In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game — starting with swinging at a 3-0 pitch.

In 1979, Davey Lopes was playing second base for the Dodgers when his team took a 7-2 lead in the fourth inning against the Reds. Cincinnati reliever Frank Pastore did little to staunch the damage, giving up two singles and three home runs in the span of the first six batters he faced, and in the process became his team’s sacrificial lamb. With no point in burning his bullpen in what was now a 12-2 blowout, Reds skipper John McNamera left Pastore in; by the time Lopes faced him in the sixth it was 14-2, there were runners on first and third and only one out. Pastore was one unhappy right-hander.

When Lopes swung at (and fouled off) a 3-0 pitch, Pastore was even less happy. And when Lopes homered on the on the pitch following that, Pastore was downright pissed. The right-hander was finally pulled, and Reds reliever Dave Tomlin was so upset that he came in from the bullpen after the inning was over to ask McNamera if Lopes would be let off the hook.

“Mac said, ‘No, we’re just going to pick our spot,’ ” recalled Reds third baseman Ray Knight in a Columbus Dispatch report. “[Tomlin] said, ‘When’s our spot?’ He said, ‘The next time [Lopes] comes up.’ ”

The next time Lopes came up was in the eighth inning, and the pitcher he faced was, not coincidentally, Dave Tomlin. Tomlin threw at him four straight times … and missed all four attempts. Lopes took first base, and that more or less ended it.

“At that time, even though I was in the big leagues, I didn’t know that rule,” said Lopes more than 25 years after the fact. “And I still don’t agree with it, because if I’d have popped the pitch up, nobody would have cared if I swung at it. … I had never, ever swung at a 3-0 pitch, but Lasorda gave it to me, so I said, what the hell.”

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game.

On May 10, 1993, Minnesota’s Dave Winfield pulled a Hall-of-Fame-worthy turnaround when, in the sixth inning, with the Twins sitting on a 6-1 lead, he took advantage of the deep positioning of Angels third baseman Rene Gonzales (“In left field” was how Winfield described it after the game) and bunted for a base hit. At that point, Winfield was dying to reach base, having entered the game batting .204. When he followed his bunt by stealing second, Anaheim pitchers were furious.

He came up again two innings later, this time with his team leading 8-3, and Angels pitcher Chuck Crim took the opportunity to put a 2-0 fastball underneath his chin. Perhaps it was because Winfield recognized his earlier breach of etiquette, but he limited his anger to a heated glare at the mound as he brushed himself off. “It was a purpose pitch,” said Crim a day later in the Los Angeles Times, “because what he did was uncalled for. I used to have a lot of respect for him, but after he pulled something like that, I lost a lot.”

As a bonus, Winfield found himself in an exceptional situation. He was angry, his team had a big lead and he was facing a 3-0 count. A good hack here was certain to drive the Anaheim bench up the wall. Instead, Winfield struck a conciliatory tone, watching Crim’s next pitch split the plate for a strike. Only then did he start hacking, and eventually lined the eighth pitch he saw into short left field for a single. Crim had nothing more to say and the matter was dropped. 

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game.

Bunting for a hit during a blowout is frowned upon, as is calling for a hit-and-run. Swinging with a 3-0 count is out, and woe be to the player who uncorks a huge swing—“from his ass,” in baseball parlance—in such a situation.

This notion of propriety was at the forefront of the mind of F.P. Santangelo one spring afternoon in 1996, his rookie season with the Montreal Expos. Against the Rockies in Coors Field, Santangelo was having the game of his short career, piling up a single, double and home run in five at-bats before he came to the plate in the top of the ninth inning. 

He poked the third pitch he saw into the right-field corner. With Dante Bichette positioned what seemed like miles away in the spacious Coors Field alley, it looked to be an easy triple, with viable potential for an inside-the-park home run. There was, however, another consideration.

The Expos were ahead 20-5 at the time, and in Santangelo’s mind that put the kibosh on digging for extra bases, especially as a young player trying to make a good impression. So the 28-year-old pulled up at second and collected himself, pleased with the latest addition to his statistically impressive day. When he looked into his dugout, however, he was startled to see manager Felipe Alou on the top step, brow furrowed, lips pursed and gaze fixed firmly upon him. With a disgusted shake of his head, Alou raised his outstretched arms, palms up, in the universal symbol of frustration. “I’m out there thinking, ‘I’m four-for-six, standing on second base,” said Santangelo. “What’d I do wrong?”

When he got back to the dugout, Alou told him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the manager snapped at the terrified rookie. “You were one base from hitting for the cycle! Do you know how long I played this game?” (The answer to this rhetorical question was 17 years in the majors.) “Do you know how many times I hit for the cycle?” (Rhetorical answer: never.)

To compound matters, it would have been the first cycle in Coors Field history.

“He was pissed,” said Santangelo of the manager. “I didn’t even realize I was a triple away. I just knew not to show the other team up.”

For more nuanced baseball minds (such as, say, Alou) it would have been perfectly appropriate for Santangelo to have trotted into third. For one thing, there was achievement on the line (a cycle), as well as the notion that even by the unwritten rules, nonagressive baserunning—the act of taking a base that is by all rights, yours—is perfectly acceptable. Without a play in the offing, third base was Santangelo’s for the taking.

Decades later, he’s still thinking about why he didn’t.

With the Padres in 1993, Gary Sheffield swung at a 3-0 pitch—and missed—when his team led by eight runs, and when Dodgers reliever Ricky Trlicek hit him with his next pitch it was almost as if Sheffield had been anticipating that very scenario. As soon as the pitch connected, Sheffield, without hesitation, charged Trlicek and tackled him near the mound as benches emptied onto the field.

