A running battle with showboats

SINCE the post- Robinson Cano Yankees, YES’s Michael Kay has, gratefully, become a convert to those who prefer that big league ballplayers do the least they can by running to first base. But not Saturday. With two on and the Yanks down, 3-0, Starlin Castro tied it with a homer in chilly Pittsburgh. The ball landed four rows deep in left. Ch. 11 then showed Castro standing, posing, watching, jogging. Kay then explained/excused that with, “He knew it.”

Funny thing about that. The frequent flipside to “He knew it was gone,” is, “He thought it was gone.”

If Castro knew it, why stand and watch? How often do we hear that this time of year the ball doesn’t carry?

While Castro was with the Cubs, manager Joe Maddon grew disenchanted with Castro because, to his team’s peril, he often stood and watched, didn’t run, thinking he knew what he did not know — otherwise known as a bad guess.

Last week, the game after the Phils’ Freddy Galvis didn’t run out an infield fly that was dropped, Ron Darling, on SNY, said Galvis had learned his lesson, “He’ll never do that again.”

But the one thing we’ve learned about “the game has changed” big league baseball is that they never learn.