How to Watch Baseball

Where Speed Counts

Dividends Paid All Around

Mickey Mantle, from the photograph printed with his chapter.

By Mickey Mantle,Outfielder, New York Yankees

Pages 16–17 · Phillips Petroleum Company, 1953

Many major league baseball players do all right without possessing exceptional speed. But it is a valuable asset in winning ball games.

You’ve noticed how many batters are thrown out at first base by only a stride or even a half stride. A player who can run a stride or a half stride faster than the average certainly puts added pressure on an infielder handling a ground ball. He can force the infielder to charge the ball instead of waiting for it. He can force the infielder to make a hurried throw. In either case he increases the chance of the infielder making an error, by a fumble, a clean boot or a wild throw. So his exceptional speed gives him a chance to reach first on an error, if not by beating out a cleanly handled grounder for a hit.

An exceptionally fast player also forces the infielders to line up closer to the plate. This naturally cuts down their range. In contrast, a slow runner permits the infield to play deep and thus reach grounders, line drives or Texas League flies over the infield. These same balls, hit by a fast runner and, consequently, against a tight infield, would be base hits.

A fast runner also can make a lot of hits by dragging a bunt, especially if he is a left-handed batter. I happen to be a switch hitter. I swing right-handed against left-handed pitchers and left-handed against the righties. So I can appreciate from personal experience the edge held by the left-handed batter when he drags the ball. He is several feet closer to first base and already on his way as he drags the bunt.

The perfect spot for a left-handed batter to drag the bunt is directly toward the second baseman. If he drags the bunt just hard enough so that the pitcher can’t cut it off, yet just slow enough so that the second baseman has to rush in for it, exceptional speed should enable him to beat it out for a hit almost every time.

In stealing bases, getting a good start on the pitcher is more important than exceptional speed after getting under way. But speed is certainly a helpful factor in trying to go from first to third on a single to the outfield, or in trying to score from first on a two-base hit down either one of the foul lines or between two outfielders.

Speed also helps an outfielder defensively. It enables a left fielder to get to a ball hit down the foul line in time to hold the runner to a single. It enables an outfielder to get to a ball hit between himself and another outfielder in time to prevent the batter from taking an extra base or bases.

Many of the advantages of speed don’t appear in the box score, but you can detect them if you

How Speed Breeds Hits
  1. 1The shortstop creeps in off his normal depth, playing shallow the way a fast man at bat forces the infield to. The marker behind him is where he would stand for a slow one.
  2. 2The pitch comes in.
  3. 3A hard grounder into the hole — an ordinary ball, and the same ball either way. The shortstop breaks back for it; both runners go.
  4. 4Drawn in, he is half a second short of it. The ball crosses the ground the deep marker is standing on and goes through into left — a base hit, and the batter’s speed is what made the infield give him the room.
Adapted from the diagram on page 17: “How speed breeds hits. The infield must play shallow for a speedy player. So he gets a hit from same grounder on which slower man is thrown out.”