The Mincemeat Decoy and "The play you have never seen "

As the tournament winds down I plan to highlight the most unusual play of the tournament . There is some historical background required though to get the appropriate frame of reference. But be assured you have never seen this play before.

Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception plan during World War II. As part of the widespread deception plan Operation Barclay to cover the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa, Mincemeat helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective. This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted "top secret" documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta Umbría in Spain.

The deliberate planting of fake documents on the enemy was not new. Known as the "Haversack Ruse", it had been practiced by the British in the First World War. Also, in August 1942 in North Africa, before the Battle of Alam Halfa a corpse was placed in a blown-up scout car, in a minefield facing the German 90th Light Division just south of Qaret el Abd. With the corpse was a map showing the locations of non-existent British minefields. The Germans fell for the ruse, and Rommel's panzers were routed to areas of soft sand where they bogged down.

The Mincemeat was revealed as a true story in the 1953 book The Man Who Never Was.

With this as background we now proceed to a play in game 2 that established some precedent for subsequent game actions.

With runners on second and third with one out a hard ground ball is hit to third baseman Steve Kunken who fires quickly to Charlie Zunda at the plate. Charlie applies the tag but the runner slides hard and gets caught up with Charlie's arms and legs. Johnny Mac is at first base shouting 'CHARLIE THROW TO FIRST"
"Jeez" thought Charlie, "here is Johnny yelling at me in All Caps and I can hardly extract myself from the runner". Next time Charlie ponders I have to find a way to get the ball down there.

Next time will happen very soon in Game 3 as Steve Kunken is pitching against the Taos Solar Sox and has runners on second and third with one out as we are down a couple runs already. Steve is feeling like the guy trying to bail the water out of the Titanic as both runners are on via errors and he needs a big play.

Steve fires his pitch and the ball is hit back to him. He quickly fires home to Charlie but Charlie leans out with his right foot on the plate and catches the ball and fires to Johnny "ALL CAPS" Mac at first. Watching this from the dugout your faithful correspondent notes to Doc Parsons that while it is a nice play, there is no force--Doc however, with his vast experience recognizes this for the Mincemeat Decoy play and whispers to me "hey Charlie is pulling a decoy". The runner from third, who resembles a 150 pound accountant , has seen the play evolve and has stopped running and indeed walking towards plate while Charlie's throw streaks to ALL CAPS at first base. The Taos team is shouting to their runner to touch home plate as some of them are not falling for Charlie's Mincemeaat Decoy but the Taos runner, acting as an observer now casually bends down to pick up the bat left by the hitter and is standing 1 foot from the plate while the umpire correctly lurks in the background without saying anything.
Johnny "All CAPS" Mac who knows a decoy when he sees one , fires the ball back to Charlie who catches the ball whirls to his left and just crushes the runner with the tag knocking him down. Looking up into the sun with a 220 pound muscular pony tailed artist on top of him, the runner then sees the 6'5" umpire lean over and fire his right arm in a throwing angle and calls him out! The Solar Sox are just devastated and your 2010 LI Athletics literally prance off the field while Steve Kunken ponders that the Titanic guys had only one error in that game albeit a pretty big error.


After the game, the ESPN guys decide they want to interview Charlie to go over the play and here is the text of the interview:

Espn : Did you have that decoy in mind or did you just forget it was not a force situation

Charlie: I am an artist ...I live to be creative

Espn: What artist has inspired you most as a catcher? Leonardo Da Vinci?

Charlie: Everyone knows Da Vinci was a pitcher and ambidextrous at that

Espn : Wow i did not know that.. what would you give to be ambidextrous?

Charlie( sipping from the water at the table): your right arm ... where are you from by the way?

ESPN : Kentucky

Charlie : Ok, makes sense

Espn : How do you think Monet would have handled that play?

Charlie: Monet was a French guy with a weak arm and no pony tail so he would have set up a chair for the runners to sit with him and enjoy the landscape, offered them some escargot and sauvignon blanc and then offered them berets and those little cigars and then gently tagged them out while asking for their pardon. I think he would have trouble with the pace of the modern game

ESPN: Then who serves as your model?

Charlie : Auguste Rodin--the plate serves as the Gates of Hell for my opponents they can't score unless they come through me . Then I use The Thinker to get in touch with my contemplative side . The Thinker is what gave me the inspiration for the Mincemeat decoy play.

ESPN: Have you ever tried this play before?

Charlie: Once in my league at home. We left a supposed "dead guy" over by the Fairfield Mariners bench in a Red Sox uniform with a game plan sticking out of his back pocket. On it we said Dave is going to throw all curves and changeups but Bobby Manowitz said he would not bite and they kicked the dead guy until the dead guy got up and walked back over to our bench. But, hey ,we gave it a shot.


ESPN: You design all the packaging for all the Paul Newman's' products. Have you ever used the decoy ploy there in your professional life?

Charlie: Once we created a terrific hot red salsa with an empty jar and a beautiful package but the focus group told us the only consumers that would come back and buy it a second time were from Kentucky.

ABC reporter: Charlie, you seem to have started a fad , young catchers all over the country are growing pony tails and crushing runners -it is labeled "doing the Mincemeat decoy" how do you feel about that?

Charlie: I enjoy being a role model and am always happy to help the young kids


Anyway, our tourney has concluded and despite our disappointment at losing, the players had a very good time playing baseball on beautiful fields on gorgeous days.

And as baseball players who are glass half full kind of guys know.. there is always next year.