In the 1870s, just as professional baseball was getting its sea legs, there was an infielder named Ross Barnes who was really only good at one thing. At 5 feet 8 inches and 145 pounds, he had a smidge of pop in this deadest part of the dead-ball era, hitting six home runs in almost 500 career games, but where Barnes really excelled was bunting. As recounted by Bill James in his most recent Historical Baseball Abstract, Barnes made a career of being able to bunt balls that would land fair and then spin over the base lines and off the field. (In the rules of the day, this still counted as a fair ball.) And so it was that Barnes led the league in hits four times and batting average three times.

Ross Barnes would've loved playing for Dusty Baker, the 64-year-old Cincinnati Reds manager who, in an era when almost every player is at least something of a threat to hit a double or home run, still has a passion for the strategy of intentionally clunking the ball down softly a few feet in front of a defense that knows it's coming. (We're not talking here about using fast hitters to lay down a bunt against unsuspecting infielders. That's actually pretty good strategy!) Baker's Reds lead the league in "successful" sacrifice bunts (or, to put it another way, bunts that "successfully" give away one of the three outs teams get per inning), and they're in the top third of the league in sacrifice bunts by non-pitchers.

Through all the rule changes and improvements that baseball has implemented through 137 years of professional existence, the bunt has persisted. It's perhaps the strongest legacy of the game's small-ball origins. And aside from everything Alex Rodriguez does, there's perhaps no single act on a baseball field that engenders such ridicule and furor among dedicated fans. We've known for decades that its efficacy was wildly overrated even in earlier, less power-friendly eras, yet it persists: purposely sacrificing outs in critical game situations to move a runner one single base.

No current manager loves the sacrifice bunt more than Baker. A couple weeks ago, his Reds attempted four such bunts in a span of eight hitters. The outcomes were largely unsuccessful for the Reds, who lost in 16 innings. The sacrificial parade reached its nadir in the bottom of the 15th inning, when the Reds attempted what amounted to a suicide squeeze — Shin-Soo Choo took off from third, Chris Heisey tried to bunt — except that there were two outs, so if Heisey didn't make contact and Choo was toast, we'd go on to the 16th inning. (The inning also would've been over if Choo crossed the plate but Heisey didn't get to first safely to make the run official.)

So what happened? I'll give you three guesses, though you only need one: