Dear Sports Fan

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a bunt work in baseball? And why is it so controversial right now?

Thanks,
Otis

— — —

Dear Otis,

A bunt is a baseball tactic where the batter hits the ball softly and directs it onto the ground. This tactic is often used as a form of sacrifice where the batter knows that she is likely to be thrown out at first base but a runner already on first, second, or less normally, third base will be able to easily advance to the next base. It’s a very old tactic and has always been controversial for one reason or another for more than a hundred years. Bunting is in the news a lot right now because the Kansas City Royals have been bunting far more than normal and have won their first two playoff games. Let’s make this a two-part post. We’ll handle how bunts work in the first half and then look into why it’s controversial in a second post.

How does a bunt work?

When a batter decides to bunt or is given instructions to bunt, she waits until the pitcher is starting to pitch and then quickly does two things: she slides her hands up the barrel of the bat and separates them for better control; as she is doing this, she pivots so that her body opens up towards the pitch. Once in bunting position, the batter does her best to make contact with the top half of the ball, so that instead of popping up for an easy out, the ball goes downwards. Advanced bunters are able to also direct the ball towards their base or first, whichever is going to be harder for the defense to field.

Getting into bunting stance does not count as a swing. A strike can only be called if, once the player is in bunting stance, they make a “movement indicating an attempt to contact the ball.” This is a wrinkle in baseball’s rules so obscure that most players and umps don’t even know this, so you will see players draw back from their bunt position if they believe the pitch is out of the strike zone and they want to ensure themselves a ball instead of a strike. A better known bunting rule is that a foul ball on a bunt attempt may count as a player’s third strike. If a batter swings at the ball and fouls it off, that can never count as a third strike, but a bunt attempt can. A foul ball is one that passes outside of first or third base. Since most bunts don’t go that far, wherever the ball stops rolling determines whether it’s fair or foul. Here’s an example of a bunt hit perfectly down the line which flummoxed the defense which was hoping it would roll foul:

If the defensive team notices that a batter is trying to bunt or thinks they might from the context of the game, they may shift where they line up in the infield to position themselves better to respond to a bunt. This usually means closer to home plate. When a bunt is made, the infielders will charge towards the rolling ball and try to get to it in time to pick it up and throw a runner out. Here’s a third baseman fielding a bunt perfectly:

As we mentioned before, a lot of bunters bunt with the intention of sacrificing themselves for the good of a runner on base. This is called a sacrifice bunt and is most often done to move a runner from first to second base. Once on second base, a runner is generally though of as in “scoring position” because they can usually make it home on any ball hit safely into the outfield. This makes it less necessary to sacrifice an out to move them to third base. A special kind of sacrifice bunt is called a squeeze play. This is when a sacrifice bunt is made to get a runner from third to home base. Sounds crazy, right? An even more daring play is the “suicide squeeze” where the runner from third starts running home before the batter even makes contact with the ball. This takes real confidence in the ability of the batter to successfully bunt the ball because if they don’t, you’ve got the catcher standing there waiting to tag the runner out. Some players use the bunt without any sense of sacrifice. They bunt because they are good at bunting and fast enough to make it a reasonable way to get safely to first base. Bunting for a base hit means that you’re basically giving up on the idea of hitting a double, triple, or home run (although doubles do sometimes happen off of bunts!) but it can still be a good strategy, especially if you can surprise the fielders by bunting when they are not in position to field the bunt.

So, that’s how a bunt works. We’ll dig into why bunts are controversial soon.
Ezra Fischer

Dear Sports Fan,

I stayed up late last night to watch the exciting playoff game between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland As and one image kept jumping out at me: the catchers and their BRIGHT YELLOW finger nails. Why do catchers paint their nails in baseball?

