Alex Rodriguez made news a couple years ago by yelling 'I got it' to an unsuspecting 3B (Casey Blake of Cleveland?) as he was running between second and third on a two out pop up. The 3B dropped the ball and Rodriguez ended up safely at third, with a sly grin. It was a big deal at the time and people called foul (including the entire other team that Rodriguez victimized). As far as I know, nothing like it has happened in baseball since.
But here's an idea – whether at HS or College level, wouldn't it be great fun if an offensive coordinator ordered all of his linemen to yell PASS or RUN on every down? No? Think you might give something away? Not a chance. First of all, the defense is the side who is always yelling PASS or RUN to help each other out. If the offense did it on every play (or every few plays) – you'd have a very confused defense with no idea which verb to trust. Maybe you even tell 2 of your linemen to scream PASS, two others RUN and another one FUMBLE. Of course you'd have to mix it up a lot so that the defense doesn't pick up anything like a code tipping which play it actually is. Maybe the O-line waits to yell once the defense thinks it's picked up on the play. It could even be choreographed to work with play-action – talk about confusing! Plus, defensive guys aren't as smart as offensive guys anyway* and a tactic like this would almost certainly shock and confuse most HS/College kids enough to take them out of their game.
* ignorant psychographic generalization based solely on the logic that being defensive is to react to an offensive schema that's been planned to exploit said defense. So, please, if your name is Lawrence Taylor, or you look or act like him, no offense.
Jim Mitchem is a copywriter, father, husband, American and founder of smashcommunications, llc.
