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- Title
The Oldest Trick in the Book.
- Authors
Deane, Bill
- Abstract
The hidden-ball trick is defined as "a time-honored legal ruse in which a baseman conceals the ball and hopes that the baserunner believes it has been returned to the pitcher. When the runner steps off the base, he is summarily tagged out with the hidden ball." The dying art dates back to the early days of pro baseball. With the invaluable help of many others, author Bill Deane has spent decades compiling a list of 264 successful executions of the trick in the major leagues. This puts the rarity of the play roughly in the class of the no-hitter. Along the way, Deane has collected the often-hilarious stories of these plays and the men who pulled them, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015 in Finding the Hidden-Ball Trick: The Colorful History of Baseball's Oldest Ruse. This is a sampling of notable pre-1920 tricks included in the book.
- Subjects
BASEBALL; BASEBALL players; DEANE, Bill; BASEBALL teams; PITCHERS (Baseball)
- Publication
Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, 2014, Vol 8, p47
- ISSN
1934-2802
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3172/BB.8.47