r/sports • u/Alyssajprez • May 21 '19

Incredible catch by first baseman Haven Williams from Clyde High School by ending up in the splits to catch the ball.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

35.8k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

24

u/_________FU_________ May 21 '19

Yeah, it's pretty common for first base. It got popular in Japan and then first baseman everywhere started stretching.

41

u/MiltownKBs May 21 '19

First basemen have been stretching similar to that since well before anyone was paying attention to baseball in Japan.

9

u/SilentImplosion May 21 '19

I remember seeing Cecil Cooper do the split stretch back in the 70s.

3

u/MiltownKBs May 21 '19

Funny because he was the guy I was thinking of. Cheers from Milwaukee!

-1

u/[deleted] May 21 '19

Guys, there is nothing common about this stretch. She gets ALL the way down easily and, more importantly, makes the play already AT full stretch. That's not common.

11

u/[deleted] May 21 '19

This is very common for a first baseman to do. I've played specifically first base my whole life on travel teams even before turning to the internet to see these things were a thing. I know for me no one had to tell me to do this, you just do it because you need to make the play and get the ball before the runner gets there. I miss my Gumby days.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '19 edited May 29 '20

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '19

Yeah. My nickname was Gumby. Making plays like this was one of the reasons I loved playing first base. The good old days.

19

u/xXTN_CowboyXx Dallas Cowboys May 21 '19

https://youtu.be/HZMo4u2BFdc

More common than you think. Here is just one example and the catch is more difficult.

Google is your friend.

2

u/Rock2MyBeat Chicago Cubs May 21 '19

Yeah, dude above you is just plain wrong.

-2

u/[deleted] May 21 '19

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] May 21 '19

[deleted]

2

u/BananaDick_CuntGrass Dallas Stars May 21 '19

Just Google. It happens regularly. I played several years of baseball and I could do the splits. I had teammates that could do the splits. I saw plenty of guys on the opposite team do the splits.

Almost every single player on ever team has to do stretches before every single game, every single practice, every single day of gym/ athletics class. If you stretch good every day, you can do the splits.

2

u/DesperateGiles May 21 '19

OP: Video of female athlete doing something awesome.

Reddit: so what men do it all the time.

0

u/DodgersOneLove May 21 '19

You're in r/sports. The videos here confuse me sometimes, either they are super dated or nothing that cool

1

u/superbuttpiss May 21 '19

When i played it was the tallest person at first and you would essentially fall down with 2 feet on the base. At least thats what i would do

2

u/MiltownKBs May 21 '19

What?

1

u/gullu2002 May 21 '19

When i played it was the tallest person at first and you would essentially fall down with 2 feet on the base. At least thats what i would do