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Cadillacs, singles’ hitters Fords. Those who can only bunt must walk to work.
While my teammates — the fireball pitcher who was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles, the deer-like outfielder who went to college on an athletic scholarship, the home-run hitting outfielder who beat up the school’s wimps — were powerful and yet graceful and at ease on that quartercircle known as a baseball field, I was set apart by my ability to bunt without equal
Still can.
Baseball men today say bunting is a lost art, that “moving runners up a base” is a phase of the game that has all the certainty of hitting the three-run homer. Coaches flash the bunt sign. Maybe the play will work; maybe it won’t. You pays your money, you takes your chances.
But the single greatest moment of my high school athletic career was a direct result of my uncanny knack for kissing the ball with the bat, rolling the ball to spot on the infield grass where it stopped as though I had it on a leash.
For one, being able to bunt kept me out of the embarrassing double play, something the scorekeeper recorded the instant I hit a ground ball with runners in front of me.
With a runner on third and McFarlane at the plate, the suicide squeeze — bunting the ball while the runner dashes for home, sacrificing the batter’s at-bat for the chance to score a run — had a greater rate of success than depending on a lifetime .220 hitter to drive an otitside pitch to right for a twoout ribbie.
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