Stealing Home Plate has to be the most insane “play” in all of organized sport.
What are the odds of success? I mean, the pitcher is just about looking right at you and you’ve got to go 90 feet!
Does it even happen any more?
Stealing Home Plate has to be the most insane “play” in all of organized sport.
What are the odds of success? I mean, the pitcher is just about looking right at you and you’ve got to go 90 feet!
Does it even happen any more?
Carlos Ruiz of the Phillies did it Tuesday.
Aaron Hill of the Blue Jays did it a few weeks ago.
In most situations it is of course a crazy thing to do. However, pitchers will sometimes become inattentive and forget to check a runner at third - since stealing is usually not a problem - and an attentive runner can take advantage of just such a lapse in judgment.
And of course, a LEFT-handed pitcher isn’t looking at you. He’s looking away from you. So they’re often the ones victimized.
Not much any more. The career records are held by Ty Cobb and Max Carey. The season records were set by Cobb in 1912, and Pete “Ah, there’s a wall I can run into” Reiser in 1946. The game record (2) was last performed by Vic Power(!) in 1958.
Stealing home has gone the way of the complete game.
I remember watching a movie called “Stealing Home” with Jodie Foster and Mark Harmon, and thinking that it was pretty much impossible. I’ve never seen it done (but I don’t watch a lot of baseball). Ruiz apparently did it as part of a double steal, where the guy on first stole second at the same time, or just before, Ruiz went home from 3rd. Is it ever done as depicted in the movie? (IIRC, he just took off from 3rd when the pitcher started his windup).
ETA: Hey, those replies weren’t there a minute ago. But my question is still valid: Are those instances mentioned part of a double-steal, or did the guy just take off as the pitcher started his windup?
Occasionally. As mentioned earlier, it’s easier with a southpaw on the mound. I’m pretty sure the Aaron Hill steal had him just taking off down the line while the pitcher was still in his stretch.
Sure, the latter is exactly how it’s done. Sometimes it’s part of a double steal, but it doesn’t have to be.
Obviously the best way to do it is to catch the pitcher napping, but even if you can’t manage this, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re screwed. Pitchers are extremely focused on the batter/catcher, and, although they are aware of the baserunners, they sure aren’t paying as much attention to them as they are the plate. So, when they suddenly see something moving in the corner of their eye, and then realize that it is they guy on third headed home, you can bet they have a WTF?! moment, and are therefore more like to balk or make a wild pitch, either of which allows the runner to score.
But how did a guy like Ty Cobb have many many straight steals? Surely after the first few, pitchers would become uber-attentive every time he got on third, right? Has something changed in the rules or game play to make it so rare?
We were taught in HS that if the runner on 3rd broke for home, to throw the ball at the batter.
If the play was a suicide squeeze, it would be the most difficult pitch to bunt safely. Also, it would get the ball on the correct side of the plate for the catcher, when the batter dove, he would be backing into the runner, and if nothing else, if the ball hit the batter the play is dead and the runner has to return to 3rd.
Pretty much this exact thing happened in a Seattle Mariners game a couple weeks ago. Mariners’ 2nd baseman Jose Lopez was on third, and backup catcher Jamie Burke was at the plate. Lopez broke for home, and the pitch came right at Burke’s head. Somehow, Burke managed to get the bat on the ball and drop a perfect bunt, and Lopez scored easily
With two outs and a weak (non-power hitting) batter up, the chances of success doesn’t need to be much more than 30% (assuming no other runners are on). Probably something which could be done more often, but isn’t because of the criticism the runner would receive if he failed. When Andy Pettitte allowed a straight steal a few weeks ago hardly any blurbs on it mentioned Pettitte’s inattentiveness so the pitcher seems to get a free pass on this play.
The Aaron Hill steal of home I mentioned before was a straight up stolen base. Here’s the video:
It’s obvious that in this case Hill just caught Pettite not paying enough attention to him. The catcher had to yell to him to get the ball home, and it was too late by then.
Orlando Cabrera of the Angels had a straight steal of home last year against the Dodgers Chad Billingsley, a righthander. Billingsley was in the windup position and didn’t see Cabrera and the play wasn’t even close.
“It’s hero or the goat.”
“It’s HERO TIME!”
“Oh, you blockhead!”
I have a guess- he probably maimed or ended the careers of a couple of catchers, and after that they said “fuck it, let him have the base.”
Cobb was a very dirty player. He would slide in, spikes up, but with his feet around the level of the other player’s waist or knees. When Tommy Lee Jones played him in the movie Cobb, he broke his own leg trying to duplicate one of Cobb’s slides.
There is a highlight shown all the time on baseball ads of Jackie Robinson stealing home in the 1955 World Series off Whitey Ford (lefthander) and catcher Yogi Berra. Steal was successful, Dodgers lost game but won their first World Series.
Vic Power!
Just felt like screaming that. Sorry.
Straight steals of home (as opposed to those executed as part of a double steal, or those that occur by accident when the pitcher pitches wildly on a suicide squeeze) were formerly much more common. Until about the 1960’s, pitchers usually pitched from the windup with a runner on third (except in a first-and-third situation), which made it a much easier play. That’s how Cobb and Robinson and Power were able to pile up those numbers.
Nowadays, I doubt if there are even five attempts at a straight steal of home in a season. I wouldn’t be surprised if in some years there are zero.
Now, in fairness, it’s not entirely true to say they used to be more common. They were more common in Cobb’s time. In Robinson’s time, they were in fact extremely uncommon, unless it was Robinson himself.
There’s a sort of prevailing assumption that stolen bases have gone down over time, but that’s not really true. Stolen bases, including stealing home, were a well used strategy until the 1920s and then began to vanish, with only a few exceptions. It’s noteworthy that Jackie Robinson stole over 30 bases only once in his career, and his average over 7 regular seasons was 24; shit, Ryan Klesko stole 23 bases a couple of times. When Jackie Robinson entered the league, nobody was stealing home or any other base; the average team in 1947 stole just 42 bases.
Baseball in the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by home run hitting and station-to-station baseball even more than it is today. There were very few consistently proficient basestealers, and it was normal for the league leader to be in the 20s or 30s. In 1939 no NL player stole more than 17 bases. And that was an improvement over 1938, when the NL leader, Stan Hack, stole 16. Jose Reyes does that in a good month. When Willie Mays stole 40 in 1956 it was the first time that had been done in the NL in 27 years.
Stolen bases then returned to the game in the 1960s, in part because pitching began to dominate the game and in part because it just became fashionable again. Maury Wills started it, of course, and it continued on right though the 1980s with stolen bases totals reaching historically remarkable levels. Stolen bases in recent years have been a bit down, but really, by historical standards they’re not that low. Teams today still steal FAR more bases than they did in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, on average.
In case anyone was wondering, there are about 20 steals of home every year.
Power’s accomplishment, incidentally, was a stone cold fluke, as he very rarely stole bases at all.