hey peeps, Now, I may be being *incredibly* dense here, but can someone please explain something to me? At the end of TOW The Birth, Ross and then everyone else watch over Ben. Chandler's first line in the tag is "and sometimes, I'll want you to steal third, and I'll go like this [then does some kind of locking a key and pulling his arm about thing...]" What does it mean to 'steal third'? Does it mean anything? and if it does, what is the link to the gesturing? is it something to do with sport? (I'm a brit so I'm guessing it could be baseball or American football...we don't really have ice hockey over here much either. Actually, baseball would make sense. Is it baseball?) thank you to anybody who can shed any form of light onto this...area which, even though I *so* don't get it, still makes me laugh... *J*
"steal third"...?
In baseball, a team's coach will sometimes want to tell his players on the field what to do. (steal third, hit a home run, bunt, etc) But he's not allowed to run out to second base every 5 minutes to whisper it in his ear, and yelling it out and letting the other team know their plans would be moronic. So they use various signals to get the message across. (pull on ear, straighten cap, locking a key and pulling his arm about thing, etc)
you managed to write all that without telling us what it meant :)
Steal third? What it means is no more important to the joke than weather WENUS ends with Systems or Statistics. :)
But if a guy is on second base, he wants to get to third base, so he will try to run to third base. It's called stealing third.
A baseball diamond has four bases. In order to score a run, a player must advance (by various means) to first base, second base, third base, and finally, homeplate.
A player "steals" a base by managing to run from the base on which he is currently standing (second base in the example) to the next base, during the time that the pitcher is "winding up" and throwing the ball to the batter standing at homeplate.
If the runner reaches the base before being tagged out by the opposing team's fielder, he has successfully "stolen" the base. On the other hand, if the catcher gets the pitched ball, throws it to the fielder (in this case the third baseman), and the fielder tags the runner with his glove before the runner touches the base, the runner is "out."
As explained previously, a coach will signal to a runner that he wants the runner to steal by making various gestures. The specific gestures will be unique to each team, so that the opposing team has no idea what their strategy is.
Now that I've sucked all the humor out of that Chandler moment, I'll shut up. ; )