We’re not talking about walk-off grand slams, 511-win careers or 56-game hitting streaks here. I’m counting down the most difficult plays to complete for the average, everyday baseball game. These plays won’t go down in the record books, but if you can manage to do any number of these consistently, you’ll find yourself a spot in the memories of fans and fellow players alike.
Steal third
Ninety feet separate you from the next base in any stealing situation. So then, what makes stealing third base so much harder? For one, the catcher needs only to throw 90 feet to third base, whereas he has to throw 127 feet, 3 3/8 inches to throw you out at second, and if you know anything about baseball or sports in general, 37 extra feet is a monumental difference. I will say this, however: Stealing third is mostly about guts. Pitchers and catchers alike know about these advantages in distance, so they are much more lax when a man is on second. This confidence can be used against them if you’ve got a read and you’ve got speed.
Inside-the-park home run
In my opinion, this is the hardest thing to accomplish from the plate. On any given regulation-sized field, you won’t find a part of the fence more than 435 feet, meaning that an outfielder can play your hit off the wall and hold you to a triple. For an inside-the-park home run, you need to be lucky: The ball has a wonky ricochet, an outfielder dives and misses, or the outfield was playing a shift. Any number of things need to happen for you to have a chance to circle the bases before they get the relay in. Oh wait! I forgot to mention that at no point can any of these “things” be deemed an error by the official scorekeeper, or you’ll have yourself a double or triple with an E on the guilty fielder.
The Greg Maddux
Now, it may be the pitcher in me, but this has to be the most dominating feeling in baseball. This is a reference to the pitch that Maddux made a career from. He would hammer the side of the plate opposite his throwing arm (inside corner for lefty hitters and outside for righty hitters) with a tailing two-seam fastball so that when it left his hand it would look like a ball, but it would cut across the strike zone at the last moment.
Essentially impossible to hit and many times even to produce a swing, it is quite the accomplishment to have this pitch in your repertoire. Forget baseball for a second — but just the sheer mechanics of the wrist and hand should reveal why mastering this effect on the baseball is quite difficult. Hold your dominant hand so you see the back of it. Now rotate it until you can see your palm. Now go back to the original set up and try rotating it the other way, toward the side of your pinkie. This is why tailing a baseball is so much harder than curving or sliding it.
Put-out at third from right field
On any given team, the right-fielder usually has the best arm (yes, better than the pitcher) because he has to make the longest throw on the field: from his position to third. Shouldn’t be difficult to figure out why this is so difficult: You must maximize power while simultaneously maintaining deadly accuracy.
5-4-3 Triple play
This may be the most difficult because it is the one play on the list that most intimately depends on multiple players performing at their best. A 5-4-3 (third baseman-second baseman-first baseman) is perhaps the classic image of the triple play: A groundball is hit hard to the third baseman; he fields it, steps on third, and throws it to the second baseman; he catches it, steps on second, and throws it to first. To make this a triple play, you have to do all this quicker than it takes the average MLB batter to go home to first: about 4.3 seconds.
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G.J. Vitale is a rising senior majoring in biology-psychology and English. He can be reached at Gregory.Vitale@tufts.edu.
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