It’s not that hard, Scott. Tell him, Wash.
It’s incredibly hard.
Hey, anything worth doing is.
I assume it’s because first base is BEHIND the first baseman while he’s watching all the action going on in front of him.
Am I right?
Because it’s a specialized position for the top 0.x% of people in their field.
But, It was a line for humor. I don’t believe that first base is generally considered to be one of the hardest positions (the opposite I thought?).
Yeah, it’s typically considered among the easiest fielding positions. I wouldn’t want to do it, though. 
Because it’s just difficult. It’s also a little bit tougher if you’re right handed, which Scott Hatteberg was.
First base isn’t the hardest position, true, it’s one of the easier ones physically. However, it’s tricky in unique ways. For an inexperienced player, what’s often tough is having to hold a runner on, jump back into position when the pitch is delivered. Knowing when to leave the base to get a grounder and shovel it to a covering pitcher is tough, too. Proper positioning is critical because you make more plays than anyone else; the rest of the infield needs you over there to be the target for their throws.
Scott Hatteberg had ben a catcher - an immensely hard position, but unique, not at all like being an infielder. Prior to the events in the film he had never played a single play at first base in his major league career. He had played exactly ONE inning anywhere but catcher - an emergency inning at third base in 2000, and he didnb’t have to make any plays. An infielder has to know a whole dance routine for every play; where do you go if there’s a runner at second and the ball is hit into the outfield between the shortstop and third baseman? Where do you go if it’s a fly ball to left with a man on first? What about a fly ball to right, bases loaded, one out? It’s a lot to keep in your head. Most people who learn an infield position learn this over the course of years and years and years of play. Hatteberg had six weeks.
There’s also just a lot of pressure. Aside from the pitcher and catcher, you’re probably the next person handling the ball the most.
IS it “incredibly hard”? Depends on what you’re comparing it to.
Compared to anything I’ve done or will do? Incredibly hard. Any professional sports position would be. It would demand strength and skills and stamina and knowledge that I’ve never had, and never will.
But that’s rarely what anyone means by that. The usual standard of comparison for how hard it is to play first base would be with the other eight positions on the field. And that question can be answered with another question, “what positions to baseball players tend to play if their primary skill is hitting?” Those would be the easiest positions to play.
First basemen usually (no runners on, non-bunt situation) set up behind the imaginary line between 1st and 2nd, so 1st base is slightly in front and to the left of them.
Ron Washington is saying playing first base is incredibly hard because playing defense at the major league level anywhere on the field is incredibly hard.
And just when you think you have it made, something goes wrong. Just ask Bill Buckner.
I couldn’t say how hard it is in absolute terms, but I think I have seen the value of a really GOOD first baseman as opposed to an average one. Being a Mets fan in the 80s, that was Keith Hernandez.
He was playing a different game than a typical first baseman. He had all the typical glove skills, but also threw better than most first basemen. I’ve read one of his books, in which he described game situations in detail. He was aware of permutations of every pitch and seemed able to anticipate things better than most. Hernandez was also renowned for correctly guessing when hitters would bunt and would charge aggressively. Some manager at the time remarked you couldn’t bunt against the Mets because of him. Also, incidentally a .300 hitter. Should be the HOF just for his fielding, IMHO.
Here’s an example of Hernandez being right on top of a bunt ending in a double play:
This is a good answer, but I think another aspect is the gamesmanship. First base, more than any position other than pitcher and catcher, has to involve itself with the metagaming that happens within every at bat. Runners are on first base way more than every other base, and runners are far more likely to attempt to steal a base from first. This is less of a factor today than it was in the time of Moneyball, but still a big part of the position.
All that means the first baseman needs to use deception a lot and they need to know the body language and tendencies of both the pitcher and runner. They need to have a strategy for not just every hitter but every hitter when there’s a runner on first.
The other challenging aspect is the scenario where the first baseman needs to field a ball and then throw to the pitcher trying to cover the base. This is an awkward motion for all parties and again requires an almost subliminal level of communication with the different pitchers who they need to orchestrate with.
First basemen typically use a specialized mitt. It’s larger and thicker than what most other fielders use. This might help indicate how unique the demands of the first base spot are relative to the rest of the fielders. Digging a thrown ball out of the dirt or off a short hop is a thing that happens 2-3 times an inning for them, the other basement might see it once a game or less.
Obviously every professional athlete is in an elite class. And it’s true that first base is a position where older, slower or less agile players tend to land which might suggest it’s easier. But it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s difficult in different ways, more tactical and more cerebral. And it’s definitely a position where mistakes will have an outsized impact.
Many good answers here. It is probably the easiest position for someone who is good enough to be a professional athlete to play adequately. It’s very hard to play it well. I got to watch it play out in real time this year. Anthony Rizzo (an excellent fielder) went out injured and the Yankees decided to bring up Ben Rice who was a catcher to play 1st. The kid is obviously very athletic and was able to do a decent job but there were several times that his inexperience was obvious.
Um, ya gotta be able to do the splits?
On the other hand, at the sub-professional level, the corner outfield positions are where you stick the weakest players (e.g. Lucy Van Pelt).
It was always my least favorite position. I found the footwork hard, finding the bag while watching the throw come to you. Add to it dealing with throws in the dirt or high or wide. Add to it holding a guy at first with a power lefty at the bat and praying he doesn’t take your head off. Also, I can’t do splits. I’d rather catch than play first and that’s saying something.
Especially when you have a late 80s/early 90s Shawon Dunston firing rockets in the dirt somewhere in the vicinity of you in first base. I watched Mark Grace save many, many a throw that should have ended up in the dugout.
It’s just a line in a movie.
