Discretion better part of valour on basepaths
Highlight-worthy slides put players at risk of injury
NEW YORK — If Mike Trout has ever been concerned about his safety when stealing a base, it hasn’t held him back.
For the AL MVP and many of baseball’s best baserunners, it might not matter anyway. In those split seconds after ball beats runner to the bag, decisions aren’t made with much calculation. If they see a way to the base, they’ll contort their body any which way to try to get there.
“When you look down there, you see the throw is going to beat you, you have to do something to try to escape,” the Los Angeles Angels star said last week.
Sometimes the result is a sweet, highlight-worthy slide. But as Trout experienced over the weekend, there’s a risk to letting instinct take hold in those spots. He tore a ligament in his left thumb diving into second base in Miami on Sunday.
Trout is having surgery to repair the thumb, which put him on the disabled list for the first time in his career. It’s yet to be seen if the injury will add caution to Trout’s baserunning after years of brazen, crowd-pleasing evasions of infielder’s tags.
Trout has been a regular Houdini on the basepaths throughout his career, and he’s particularly adept at missing tags when he goes in headfirst. He gave Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson the slip on a stolen base last September, flipping onto his right side at the last moment, whipping his left arm away from Donaldson’s glove and getting his right hand on the corner of the base.
And of course, sometimes a player just can’t help himself, like when Blue Jays baserunner Chris Coghlan sent himself soaring over catcher Yadier Molina on a play at the plate in late April.
Concern for injury? Not exactly. No time, really.
“I was thinking, ‘Since he’s down, why don’t you jump?’ ” Coghlan recalled.
It’s not a play Coghlan has ever practised, and not one he’s sure he could replicate. It only worked because his legs bounced off Molina’s back as the catcher stood, generating enough momentum for Coghlan to finish his flip.
Would he risk his body like that again? It probably won’t ever come up.
“You probably don’t see that for 100 years,” said John Gibbons, his manager.
Of course, some players have learned the hard way that perhaps they don’t have the body control to attempt such bold entries. Like when San Francisco’s All-Star catcher Buster Posey got a mouthful of third base and a scratch on his chin during an awkward, headfirst slide last August.
He vowed after the game that he’d only be sliding feet-first the rest of the season.
“I’ve always said that this game will humble you quickly,” he added.