Second base is exciting. Half way home, a mere single is often all it takes to allow its occupant to score. Unlike boring third base where, after a hit, you can pretty much walk home, from second you have to sprint. Even that may not be enough; scoring from second, in the end, may require your best slide or even a head first dive to get safely across home plate. Love that base!
And that's just offense. Defensively, second is where double plays are made and they are rarely easy. Second basemen must take the toss from a fellow infielder, touch the bag, dodge the incoming runner, turn to first and deliver a throw strong enough to beat the batter, now desperate to avoid the humiliation of having hit into a rally killing, pitcher's delight.
This season my Sunday Softball team, the Reds, has had great play at second base. We've turned double plays game after game after game. Our second baseman has just been the best. Till the playoffs began yesterday. That's when strange things began happening.
Early in game 1 our opponents, the Westies, had 2 outs, a runner on first when their batter hit a weak grounder to short. He flipped the ball to our second baseman for the out. Easiest of plays. The runner from first ran hard and futilely. He was clearly out but slid into second anyway where he made contact with our second baseman. No big deal. Happens all the time. Just baseball. No harm, no foul.
Our second baseman became enraged. He threw the ball down at the prone runner. Everyone ran out on the field. Players yelled, players pushed, players sought to calm things, the umpire threw our second baseman out of the game.
Why did this happen? I have no idea. Weird.
In the second game we had a nice early lead when our opponents put 2 runners on base. The next batter grounded the ball to our second baseman who had returned to the field after his first game banishment. Fielding it he decided to tag the runner. Sensing this the runner stopped. Not a surprising tactic but it seemed to befuddle our guy. He stood there for a few seconds just stairing at the now unmoving runner, then, finally, after giving the matter some thought, began walking slowly towards him. So the runner reacted by taking some steps in the direction of first base. This totally unsurprising move seemed to further mystify our player.
I watched in amazement. All he had to do was flip the ball to second where our shortstop awaited a throw. How could this simplest of plays be taking so long and becoming so complicated?
Finally our second baseman came to his senses and threw the ball to second. But by then the Westies' lead runner had arrived at third base, rounded it and decided to rush home. Our shortstop, seeing this, became eager to catch the throw and then nail the runner at home. So eager, unfortunately, that he came off the base before the ball arrived. Safe there! His throw home got away from our catcher. Safe there! And with the ball rolling, the runners each moved up another base. One run home, runners on second and third, no one out. Soon a missed throw at second base and a dropped pop up continued our worst inning of the season.
Mystifying! Weird!
And just as strange, we won both games because of what happened at second base. In game 1, the player who replaced our ejected guy had a big single to help score our first run and then hit a massive home run. In a 3-2 victory he acccounted for a crucial 2 runs. And, in game 2, with 5 runs in, with our 4 run lead turned to a 1 run deficit, with the bases loaded and 1 out we were well on our way to getting blown out. Till a grounder to third, a throw to second where our second baseman caught it, stepped on the bag, avoided the hard charging runner, pivoted and made a perfect throw to first for the double play, twin killing, pitcher's delight. Behind by just 1 run after that horror show? It was almost like, psychologically, we were still ahead. Soon a 2 run homer put us ahead for real and for good.
And, in the 6th inning when we needed another insurance run to make us feel safe? It was our second baseman who knocked it in.
Very strange!
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