For some reason I have yet to fully comprehend, literary types seem attracted to baseball and since literary types often don’t know jack shit about the game, but can’t stop themselves from writing about it, our National Pastime has inspired some really bad and misleading reading material.
And those literary types really get excited about spring training because it gives them the opportunity to gush about “Cycles of Life” and “Rebirth” and “Hope” and one overly-lyrical writer decided he couldn’t write about the beginning of a baseball season without using the phrase “the jonquils of spring” which if you ever actually said out loud in Big League clubhouse, might get your ass kicked.
Bad writing about baseball inspired this essay because another Can’t Shut the Hell Up Writer who didn’t understand what he was seeing wrote this line:
“We ponder the inaction.”
Which is an incredibly pompous way of saying: “I don’t understand what’s happening, but I’m going to write about it anyway.” So today let’s “ponder the inaction” and try to understand what’s actually going on when it looks like nothing is.
The Dugout and Third Base Coach
Someone in the dugout will signal the third base coach what they want to happen on the next pitch and TV loves to show the manager touching spots on his face, which may or may not be the actual signs because ballplayers who become managers are generally pretty smart and while the manager does all that face touching, the real signs might be given by a trainer leaning on the dugout railing.
And we might as well get this stuff about signs over with now:
Signs are supposed to look complicated, but be simple because not every ballplayer is an amateur astrophysicist (the ones who don’t become managers). Sign systems often use an “indicator” which means none of the stuff they’re doing means anything unless they touch the “indicator” (let’s say the ear) and then the next sign is “hot” meaning “that’s the sign.”
So we see a whole bunch of signs, but only two of them mean anything: the “indicator” and the “hot” sign that follows. Everything else is camouflage.
Indicators can also be things like the third base coach having his feet apart or together or standing in the coaches box or standing somewhere else and you and I are never going to figure this out just by watching, but some veteran coach who never finished high school, but has been playing baseball since the Hoover Administration can watch a sign sequence, decode it and know a steal is coming.
The Dugout and Catcher
Last I heard pitches were still not being called from the dugout in the Big Leagues. (They often are in college because no college coach wants his career screwed-up by a 19-year-old doing something dumb which is what 19-year-olds do best.) So when a Big League catcher looks into the dugout he’s not getting pitches called, he’s being told what to do with runners on base.
Say you’ve got runners on first and second base.
If the runner on second base tries to steal third, do you want the catcher to try to throw him out or try to throw out the trail runner who often gets a bad jump stealing second base because he has to make sure the runner who started on second is really going to third base.
So after looking into the dugout and getting the base running signs, now the catcher knows what he’s doing, but he has to pass that information along to the infielders.
The Catcher and Infielders
After he gets the sign from the dugout, the catcher steps out in front of home plate and tells the infielders what he’s going to do with runners on base because if he’s not throwing to a base you don’t need an infielder covering.
Now let’s say there’s a foul ball, the runners were going and that revealed which infielder was covering (or not covering) which base.
If the defense gets lazy and the catcher doesn’t give the infield a new set of signs, now the opposition knows what the defense is going to do and they can use that, which brings us to…
Fake breaks
If the offense wants to know who’s covering second base on an attempted steal – the shortstop or second baseman – they might signal the runner on first base to do a “fake break” (start like he’s stealing and then stop) and then look at second base to see who covered.
And with runners on first and third, maybe nobody’s going to cover second and they’re going to concede the steal of second base because they don’t want the runner on third base to get any bright ideas about stealing home.
So one night Royals first base coach Rusty Kuntz asked Melky Cabrera to give him a fake break and saw the opposition wasn’t going to cover second base because there was also a runner standing on third. The catcher failed to give a new set of signs so nobody was going to cover second, but Rusty had a hard time convincing Melky a stolen base was there for the taking.
Melky argued that he didn’t steal many bases at that point in his career, but Rusty convinced Melky there wasn’t going to be a throw and he could walk into second and Melky stole second base standing up.
The Third Base Coach, Batter and Baserunners
We’re never going to figure out the secret signs being given to batters and runners, but there are also “universal signs” which aren’t secret and used by everybody in baseball and if you know those you can see what the third base coach is telling the runners.
For instance:
A coach pointing at his eyes and then spinning a finger in the air is telling the runners to “look around.” Know where the defenders are positioned because if you’re a runner on first base and you know the right fielder is over toward the centerfield gap and a line drive is hit over your left shoulder, you can start running right away without looking at the outfield. You already know the right fielder is in the gap and can’t make the catch.
Starting right away means you’re a couple steps ahead of where you’d be if you had to wait and look.
We watch replay after replay of slides and tags (the end of plays), but rarely, if ever, look to see how the runner started, which might be the thing that decided if the runner was safe or out.
The First Base Coach and Runner
So you got smart ballplayers, but you also have dumbbells, which means first base coaches have to know if they have Albert Einstein or Jethro Bodine standing on first base.
