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The San Francisco Giants succeeded in their bid to win the World Series, pulling a rare four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers by employing a unique new strategy that had previously never before been considered in baseball: hit the ball, and do it very, very often.
The strategy, which ingeniously involves using a player’s bat to strike the ball as it is pitched across the plate and repeating this action throughout the game, was first introduced by Giants Manager Bruce Bochy towards the end of the season, right before the team began to find their stride.
“I pulled all the guys together, and I told them I had a crazy idea, but to bear with me,” Bochy said. “I said, ‘Guys, I don’t know if this sounds dumb, but we need to start hitting that damn ball, and we should probably do it as much as we can. Definitely more than the other guys if we want to really consider winning this thing.’”
Sources confirmed that after a long, confused silence, the players reluctantly agreed to this groundbreaking new strategy. One of the team’s leading hitters, Buster Posey, was initially skeptical of the radical new course for the team.
“I admit, I was hesitant at first,” Posey said. “When [Bochy] said we were gonna try to hit the ball as often as we can, I thought it was a silly idea. Then I looked at my stats and thought to myself, ‘Hey, I guess I already hit the ball fairly often to begin with, why not just hit it even more often?’ And that’s when I really got on board and we started doing well as a team.”
The initial transition to hitting the ball a lot was difficult for the team. During batting practice, players would storm off the field, struggling to wrap their minds around this revolutionary new concept. But as they began to win games, they warmed up to the bold initiative, saying, “Yeah, this is great!” and, “Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?”
Despite their success, the Giants are already looking forward to next season, and Bochy is already hard at work to come up with new radical strategies. “Right after this interview I plan to sit down with Ted Lincecum, and the rest of the bullpen,” Bochy said. “This is off the record, but I think I’m going to tell them to try to not let the other team hit the ball when we pitch.”
Bochy added, “Of course if that doesn’t pan out, we can always go back to our old strategy of pointing behind the batter and yelling ‘whoa, look at that!’ Works like 50 percent of the time.”