Thanks,
Vera

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Dear Vera,

I noticed that too and did some research about it this morning. Catchers paint their finger nails (or color them in other ways) so that their fingers are more easily visible to the pitchers on their team. Before each pitch, the catcher and pitcher need to communicate about what pitch to throw and where to throw it. This communication is important for practical reasons — the catcher needs to be able to catch the ball and he can often do subtle things to help fool the batter and even the ump — and for tactical reasons. Catchers have the primary responsibility for what pitches get thrown when and where. So, how do they communicate? And why does it involve colored nails?

Catchers communicate with pitchers through an occupational sign language. From their catcher’s squat, they stick one hand between their legs and flash a series of hand signals. There’s a simple standard for these signs. Baseball-catcher.com lists the simplest version of the language:

One Finger = Fast Ball
Two Fingers = Curve Ball
Three Fingers = Slider
Four Fingers and/or Wiggle Fingers = Change Up

Major league catchers use far more complicated signs because, even shielded between their legs, the signals might be seen by an opposing player, coach, or even a plant in the audience with a set of binoculars and a cell-phone.

The pitcher stands over sixty feet away from the catcher. We know from David Epstein’s amazing book, The Sports Gene, that baseball players have extraordinary eyesight. Major league players average 20/13 eyesight, which means they can see from 20 feet what the rest of us can see from 13. Even if sixty feet looks to them like 39 feet would look like to a “normal” person, that’s still pretty far. I just measured out about 40 feet in my apartment. From that distance, I could easily see a hand size object but I’m not sure how well I’d be able to translate fast moving hand signals with close to 100% certainty. Add to that the pumping adrenaline of performing in front of 40,000 screaming fans, the overwhelming pressure of a close game, and the mental sloppiness that comes from pushing your body to its limits of exertion, and you can understand why any visual aid would be useful!

So, catchers started adding a bright, contrasting, easy to see stripe of color on their fingers. At first it was just white tape on the fingers or finger tips. Then catchers like Yankees Russell Martin started painting their finger nails. In a 2011 Newsday column, Martin was quoted commenting about his bright orange nail polish:

“At first, I just put white on it. I used to use Wite-Out and then I’d have to take it off after games and it was messy. I just decided to put on a color that kind of pops out.”

[begin rant]

A quick aside about nail polish on male athletes and coverage of it.

I get that men don’t normally wear nail polish. In our culture that’s more common for women to do. I think it’s probably fine to recognize the humor of some of the most stereotypical masculine people out there, professional athletes, adopting a stereotypically feminine habit. The Newsday article does a good job with this by asking whether the Yankees were going to hire a staff manicurist and by describing Martin’s use of nail polish as a sign of his commitment to his team and to winning. Contrast that with the purely offensive way For the Record sports covers Russell Martin. In one short paragraph, they suggest wearing nail polish may be “how you get gay” and predict a homosexual “love triangle” between Martin and his teammates. Nice work guys — I guess that’s what we should expect from a site whose site’s main navigation bar’s first four categories are Pro, College, Hot Chicks, and Title IX. Here are a few of the headlines from their Title IX section:

• Kate Upton in classy animal print photo sheet [VIDEO]
• Slovenian triple jumper Snežana Rodić and her awesome butt
• [VIDEO] When girls try to be coordinated
• Diana Taurasi likes ironing her man clothes

This is everything wrong with one segment of sports culture. Even if you’re okay with a sports site having a “Hot Chicks” section, naming a section of your website after the landmark equal rights law that mandated equality for women in educational or other federally funded programs, which included almost all youth and college sports, and then filling it with sexist, disgustingly insulting junk is totally unacceptable. How more insulting could you possibly get?

[end rant]

From nail polish, the evolution continued to custom-made finger-stickers. The catchers in last night’s game looked to me like they were wearing the neon green stickers made by a company called Game Signs. Game Signs boasts that their “signal enhancement stickers are easy to use, easy to remove and durable enough to withstand the roughest of games.”

The stickers look great, and I’m sure it’s nice to be able to peel them off after a game, but I think that if my hands were going to be shown in close-ups on HD TVs around the country, I might just get a manicure anyway!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer