This is a Quiz
Having been asked to fill in tomorrow, I want to make sure I can do this correctly.
You know what I was thinking watching Estrada chase after the pop foul? Is was thinking that there are many fewer popouts to the catcher these days then there used to be in my youth. Back in the days of Bench, it seemed like a there’d be a rising fastball that the batter got just under, poping it back, the catcher would toss the mask aside, stagger under the ball, and put it away. Now, with fewer pitchers relying on the rising fastball and less foul territory, there are fewer of these fun plays.
They’re only fun plays if you’ve never had to make one ;-).
Nice Quiz.
Stands are a lot closer to the action these days, so a lot of the old pop fouls are dropping out of play.
Hey bamadan, I had to change your title on this posting. It was causing some weird effects with the navigation on the site and the news tracker. It’s cool now though.
Merv, do I correctly understand that I can’t place a link in the title of the posting?
Craig, that’s why I said “…and with less foul territory” 🙂
Anyway, I was thinking that there may be another reason. How many people remember the picture on the cover of the first Sports Illustrated? It has a picture of Eddie Mathews swinging with the catcher and umpire behind him. You can see the catcher in his squat: it looks like the angle between shin and thigh was less than 90 degrees. He is much, much closer to standing up than now where the catcher’s butt is resting against his ankles. It is self-obvious that anyone nearly sitting down will have a much harder time getting up to sprint than someone barely bent over. Catchers have gradually been getting lower over the years, from Roger Breshnahan through Bill Dickey to Bill Freehan. But it seemed that around the time of Tony Pena and the increased reliance on the split finger fastball from Mike Scott and Roger Craig, that the catcher has just about flopped into the dirt.
Yep, no links in the title. If it was just the news tracker, I would have found a way around it. However, the MovableType software also choked on it.
I might need to investigate this though.
Thanks. I’ll try not to screw things up too much tonight.
You’ll do a good job Bamadan