I am a 63-year old lifetime baseball fan who continues to be amazed at aspects of the game I miss that are often right in front of my old eyes. I saw (briefly) a video on Instagram this morning and I wish I could find it again. In the CWS game we played against Oral Roberts, Bottom of the 5th, 2 outs, ORU runner on first, Waldrup gets the pitch call on his little wrist thingy. BT indicates to check the thingy again, and Hurston re-flexes his glove and looks down at it. He looks up and in to BT, who has his glove out to receive a pitch. Hurston is focused intently on the plate, seemingly not paying attention to the guy on 1B. Then BT quickly flashes his glove one time. Just a momentary flip down and back. That was the signal. Hurston immediately spins to catch the ORU base runner too far off the bag, they get him in a run down and Hurston ends up with the ball and tagging the runner out. Inning over. Highlights only show the moment BT flashed the glove, not the seeming shake off of a pitch call, or whatever the two of them had worked out to take advantage of the situation. BT's eyes were on what was happening at 1B and he waited until the right moment to signal Hurston to make the spin and throw. Doubtless, Jac was in on the set up as well. It's just amazing to me the games within the game that fans like me rarely get insight. Also another reason I am grateful for a kid like BT behind the plate.
Ahhh, the old “daylight” pickoff play from the catcher’s drop of his mitt—that play was also used between the SS-Catcher-Pitcher on a pick play at second. The pitcher is looking in at his catcher-SS breaks behind the runner at 2nd-when the catcher sees “daylight” between them he drops his mitt-pitcher spins and throws to the bag. Good stuff.
Commonly practiced to get timing down especially with base runners who took leads with improper footwork. Also worked well against runners at 2nd who where too busy looking where the SS and 2nd basemen were and taking their eyes off of the pitcher. Normally worked on it on days while working on other things like pitchers covering 1st etc.
