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[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, all the rest of the month is available for your curiosity, about either baseball or Tarot. Leave a comment with a prompt if you want in. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
The sound of the bat sends the outfielder running back toward the fence line. It doesn't look like she can chase it down... She's at the warning track, leaps up... Did she just catch that ball? Yes. She flashes the leather glove, with the ball inside, before throwing it back in to the infield. Someone shakes their head in disbelief at what they have just seen.
The Circus Catch is an improbable fielding play for the defense, usually involving some sort of exertion of effort beyond what would normally be expected, or making the play in a particularly spectacular way. One of the more famous types of circus catch is an over-the-shoulder basket catch, made rather famous by Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series, making the catch while running full speed at the warning track, but they're are a lot of different varieties of catch. Catches made when a player leaps vertically from a standing position to grab a line drive over their head are said to be "climbing the ladder". Just about any sliding or diving catch qualifies under the circus moniker, but those catches that are made with a large part of the baseball visible, such that it looks like force of will is what's holding the ball in the mitt are often referred to as "snowcones", which is a familiar name for anyone who has had a particular brand of shave ice. Some circus catches take advantage of the fact that it is legal to use the fence as a launch point to gather extra height and therefore catch a ball that would otherwise go beyond for a home run. Such balls if caught in the air, can be pulled back into the field of play and be recorded as outs, so long as the fielder makes the catch inside the legal field of play and stays in the field long enough for the catch to count.
The play-by-play announcer and the color commentator will often to the hitter as having been "robbed" of the hit they would normally have had by the catch when it happens. Any circus catch will usually elicit cheers from the fanatics of that team and generally makes it to the highlight show for that day, often in a "top plays of the day" segment, since circus catches satisfy the desire for good-looking and dramatic action as part of the baseball game.
Interestingly, though, many of those circus catches are only possible because of the planning that goes into positioning fielders based on the scouting report's indications of where a batter is likely to put the ball into play. If a batter strikes the ball very well or not as well as normal, the fielders have to chase it down, but they wouldn't be able to if they weren't already close enough to the right spot to get there in time. Reflex catches for the infield means they have to be positioned just right to snag the line drive as it tries to zip on by. Grabbing a botched bunt out of the air wouldn't be possible without players that are already moving in the right direction once the batter squared to bunt. There is often a significant amount of preparation that goes into any act of serendipity, luck, or coincidence.
This is actually one of the principles of sympathetic magic - doing the ritual, making the talisman, and so forth is as much about opening and training the mind to be looking for opportunities to fulfill will as it is about asking the deit(y/ies)/energy/kami to remove obstacles and arrange for lovely coincidences. While it's somewhat trite (and monotheistic) to sum it up as "God helps those who help themselves," there's research I saw...somewhere, that says if you prime the mind toward a particular situation, you are more likely to see things in relation to that situation. (The research on thinking of involves people being told riddles, and then having pictures scattered into their day that contained solutions to the riddles they hadn't solved earlier. The supposed serendipitous flash that produced the answer had been planted, but the person who received it probably would not have noticed had they not been thinking about the riddle.) Like the circus itself, the circus catch is a thing that looks impressive and turns out to have been mostly the result of practicing the necessary skills repeatedly, building the ideal of the routine. What makes the circus catch exciting is that it is an apparent visible deviation from the routine, and there's the possibility that things will fail spectacularly, but at the very last possible moment, there is a great success! Even when that turns out to be part of the routine, too. It's still entertaining.
This card is a positive one, generally speaking - the coincidences are going to work in your favor, and it's going to look spectacular when you pull the rabbit out of your hat at the very last minute. Remember the preparation that put you in this position (and thank whomever may have helped you). Possibly think about not doing things in such a dramatic fashion next time?
The down side of this card is a showboat - the kind of person that let's things go until the last moment just so that they can make a flashy save. Their ego interferes with the good operation of the team, and it eventually catches up with them. Mighty Casey lets two strikes go by before even considering trying to swing, and then, when he's certain that he'll just be able to knock it out of the park...
