Proven Mistakes Stand Test of Time

There’s a best-selling book in the stalls, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Its message is clear: life is simple, unchanging and what was true yesterday will be just as true tomorrow. People are predictable. Life is a rerun.

The world of sport is no different from the real world.

They televise the games now, they pay players what robber barons used to make, they have instant replay, blimps, playoffs and stadiums with roofs over them. But the games remain the same.

You can bet me that no matter how the technology and the reporting of them advances, the games will be conducted along the lines of antiquity. If it was good enough for John McGraw, it should be good enough for Tom Lasorda. If it was good enough for Walter Camp, it should be good enough for Mike Ditka.

Basketball calls it the high post but in Dr. Naismith’s day they just said, “Get the ball into the big guy with the game on the line.” The games aren’t complicated, the nomenclature is.

The strategy is as predictable as the glaciers. Well into the year 2000 if you go to a game, it will be conducted along the lines it was in the year 1900. A short Q. and A. may tell you what it is and will remain.

Question: In baseball, with a man on and fewer than two out, what will the batter do?

Answer: Bunt.

Q: Will it work?

A: No, the chances are the batter will pop it up, foul it off on the third strike, or hit it back to the pitcher, who will throw out the lead runner. The strategy will result in a run only about every other eclipse of the moon but they keep trying.

Q: Why?

A: There is a thing called the book. No one’s ever seen it but it must have a secret circulation second only to the Bible’s. You bunt because it is a form of Holy Writ. You “go by the book.”

Q: With a base open and a one-run lead and a world-class slugger at bat, will the pitcher walk him?

A: Are you kidding? The book says, “Never put the winning run on base.”

That’s why the Oakland A’s pitched to Kirk Gibson with a one-run lead in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the ’88 World Series. Mike Davis was on second at the time, first base was open, two were out and--well, you know what happened.

In 1985, in the Dodger-Cardinal playoff, with men on second and third in the ninth and the Dodgers leading by a run, first base was open when Jack Clark, no less, came to bat. He hit it farther than Gibson.

Q: So managers now walk dangerous sluggers?

A: Don’t be silly. All that managers notice about dangerous sluggers is that they strike out a lot. Managers like contact hitters who get good averages, not many runs batted in. Them, they walk. Babe Ruth revolutionized the game but baseball doesn’t recognize revolutions. That’s its charm.

Q: In pro football when a team gets a seven-point lead with two minutes, or less, to play, what does it do to protect that lead?

A: It totally ignores the most dangerous man on the field, the quarterback. It has designed a tactic known as the prevent defense. It is a comical fire drill in which seven to 10 defensive backs go into the game and practice running backward against guys running forward in the hope they can knock down the desperation passes the quarterback will throw.

Q: And does it work?

A: You have to be kidding. Did the Maginot Line work?

All an able first-class pro quarterback requires is time. Don’t rush him and he will throw that ball through a keyhole to Helen Keller. Let him stand there until he gets cobwebs and he’ll pick you apart like a safecracker.

Q: So, the prevent defense is a bust?

A: Not at all. It has saved the game. Two teams that butted heads for 57 to 58 minutes to build up a 14-7 game suddenly start scoring at will in the last 120 seconds. A team that scores like a guy laying bricks for 3 1/2 quarters is suddenly like a guy winning a lottery in the last. These guys have stumbled on a way to keep the customers in their seats till the gun.

Q: Don’t they ever change the scheme?

A: Nah. Let me give you another example.

With the ball on the opposition’s one- or two-yard line, first down and goal to go, the team with the ball, which got there with a series of clever, unexpected plays, will try to smash the ball through a wall of 11 guys who weigh an aggregate of two tons, massed at the point of attack. They will fail every time.

Q: Why do they do it?

A: You tell me. I suppose because geometry teaches you a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

Q: Isn’t it?

A: Not when it has to go through the equivalent of two parked freight cars hooked together. Then it becomes the shortest distance to Centinela Hospital. The Chicago Bears’ one-yard line is the sporting equivalent of a Soviet Gulag.

Q: Don’t the coaches vary the strategy?

A: By third down, they get the message. Too late. They try a wide play. The other guys have figured that out, too. They usually have to settle for a field goal on fourth down.

Q: Why don’t coaches change?

A: Because newspapermen suggest it. They say we don’t understand the situation.

Q: Do you?

A: Well, we can add. We can recognize an immovable object when we see it.

Q: What do the coaches say?

A: They say, quote, Anybody ought to be able to make a yard, unquote

Q: True?

A: That’s what Custer said at Little Big Horn.

Q: So, it will all remain the same?

A: Of course! You can’t tamper with tradition. What didn’t work in your father’s day still doesn’t work today.

But so what? What are we, Communists? We stick with what doesn’t work. After all, it’s an old American sports custom--if it doesn’t work, don’t fix it.