Who's On Third?

Carl Yastrzemski, a splendid defensive leftfielder and a pretty good first baseman, was tossed over to third base in 1973 and played 31 games there. He was horrible. He found, like most outfielders, that the throwing mechanics from third are different from those in the outfield. The throw from third requires a strong arm, but a quicker release. No time to wind up. "Yaz asked, 'Can you help me?' " says Malzone. "They didn't try it again."

It's difficult to find outfielders who made the switch to third base with success. Mike Shannon did it for the Cardinals in 1967. "But if you had asked Mike to catch trucks with his hands, he would have tried it," says St. Louis manager Joe Torre, later a teammate of Shannon's. "Mike's kind of crazy."

A third baseman has to be a little crazy. Rader was: He was known to hit his head against concrete walls. "I loved to play as shallow as I could," he says. Shallow or deep, there is danger. Santo remembers playing deep at third one day in spring training in 1959. "[L.A.'s] Frank Howard came to the plate," Santo recalls. "He was the biggest person I'd ever seen in my life. He hit a one-hopper that hit me in the stomach and knocked me out. When I woke up in the hospital, there he was again, standing over me. I said, 'Am I in heaven? Who's this giant?' "

At times the position makes you crazy. Petrocelli says, "When I faced a pull hitter who could hit homers but could also bunt, like Paul Blair, it drove me nuts."

Says Rader, "I don't think many guys today fit the mold at third base. You have to be real aggressive, a tough s.o.b. I signed as a shortstop, but from the time I signed until the day I reported, I grew two inches and gained 20 pounds. When I got to my first spring training, the clubhouse guy, Whitey Diskin, asked me who I was. I said, 'I'm Rader, the shortstop.' He said, 'You might be Rader, but you're no shortstop. You're a third baseman.' "

The Giants' Williams says, "You have to want the ball hit to you every play, and you want it hit to you hard every play. It's a good feeling to make that dive." Says Malzone, "You can't have any fear of the baseball. At third, if you have any fear, you're done."

"You make plays without even seeing the ball," says new Cub and former Mariners manager Jim Lefebvre. "Boggs made an unbelievable play against us last year. I asked him, 'How did you do that?' He smiled and said, 'I don't know.' "

Third base.

Shortstop has traditionally been considered baseball's ultimate skill position, and it is true that shortstop requires more pure athleticism—speed, range and agility—than third base. But shortstop is also safer. "I used to get hit in the cup regularly at third," says Cal Ripken Jr., the Orioles' All-Star shortstop, who played third for three years in the minors. "At shortstop I've never been hit in the cup."

Jim Fregosi, now manager of the Phillies, was moved from shortstop to third base 11 years into his major league career. "I like to think of myself as having been a hell of a defensive shortstop, but I was a terrible third baseman," he says. "I never saw the ball come off the bat. You can't see the hitter's hands come through the hitting zone like you can at shortstop."