FEDERAL BASEBALL: THANK YOU, NEIFI

Federal Baseball has some thanks for & thoughts on Neifi Perez.

The batter, Neifi Perez, bunted the very next pitch right back to Cordero, who successfully excuted the throw to first and closed out the victory. Yes, Perez bunted into the last out.

Now, Perez is a severely limited threat at the plate. I recall listening to a spring training game last March, Cubs vs. Royals, with XM picking up the Kansas City feed. The Royals' announcers were brutal whenever Neifi came to the plate. At one point, Perez popped to second, and longtime play-by-play man, the type of guy you imagine would be a slow but kindly golfer who lets you play through on a Saturday morning outing, sarcastically spitted, "Hey, we've never seen that before." Perez is a plainly horrible offensive player.

Still, bunting into the final out of the game is . . . sheesh, a special kind of giving up. Sure, Otis Nixon did it---badly---in the sixth game of the '92 World Series (bunting into the final out), but at least Nixon was blazing fast and could have made it to first on a reasonably well-placed bunt. Perez doesn't even have much speed.

Imagine Mark Brunell trying to execute the two-minute drill throwing right-handed; imagine Chris Dudley trying to drop-kick free throws; imagine Robert E. Lee leading monkeys on roller skates into battle. That's about what Neifi Perez did yesterday, only the others would have had a bit more justification. What Neifi did, especially given the situation, rhymes with quicken-spit.