...Mighty Casey struck out.
The sound of the bat sends the outfielder running back toward the fence line. It doesn't look like she can chase it down... She's at the warning track, leaps up... Did she just catch that ball? Yes. She flashes the leather glove, with the ball inside, before throwing it back in to the infield. Someone shakes their head in disbelief at what they have just seen.
The Circus Catch is an improbable fielding play for the defense, usually involving some sort of exertion of effort beyond what would normally be expected, or making the play in a particularly spectacular way. One of the more famous types of circus catch is an over-the-shoulder basket catch, made rather famous by Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series, making the catch while running full speed at the warning track, but they're are a lot of different varieties of catch. Catches made when a player leaps vertically from a standing position to grab a line drive over their head are said to be "climbing the ladder". Just about any sliding or diving catch qualifies under the circus moniker, but those catches that are made with a large part of the baseball visible, such that it looks like force of will is what's holding the ball in the mitt are often referred to as "snowcones", which is a familiar name for anyone who has had a particular brand of shave ice. Some circus catches take advantage of the fact that it is legal to use the fence as a launch point to gather extra height and therefore catch a ball that would otherwise go beyond for a home run. Such balls if caught in the air, can be pulled back into the field of play and be recorded as outs, so long as the fielder makes the catch inside the legal field of play and stays in the field long enough for the catch to count.
The play-by-play announcer and the color commentator will often to the hitter as having been "robbed" of the hit they would normally have had by the catch when it happens. Any circus catch will usually elicit cheers from the fanatics of that team and generally makes it to the highlight show for that day, often in a "top plays of the day" segment, since circus catches satisfy the desire for good-looking and dramatic action as part of the baseball game.
Interestingly, though, many of those circus catches are only possible because of the planning that goes into positioning fielders based on the scouting report's indications of where a batter is likely to put the ball into play. If a batter strikes the ball very well or not as well as normal, the fielders have to chase it down, but they wouldn't be able to if they weren't already close enough to the right spot to get there in time. Reflex catches for the infield means they have to be positioned just right to snag the line drive as it tries to zip on by. Grabbing a botched bunt out of the air wouldn't be possible without players that are already moving in the right direction once the batter squared to bunt. There is often a significant amount of preparation that goes into any act of serendipity, luck, or coincidence.
This is actually one of the principles of sympathetic magic - doing the ritual, making the talisman, and so forth is as much about opening and training the mind to be looking for opportunities to fulfill will as it is about asking the deit(y/ies)/energy/kami to remove obstacles and arrange for lovely coincidences. While it's somewhat trite (and monotheistic) to sum it up as "God helps those who help themselves," there's research I saw...somewhere, that says if you prime the mind toward a particular situation, you are more likely to see things in relation to that situation. (The research on thinking of involves people being told riddles, and then having pictures scattered into their day that contained solutions to the riddles they hadn't solved earlier. The supposed serendipitous flash that produced the answer had been planted, but the person who received it probably would not have noticed had they not been thinking about the riddle.) Like the circus itself, the circus catch is a thing that looks impressive and turns out to have been mostly the result of practicing the necessary skills repeatedly, building the ideal of the routine. What makes the circus catch exciting is that it is an apparent visible deviation from the routine, and there's the possibility that things will fail spectacularly, but at the very last possible moment, there is a great success! Even when that turns out to be part of the routine, too. It's still entertaining.
This card is a positive one, generally speaking - the coincidences are going to work in your favor, and it's going to look spectacular when you pull the rabbit out of your hat at the very last minute. Remember the preparation that put you in this position (and thank whomever may have helped you). Possibly think about not doing things in such a dramatic fashion next time?
The down side of this card is a showboat - the kind of person that let's things go until the last moment just so that they can make a flashy save. Their ego interferes with the good operation of the team, and it eventually catches up with them. Mighty Casey lets two strikes go by before even considering trying to swing, and then, when he's certain that he'll just be able to knock it out of the park...
...Mighty Casey struck out.
