There are two major categories of sacrifices in baseball, the sacrifice bunt (SB) and the sacrifice fly (SF). Both operate on the ancient principle of "giving up to get back," basically the same quid pro quo that informed the Vedic sacrifices in India 3000 years ago. Of course the barter back then was conducted by priests, who acted as middle men between their human patrons and the petitioned gods (though apparently the sacrifice’s participants were often hopped up on a now lost hallucinogen called soma or amrita, the rough equivalent of our athletes pumped on steroids). What this phrase means in a baseball context is that, in general, the batter intentionally makes an out to get back or at least supposedly improve his team’s chances of getting back one or two runs. I say "in general" here because a SF isn’t always struck intentionally (I’ll come back to this later); moreover, some modern baseball statisticians dispute the value of the SB, maintaining that long term bunting/run scoring statistics conclusively prove that sacrificing an out in this way on average decreases your team’s chances of scoring in that half inning. Other b-ball number crunchers, while conceding this point, yet counter that in certain game situations with certain hitters at the plate (e.g. a tie game in the late innings with a speedy runner on first, no outs, and a weak hitting, National League pitcher coming to the plate with no plans to remove him for a pinch hitter), giving up the out to move a runner into scoring position is the smart way to go.
I won’t go into the mechanics of the SB, though I will say that this play was once far more common that it is today. Take 1917, for example, the "twilight" of the so-called "dead ball era," just three years before Babe Ruth rocked the baseball world with 54 home runs (35 more than the second place home runner) and sent the SB into a tailspin. The ML leader in homers that year hit 12—I’ll spell that out, t-w-e-l-v-e—while the ML record for SBs, which still stands after 85 years, was set at 67. In contrast, the year Barry Bonds hit his record 73 homers, 2001, the ML league leader in SBs had 17, and that was a NL pitcher.
The strategy behind the SB is fairly simple, though execution isn’t always so. SB situations are glaringly apparent to grizzled baseball veterans on the opposing team, who want just the opposite of the bunting team: to prevent the runner or runners on base from moving into scoring position. So the wheels, such as they are in the minds of lifer baseball managers, begin to spin. The corner infielders are instructed to "cheat" in, which means they charge toward home plate as the pitch is delivered, hoping to get to the bunted ball fast enough to have a play on the lead runner. The opposing hurler too will toss a monkey wrench into the SB plans. He’ll attempt to spot the pitches in the strike zone where it will be most difficult to get the ball down on the infield grass. Here I must digress a bit. This tightening of the corner infielders is often turned into a cat-and-mouse game by wily hitters. To understand how, first keep in mind that when for whatever reason the infielders move closer to home plate, they necessarily cut down on the time and angle they have to range left or right on a ground ball. In other words, a sharp ground ball, that would be an automatic out with the fielders at their normal depth on the infield track, will rocket past them when drawn in. This gives a hitter with above average back control a couple of options. He can square to bunt and then proceed as advertised in the face of the in-rushing defense, OR he can square as if to bunt as the pitcher goes into his windup. At this juncture, the defense has really no choice but to take the bait, and as they bravely charge toward home plate in anticipation of an easy force out, the unrepentant hitter will quickly pull back into a full hitting mode and whack the ball on the ground, past the helplessly diving first or third baseman. This is what’s called, aptly, a "fake bunt."
TO BE CONTINUED
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