There’s often a lot of talk about how it should be possible to charge errors for brain farts, and I wish I could have done that during yesterday’s game, twice for the same reason.
To set the stage a bit, our home dugout is the 3rd base dugout. Situation is top 2nd, no score, runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs. RHB shows bunt on 1st pitch and takes a strike. Shows again on 2nd pitch that misses badly outside. Next pitch sees batter put down a pretty good bunt for a sacrifice, but something happens. At least 10 people in our dugout are screaming “THREE!” “THREE!”
RHP was set to field the ball and throw to 1st, but suddenly shifts his feet to field the ball and throw to 3rd. Unfortunately, rather than fielding the ball cleanly and making a good throw to 3rd that would have been too late to force the runner, the ball got picked up, bobbled, then thrown poorly to 3rd where the F5 had to jump to grab the ball and keep it from going wild. E1, BR reaches on FC and gets credit for sac bunt. 3 runs scored after that, 1 of them earned.
I was sitting there thinking how many times I’d seen something similar, where people not playing a defensive position were yelling poor instructions to fielders who should be either listening to teammates on the field or making their own decisions and wishing I could have charged an error to the dugout.
The very next inning with a different pitcher, other than the different batting positions of the hitters, virtually the same situation comes up. Situation is top 3rd, we’re behind 3-0, runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs. RHB shows bunt on 1st pitch and takes a pitch very high. Next pitch sees batter put down a pretty good bunt for a sacrifice, but something happens again. At least 10 people in our dugout are screaming “THREE!” “THREE!”
RHP fields the ball cleanly and makes a great throw to 3rd far too late to get the force, so now the bases are loaded with no outs. Now I’m sure I want to charge an error to the dugout, right after I whap a few of them upside the head to wake them up!
In general I’m pretty forgiving of brain farts because I realize the players are only kids still developing and will make mistakes. But both times no less than 4 coaches were doing the screaming and looking pretty guilty for having done so, but it didn’t help the players on the field one whit.
I’m just sayin’ … 