Houston has had a bit of this lately. They’ve had a bit of a rotation at first. They’ve had 5 different players at the position in August alone (including the backup catcher) and 9 overall over the course of the season.
Some of that is fallout from releasing Abreu, of course. But also somewhat due to injury. And lefty/righty considerations for the opposing pitcher. And also wanting to increase offensive production at the position.
I desperately wanted to play first in Little League because (theoretically) it meant being involved in the play more often. Outfield was boring. The one small problem was my complete and utter lack of ability and they never let me try it.
I’m still sort of fascinated by first baseman mitts and have never used one. Might just go buy one for myself in my old age for fun. Someone told me they have a machine at sporting goods stores that breaks in new gloves using steam to soften them - is that true? I used to oil new gloves, put two or three balls inside and tie them up with twine for a week.
Right field is where you put the little leaguers who chase butterflies. It’s where the fewest hits go. Left handed batters are rare at that level and batters can rarely hit to the opposite field with any power. Once you get to mid level playing those things are no longer true and your right fielder needs to be able to cover a large portion of the field and have a good arm.
Compared to other positions it’s not incredibly hard. You don’t need the mobility or throwing arm of a shortstop, for instance. You don’t need the knowledge of hitters and pitching mechanics that are required of catchers. You don’t need the speed, arm, or judgment of a center fielder. You don’t have the problem of turning a double play with your back to an oncoming runner the way a second baseman does.
Of course, a player who isn’t used to the position will have to learn it. When to come in to field a bunt is just one example. But this is no harder than the special skills needed at any other position.
It’s true that a first baseman has to corral errant throws. But remember that Hatteberg had been a catcher. He had plenty of experience blocking pitches in the dirt, and catching pitches that were high or outside. The basic skills are the same, and a catcher has to deal with bad pitches more often than a first baseman has to deal with bad throws.
Brent Jennings’ line as Ron Washington was a throw-away joke that served to create a little tension. I doubt that Washington said this in real life, especially in a meeting where Billy Beane is trying to convince Scott Hatteberg to switch positions. It would have been counterproductive.
The OP’s question is intimately connected to how we judge defensive value. The WAR stat explicitly gives bonuses or penalties purely based on what position a player is at, before a single ball in play is hit somewhere:
Current values (per 1350 (150*9) innings played) are [Baseball Reference LINK]:
- C: +9 runs
- SS: +7 runs
- 2B: +3 runs
- CF: +2.5 runs
- 3B: +2 runs
- RF: -7 runs
- LF: -7 runs
- 1B: -9.5 runs
- DH: -15 runs
The issue is that nobody hits as a shortstop or right fielder: everybody hits as a hitter.[/Bill James, who devised a different system Win Shares] The above is ostensibly an attempt to adjust for positional difficulty. But it’s very difficult to discern where these figures come from, exactly, and whether they truly provide for actual on-the-field wins. Here’s Fangraph’s version:
- Catcher: +12.5 runs
- Shortstop: +7.5 runs runs
- Second Base: +2.5 runs
- Third Base: +2.5 runs
- Center Field: +2.5 runs
- Left Field: -7.5
- Right Field: -7.5 runs
- First Base: -12.5 runs
- Designated Hitter: -17.5 runs
Note the spread is quite a bit larger than for BBRef’s version.
Obviously, some sort of adjustment needs to be made. But primo fielders at 1B kind of break the assumptions here. Yeah, teams tend to stick their worst fielder there-after all, they need to play somewhere. But a Keith Hernandez can accrue a significant amount of value by playing there; is the adjustment in question adequate to account for such, or does such a fielder transcend the system?
There is apparently some hard data to base the above figures on, mainly how well they field when they switch positions. But would Ozzie Smith, arguably the best fielding infielder in the history of the game, maintain his advantage if he were shifted to 1B? Note he unlike Hernandez is right-handed and even for someone of the Wizard’s ability the linked double play started by KH may not have been even in his repertoire. Likewise a right-handed mirror image clone of KH probably would handle SS fairly well (as a Red Sox fan my relatively recent go-to there for a right-handed fielder would be Kevin Youkilis, whose peak was excellent at first at least and was originally a 3B). Point is the skills aren’t often directly transferable to another position.
I’d also make sure the figures scale with average number of chances at a given position, so 2B should be higher than 3B which sees approximately half as many. 1B like 2B gets fewer batted balls than the geometrically-equivalent 3B (and SS for 2B), but surely being involved in more plays overall would help to balance the scales there. [Note even a CF gets just a few more than a 3B does]
I’ve personally been rather skeptical of these figures since I first heard of them years ago; my spread would be quite a bit smaller than even BBRef’s, and if the positional requirements DO dictate that better fielders will play higher on said scale, then we should be using the yearly positional averages and not a more or less static set of values (the BBRef link above does track the yearly values, which do slowly change over long periods of time-3B was much more valuable than 2B before 1920 given all the bunting going on then, for example).
DH is even more problematic since they ALL hit as hitters, by definition. Because a lot of players from other positions who end up there tend to hit worse when DHing, AND teams seem to struggle to find DHs who can, you know, actually hit, I’ve long felt that the DH penalties are quite a bit too extreme.
I’d probably go with something more like the following (reflecting that RF is a bit more challenging than LF tho the chances are about the same in both, and that catchers are a unique case and deserve the top spot–note in the above play Gary Carter was being given an off-day from C):
- Catcher: +10.0 runs
- Shortstop: +6.0 runs
- Second Base: +5.0 runs
- Center Field: +2.5 runs
- Third Base: +1.0 runs
- Right Field: 0
- Left Field: -2.0 runs
- First Base: -5.0 runs
- Designated Hitter: -7.5 runs
But even then I am still not sure these actually reflect real value and thus real wins.