Pick off plays always carry a prime opportunity for embarrassment,
either for the pitcher — if his throw is too high or off line — or the
runner, if he happened to stray too far from off base. Still, few pick
off plays have ever been more embarrassing than the trick attempt
employed by the Delano (Cal.) High baseball team in the video you see
below.
As noted by the blog It's Always Sunny in Detroit, with two outs and
the bases loaded, Delano desperately needed a way to get out of an
inning without allowing any more runs. Rather than risk giving up a
game-changing hit, Delano coach Dan Paulson called for a trick play the team calls "El Black."
Now, let's walk through the crafty piece of baseball be-devilment
known as El Black, shall we? First, the unnamed pitcher faked a pickoff
throw to second base. As soon as he did so, the second baseman rushed
over as if he was covering the bag and preparing for a throw.
The trick, of course, was that the throw never came.
While everyone in the field reacted as if the ball had soared into the
outfield, the pitcher himself still held the ball in his glove. Not
knowing this, the runner on third base skipped his way toward home
assuming that he could practically trot in with an easy run … only for
the pitcher to swivel and gun him out at home with a bullet of a throw
from the mound.
The play is a terrifically executed elementary trick play, perhaps
second only to the hidden ball trick. While the fake to second
certainly isn't unheard of, it's rarely pulled off as cleanly as it was in Delano.
Of course, the bad news is that the Tigers' success with the trick
play in such a key situation will almost certainly raise other people's
awareness about the risk of the fake to second play, which will in turn
decrease the chance of it being successful again in the future.
That takes nothing away from Delano's successful foray with El
Black, not to mention the guts it took to call such a play in a key
moment of a game.