And if it’s Jethro, the first base coach has to watch the third base coach and make sure the dumbbell runner on first base gets the sign which might be a simplified version of what the third base coach tried to communicate.
As one first base coach told me: basically it’s “you’re running” or “you’re not running” and that might be communicated by using the runner’s name or not using it or patting his shoulder or not patting it or anything else simple enough for Jethro to comprehend.
The Pitcher and Catcher
Now they use Buzz Lightyear communication systems and the catcher pushes some buttons on his wristband and the guys wearing headsets (pitcher, catcher and up to three fielders) hear what pitch is coming and it’s an actual word like: “fastball.”
So far so good, but you want everybody on defense to know what pitch is coming because it changes what they’ll do when the pitcher starts his windup.
And we’ll start with…
The Middle Infielders
Before the Houston Astros got caught cheating (which baseball still hasn’t done anything about and probably never will) and screwed this up for everybody, the middle infielders would see the catcher’s signs and pass that information along to everybody else.
And the information is pretty simple: is the next pitch a fastball or off-speed?
The fielders don’t care whether the off-speed pitch is a slider or a curve or a change-up; if put in play, all those off-speed pitches are likely to be hit to the pull side of the field. If it’s a fastball, chances get better it will be hit straight-away or to the opposite field.
With a runner on first base, you don’t want both guys covering second if the runner takes off, so after they get the pitch the two middle infielders look at each other, cover their mouths with their gloves and whichever one is in charge signals “Me” (closed mouth because that’s how you pronounce an “m” and mean’s “I’m covering”) or “You” (open mouth because that’s how you pronounce a “y” and means “you’re covering”).
So left-handed hitter with a slider coming, the second baseman wants to stay where he is because if that slider’s put in play it’s probably going to be pulled and if the runner takes off, the shortstop will cover second base.
The Middle Infielders and Corner Infielders
The middle infielders now know if the pitch is fastball or off-speed and they communicate that information to the corner infielders by making a “hssst” noise. (If I recall correctly they do it on off-speed pitches, if I don’t recall correctly it’s the opposite.) But they do it just as the pitcher starts his delivery, so even though the base coaches can also hear the “hssst” noise, it’s too late for them to pass that information to the hitter.
So if I’m a third baseman with a right-handed hitter at the plate and I hear an off-speed pitch is coming I know there’s a good chance the ball’s coming to my side of the field.
As pitches are delivered, infielders get up on their toes and shuffle forward (it’s put them in good fielding position) and you can tell if the pitch is off-speed or a fastball by which way the infielders shuffle; pull side if off-speed, opposite field if fastball.
The Runner on Second Base and Hitter
Before they started using the electronic pitch calling system, the runner on second base could see the signs and, if he could decipher the sign sequence, signal fastball or off-speed to the hitter.
The runner might do that by “hands on knees” for off-speed “hands on hips” for fastball. Or which hand he used to touch his batting helmet or anything else they could dream up. And if he couldn’t get the pitch, the runner could signal location — inside or outside — which is why catchers wait to the last second to set up.
All this was considered legit because it was being done by the players on the field, not some analytics department intern sitting in centerfield with binoculars. If a team didn’t want the runner on second stealing signs, they needed to come up with a better sign system…or…the pitcher could drill the batter in the ribs and say, “Thank your buddy on second base for that one.”
We see a batter get hit by a pitch and pitchers will always say it got away from them, but sometimes it’s intentional and sends a message.
The Catcher and Centerfielder
Don’t know how common this is, but I’ve heard about catchers also giving signs to the centerfielder and letting him know when an off-speed pitch is coming because if the ball is put in play, chances are it’ll be hit to the pull side of the field.
Like I already said, we focus on the end of plays and not the beginning and some unbelievable catches are made because a defender started moving in the right direction before the ball was hit.
The Outfield Coach and Outfielders/Infield Coach and Infielders
When they’re on defense, the outfield coach and the infield coach have to stand in the same spot in the dugout (the outfield coach will be in the dugout entrance closest to the outfield, the infield coach will be closest to the infield) and the coaches stand in the same spots so the players know where to find them.
I could write a lot more about this or we could just watch this video in which Royals outfield coach Rusty Kuntz explains the signs used for outfielders and you should watch it because Rusty’s pretty entertaining:
Pondering the Inaction? What inaction?
Hard as it might be to believe, I still haven’t talked about all the things that happen between two pitches, but I gotta stop somewhere or get a book deal because I could keep writing about this stuff forever. But by now you should have figured out there is no “inaction” – just people who don’t know what to look for and prove it by writing about it.
Remember: all this is happening between two pitches and it happens every time.
And now I need to go to the florist and buy some jonquils of spring.
All the content is good but these baseball pieces are worth a subscription alone.
I need to take notes when I read your baseball articles. I loved this one!