Reply #26: your baseball story is wrong

[hfojvt]

I always watched the ball, (except when I hit a grounder in the infield, in which case you put your head down and run). The point of watching it is to know whether you should stop at first, or keep going to second. Admittedly, if you hit the ball deep enough, stopping at first is not an option, but at some point you need to decide - single, double, triple, homer.

Actually, the first and third base coaches are supposed to make those decisions for you, but we never had those when I played little league, so I learned to do this on my own, and I also had one 1st base coach who was apparently unaware of how fast I could run. I was heading to first at about 3/4 impulse and the 1st base coach said "hold up" and I noticed that a) the ball was still rolling and b) the outfielder was still about fifteen feet from the ball, so I put it into warp drive and safely slid in to second.

So I think it pays to watch the ball.