Maskirovka.

If in my entire life of playing ball, from the sewer-grate games on the asphalt in front of my parent's tilted little house in Yonkers, abutting the then-benighted borough of the Bronx, to the dazzle of lights under the Mexico City sky while playing the perennial champions of the Mexican Baseball League, Diablos Rojos del Mexico, if during all those years, and all those "let's play two" long days and nights, if I hit 10,000 balls into the outfield, 9,990 were sent between the left field foul line and left center field.

In fact, I can probably remember every single time I hit a ball to the opposite field. 

Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of them all, had the same propensity. And for Williams, American League teams developed a shift, stacking the right side of the field with five fielders, maybe six, rather than the usual three. 

No teams shifted for me, which reminds me of a story of Jimmy Piersall jawboning with catcher Yogi Berra after Whitey Ford had beaned a few players who in his wily mind needed beaning. 

Piersall, it's told said to Berra who was catching, "If Ford throws at me I'll beat his head in with my bat." Berra, unflappable and wise answered perfectly. "We don't bean .220 hitters." Nor do they shift for them.

In any event, one afternoon we were playing someone somewhere and we had two men on. I was coming up and Hector called me over from the on-deck circle. 

"Just hit one to right," Jorge, the old man directed. "One to right will bring two men in if I have them running on the pitch." 

In the batter's box I moved my back foot away from the plate and my lead foot in. I had shifted myself as far as possible, and waited for something I could put wood on. Preferably something out over the plate or outside. No one noticed my stance (we don't notice .220 hitters) and before long, I hit a bloop to shallow right field. It was too deep for the second baseman and too short for the right fielder. With the runners running, they scored and with my walk off blooper, we won the game. Maybe 6-5, something like that.

Right now, I'm reading a long military history book called "Endgame 1944. How Stalin Won the War." The war Dimbleby is talking about Stalin winning, is not the war against Hitler, but the war within the war, against Roosevelt and Churchill--the West--for the post-war domination of Europe. By the way, it's a war we're still fighting today. (Ukraine.)

The thing that's struck me about the book is the over-confidence of the German generals even as they're being out-thought, out-materiel-ed and out-manned by the Soviets. The Germans bolstered their defenses where they, the Germans, would attack, if the Germans were the Russians. The Russians attacked instead where the Germans wouldn't think they'd attack. 

This is the essential idea, crossing up your opponent. The Soviets called it maskirovka. It's essentially feinting. Showing one thing and doing another. The ol' double cross. Hitting to the opposite field. Out-thinking, not out-spending.

There's not much advertising point in all this, except the most basic strategic point of all. 

Do something unexpected.

Or, like Daffy, get your head blown off.