WHILE I’M FAR from the best sportswriter, I’ve got what no other sportswriter has: The best readers. Thinking men and women.
Bensonhurst’s Howard Rheingold, for example. Rheingold – now there’s a retro New York baseball name – last week wrote to ask if we agreed with the commonly held wisdom that runners who slide/dive into first base (Roberto Alomar instantly comes to mind), as opposed to running straight through the bag, actually slow their arrival.
Agreed. Diving or sliding seems to delay their arrival while escalating the risk of injury. Running straight ahead is not the same as diving for a ball before it hits the ground.
Rheingold then laid out the following common scenario: Runners at first and third, two out, eighth or ninth inning, tie score or the team at bat is down by a run. Got it?
Got it.
OK then: Why, after a bouncer toward the hole or to the third base side – when the infielder is most likely to throw to second for the force to end the inning or the game – does the runner from first slide into second? Why doesn’t he run through the bag, as he would at first base?
After all, short of a collision, there’s nothing to lose. There are already two outs. Sure, if the runner touches second safely, he’s likely to be tagged out after running through second – but the tying or winning run will have by then scored from third.
And if the runner is ruled out for running out of the baseline – that is, toward the outfield after touching second – the runner from third, running on contact, would have already scored before the baseline violation had been committed.
So why then, given such circumstances, would the runner lose speed to slide into second? Why provide the opponent with an easier chance to record the final out of the inning or the game?
Sounded like a good question, a real good one. We consulted the rule book, finding nothing in it that would prevent such a “Rheingold Maneuver.”
We then spoke with a couple of baseball savants, laying out the scenario, then asking whether it could legally be done – “I don’t see why not?” – and, then, why it’s never done.
They thought about it, thought about it some more, then concluded, “Gee, that’s a good question.”
Best readers in the world.
Good questions from the best readers, Part II: Mark Morley of Connecticut writes that if The Post wants him to play Su Doku, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you printed his ERA?”
Mike Francesa and Chris Russo had a good thing going for listeners on Thursday when they talked with Gary Pomerantz, the author of “Wilt, 1962.” Pomerantz was eager and able to recount some fascinating tales about Wilt Chamberlain.
But Francesa won’t allow anyone to horde center stage for long. At one point, he interrupted to say, “I used to go to the old Garden when I was a kid, just to watch Wilt play. … I’d sit upstairs in what they used to call, ‘Blue Heaven,’ up at the top of The Garden …” and blah, blah, blah.
There was no Blue Heaven in the old Garden, and we’ve never heard that expression used for the top of the new Garden, either. What became known as the “blue seats” or “the blues” were the “cheap seats” in the new Garden – and were so named because they were blue. The old Garden’s seats, top to bottom, were brown.
HBO’s Real Sports, with Armen Keteyian at the wheel, tomorrow at 9 p.m., delivers a strong piece on how the poker explosion has created a gambling epidemic among the young. Poker, now televised on 12 networks, has created the first-ever G.A. meetings held exclusively for teens.
There’s a significant and unique element attached to this sudden, runaway poker craze: It can’t be rationalized by TV programmers as a “societal problem” – a problem that TV can’t be blamed for. This craze began with, and was grown and sustained, by TV.