Juggling The Lineup.

Shifting around a team's batting order in deceitful fashion to get the upper-hand on an opponent is seldom used in today's game

LINEUP CARD CHICANERY--OR SHENANIGANS, to use a milder characterization--has been lamentably rare in this pallid, colorless era of "cookie-cutter" managers who cling to the shelter of "going by the book." Few dare to improvise a page that has been left out of baseball's unwritten bible.

It wasn't ever thus.

"I was always willing to try out a new idea," declared Paul Richards, one of the most innovative managers in baseball history. When it came to lineup chicanery, Richards, a more cerebral devotee of such take-no prisoners competitors as John McGraw and Ty Cobb, wrote his own book.

How many managers these days could display the ingenuity--or is it effrontery?--of Richards, who on September 11, 1958, listed three pitchers on the Baltimore Orioles lineup card he carried up to the plate before a game with the Kansas City Athletics?

The actual starter, Billy O'Dell, was scheduled to bat ninth as was customary even in the American League in those pre-designated hitter days. In addition to O'Dell, Richards penciled in Jack Harshman, another pitcher, as his center fielder, batting fifth, and listed the third pitcher, Milt Pappas; at second base, batting seventh.

Richards' scheme was inspired by the opportunity it created of being able to bring an appropriate pinch-hitter up to the plate if the Orioles had a scoring chance in the first inning. After all, the team that scores first wins more often than it loses.