Last week I was staying away from home in town and on the hotel TV late at night I caught a few innings of the Yankees and the White Sox.
Twice balls were hit between Cano and the bag and both times he turned his back to the ball and tried to glove it. The first bounced off his glove and the batter made first. I assumed this would be scored as an error but the commentators discussed what a difficult play it was and indeed it was scored as a hit. Well of course it’s difficult, he’s not looking at the ball.
So why hasn’t anyone ever suggested to their multi-millionaire players that they learn skills that even kids learn in other places. No-one in any cricket playing country would turn their back on the ball.
Now don’t jump in to tell me I am trying to belittle baseball, I have similar questions about Australian sport and I love baseball.
I’m just saying that if I was being paid millions of dollars to do something, I would want to do the best job possible and that would include finding ways to improve my performance.
Amazing though it might seem, they HAVE thought of this. I know, I know, it’s just incredible to imagine that in the 200 years or so of baseball history someone would have thought of it, but yes, barehanding the ball HAS occurred to them and for the most part it has been found wanting. There are a few situations where it works, e.g. very slow-rolling grounders near the plate.
The reason it is rarely used, as anyone who has ever once in their life attempted to catch a baseball knows, is that you’re likelier to catch the ball if you use your glove. If you attempt to barehand hard ground balls, ninety percent of the time you will fail. Cano’s method works 95% of the time.
Highlights of Great Catches in Cricket have, of course, nothing at all to do with what the optimum strategy is since you didn’t include Great Moments In Cricket When A Guy Didn’t Make A Catch He Would Have Made If He’s Been Wearing A Glove.
Using your bare hand toa catch ground balls sure as hell wouldn’t improve your performance and would be an excellent way to lose your job as a major league baseball player.
Unless it’s the left side of the infield charging a slow dribbler, or the shortstop bare-handing the toss from the 2nd baseman to speed up the relay to first, then I don’t want to see anyone bare-handing. Not when they have big leather gloves they can corral the ball with.
Well not really. If I were playing professional sport my aim would be do whatever I can do to help my team win, not do whatever I can do to not get injured. Sit on the bench would be the winner there.
Though a cricket ball is actually of simlair construction to a baseball, but slightly harder and denser. Whilst brken fingers are a hazard in cricket, it’s not a given that you will break your fingers trying to catch a ball barehanded.
Not even close. I only ever played district cricket but I have comfortably taken catches from full blooded shots where I have only been half the distance from the batsman as the pitcher is in baseball.
So you would trade one out, for not helping your team for the next 6 weeks? To extrapolate, I suppose you believe that all players who are injured should keep on playing then, despite the risk of permanent career ending damage? Play till you drop.
My point, in case you can’t see it, is that managing risk of injury is always a part of sport.
Because Baseball is based upon what was a girls game (rounders). Which also explains why you are’nt allowed to strike the batter with the ball in baseball.
Why don’t you hand them lacrosse nets. A catch is almost guaranteed.
Incidentally, even at club level ninety a good fielder should take 90% of catches where the ball actually reaches his hands. At international level; 100. I have taken baseballs barehanded and the difficulty level was pretty much the same.
“No rounders!” And soaking–hitting a runner with a thrown ball to put him out–was part of some of the earliest proto-baseball forms (before the Cartwright codification of 1845). Hitting the batter with a pitched ball was tolerated much longer, usually counted as “no pitch” and a dead ball before the hit-batsman rule we know today was assembled in bits and stages through the 1880s and '90s.
You asked why players don’t use their bare hands. The answer is very simple; it doesn’t work. You cannot efficiently catch a ball as well with your bare hand as you can with a glove.
There are 162 games and 27 outs to be played per season. If you think that getting one out is superior to your participating for the next 6 weeks, then you are not worth having on the team.
As Rick Jay hinted at, the game was initially played without gloves. Then the gloves were more like heavy work gloves. Eventually, it progressed to the webbed glove you see these days.
If there was the smallest benefit to fielding bare-handed it would have been done long ago.
Well, there is a very small set of circumstances (basically covered by MOIDALIZE above) in which there is a benefit–and it is done. It sounds like the OP’s play was outside that set.
To a cricket fan, that isn’t particularly remarkable. A decent take but to baseball fans I suspect it is only the bare hand that makes it worthy of interest.
I’m not putting baseball down but barehanded fielding of that type does happen in cricket fairly regularly.