What Sheffield overlooked in his victimization scenario was that control wasn’t exactly the right-hander’s bag. After the game, Trlicek took great pains—far beyond the scope of a standard pitcher’s denial—to declare the pitch unintentional, and his story was believable. Trlicek had retired only four of the 11 batters he’d faced prior to drilling Sheffield, giving up six earned runs. The five at-bats preceding Sheffield went: hit by pitch, walk, walk, triple, single. Trlicek was missing his spots so badly that it seemed the only way he could have hit Sheffield was unintentionally; had he wanted to, he probably would have missed.

After the scrape, both pitcher and batter were ejected (it was more or less a mercy killing in Trlicek’s case), and afterward Sheffield confessed to being spurred by guilty feelings over his ill-timed swing. “I just reacted,” he said.

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game — starting with swinging at a 3-0 pitch.

On May 26 1990, the Mets were walking all over San Diego, holding an 11-0 lead in the eighth inning. With two outs and runners on second and third, shortstop Kevin Elster drew three straight balls from Padres reliever Calvin Schiraldi. With the next pitch, Elster hit the exacta—not only did he swing 3-0, but he swung hard. He let out some shaft. He generated some wind.

He made the Padres mad.

When the Mets retook the field, San Diego coach Sandy Alomar asked third baseman Howard Johnson, “Is [Elster] crazy or just stupid?” Elster answerd the question himself when it was posed to him by reporters the next day, saying, “A little of both.”

The following night, San Diego broke open a 2-2 tie with six runs in the eighth inning. The first Met to bat in the following frame was Elster, and with a comfortable lead, pitcher Greg W. Harris performed his role as baseball assassin, with a low-and-outside first pitch to throw off the scent, and a second pitch that hit Elster clean in the back. Elster read the intent immediately, even as he kneeled at the plate in pain. Before he could even get up, Harris offered a bring-it-on wave of his hand, Elster obliged, and benches emptied. At least Elster saw the pitch for what it was, saying after the game in the Los Angeles Times, “It took some guts for Harris to throw at me. I wish some of our pitchers would do the same thing.”

New York manager Davey Johnson didn’t buy it. “If I’m out there, I’d rather have them swinging,” he said in a Newsday report. “Get it over. My guy (Elster) is hitting .170. Why prolong it? If Harris thinks that’s wrong, he needs to go to a psychiatrist.” Perhaps it was coincidence, but Johnson was fired a day later.

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game — starting with swinging at a 3-0 pitch.

In 2001, Tsuyoshi Shinjo jumped to the major leagues after a decade of playing professional baseball in Japan. Well-schooled in the customs of his native league, Shinjo quickly discovered the culture gap. In Japan, a 3-0 swing while holding a big lead was hardly objectionable. As it turned out learning that was not the case in the U.S. proved painful.

On May 24, with his New York Mets club holding an 11-3 lead over the Marlins in the bottom of the eighth inning, Shinjo stepped to the plate with one out and the bases empty. He took three straight balls, then swung at and missed the fourth pitch. On the fifth pitch, he flied out to deep right field.

The result of the at-bat was less important than the impression it left on the Marlins, who felt that Shinjo committed a breach of etiquette in any language. Their next day’s starter, Brad Penny, responded.

Contained therein is a lesson in retaliation cause and effect. By the time Penny decided to exact revenge, he and the Marlins held a 3-0, seventh-inning lead. The right-hander had given up only five hits to that point, one of them, to Robin Ventura, immediately preceding Shinjo’s at-bat. With one out, Penny drilled Shinjo in the left shoulder, a message that Todd Zeile, standing on deck, understood and did not appreciate.

Later, Penny denied that there was intent behind the pitch, but said in the New York Daily News that Shinjo “did deserve to get hit after what he did last night. You don’t do that. I know he’s new over here, but he’s got some things to learn.”

Penny, too, had some things to learn, one of them being that, no matter how well one is pitching, it’s not a great idea to simultaneously and with a single pitch wake up a sleeping lion and bring the tying run to the plate.

That tying run, Zeile, planted Penny’s first pitch over Shea Stadium’s left-field fence to tie the game. As Zeile rounded third, he had some choice words for the pitcher, capped by the statement, “That’s for Shinjo.”

“If somebody thinks you retaliate for somebody swinging 3-0, you’d better learn what retaliation is,” said Mets manager Bobby Valentine after the game. “It’s no reason to hurt someone. It’s this new ‘Let’s wear a skirt’ baseball. I’ve been in the game 33 years, and I’ve never worn a skirt. Let it be known, we’ll swing 3-0 whenever we get the chance. That’s the way I was taught. The guys on the other side don’t like it, don’t get behind eight runs.”

To judge by the ensuing approach of his players, Valentine knew better. It showed a week later when, against the Phillies, New York jumped out to a 9-0 lead in the seventh inning. Shinjo swung first pitch. When center fielder Darryl Hamilton went 3-0 on reliever Jose Santiago, he watched two strikes before grounding out to the pitcher. Five days after that, the Mets jumped out to a 6-0 lead over Tampa Bay; Lenny Harris worked a 3-0 count, then watched a called strike. The day after that, holding a 9-3 lead in the seventh inning over Baltimore, Timo Perez watched a strike after going 3-0 against Chuck McElroy. The list goes on.

As for Shinjo’s lack of fluency in the American game, the Marlins weren’t the only disbelievers.

“The only (Japanese) guy who did that, swung at a 3-0 pitch, was Shinjo—everybody else, I think they know,” said Mac Suzuki, a native of Kobe, Japan, who spent the first 10 years of his professional career in America—including stints with the Mariners, Royals, Rockies and Brewers—before heading home to the Japanese league when he was 28. “They ask somebody what they can do, what they cannot do. The guys right now, guys playing in the States, they study before they come. Only Shinjo—Shinjo was kind of crazy.”