Managing a Brewers team with the best record in baseball (81-31) and hoping for its World Series appearance since 1982, Murphy told the press after the game, “He popped a ball up to right field and didn’t run, and the ball landed and stopped. He would’ve easily got to second base. What could’ve happened after that, I’m not sure, but you can’t have a guy not understanding that…I love the kid, and I believe in the kid immensely… we can’t have that.”

To his credit, Cooper Pratt, 22, acknowledged that he was in the wrong and, as we say in the theater, “took the note.”

“There is no excuse,” he said after the game. “I should’ve ran hard no matter if it’s foul, or fair, [or] if it’s an out. I should’ve been busting my butt to get to second base. Some of the guys pulled me aside and let me know, ‘Hey, this is how we do it here,’ and I know that. It won’t happen again.” He added, “There’s a certain way to play here and I may be new, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the way we’re taught to play right through the organization from rookie ball to the big leagues. And I didn’t do that. And I will do that. No excuses.”

It isn’t just baseball that needs its veterans and old hands to pass along the right way to “do things,” to the young members of a craft, an occupation, a business or a profession. What kind of mentoring one receives and the skill of those who provide it can make the difference between career success or failure.

I must also note that I have seen veteran players, even superstars , fail to run hard to first base in similar situations to the one that enmeshed young Cooper Pratt. Rare is the courageous manager who will yank such a player from the game: it’s a classic instance of the King’s Pass (Rationalization #11). In 1978, Billy Martin memorably yanked Reggie Jackson from the game after he loafed after a ball his his way in the outfield, and they nearly came to blows in the dugout.