EVERYBODY IN THE INFIELD.

EVERYBODY IN THE INFIELD. Malcolm Gladwell had an article about a girls basketball team (twelve and under) which had great success playing a full court press. The article turned out to be controversial (google new yorker gladwell basketball if you are curious). One of the criticisms of the article is that of course a press works well against young athletes who don’t have the skills of older players. The article reminded me of a time when my brother Elmer and I were in college and had a friend–Bill–who was coaching a team of young boys at a summer day camp. It must have been softball because the kids were young. It was the worst team in the league. They hadn’t come close to winning a game and they were very discouraged. This was long before THE BAD NEWS BEARS, but that is what it was like. Some had completely lost interest. We chatted and one of us had the thought that at that age the weak players were put in the outfield where they couldn’t do anything if a ball was hit near them. We wound up with a proposal that Bill would put all the players in the infield. The next time we saw Bill he reported success. The boys were tremendously excited by the new plan. There was lots of infield chatter. And a strange thing happened. The coach of the other team felt that he had to counter this new tactic. He did it by having his team bunt. And keep bunting. The way I remember it, Bill’s team won.