The Pig On South Hill

Manitoba Provincial Highway 83 turns into US Highway 83 at the North Dakota border crossing called Westhope/Coulter, and continues on its 1,885 mile journey southward through six states on its way to Brownsville, Texas.  The first leg of the road traverses the North Dakota tundra for sixty-nine miles until it begins its descent down Minot's North Hill, where one used to find the Minot Outdoor Theater (now defunct), North Hill Bowl (my home away from home), Minot International Airport (busier now than ever), and the Ramada Inn (since changed to the Grand International, but still the spot for one of the prettiest nighttime views the state has to offer).  At the foot of North Hill lies Bishop Ryan High School (my alma mater) and Minot State University (fka Minot State College).  The highway, also called "Broadway," flattens out and continues over the Souris River and the Great Northern Railway (nka BNSF for Burlington Northern & Santa Fe) tracks.  Running past the west edge of downtown Minot, 83 eventually begins its climb up South Hill for a few more miles until it shoots out of town for Lake Sakagawea (fka the Garrison Reservoir), Bismarck (the state capital), Strasburg (home town of the famous band leader, Lawrence Welk), and points beyond.  As you drive along the 269 miles over which Highway 83 traverses the Peace Garden State, you will see farms, prairies and ranches, glimpses of the Missouri River, and if you look closely, missile silos. North Dakota farms and ranches are typically miles apart from each other, as are the towns.  Sometimes, it seems, so are the cars, as one can drive through an entire county and come upon less than a half dozen vehicles.  When you fly over North Dakota at night, you wonder if anybody's down there.

It is sometimes said that there are two ways you can tell a native Minoter.  One is that she will pronounce the city as "MY-nit" instead of "MY-not."  The other is the constant referral to the two aforementioned Hills as landmarks.  The city of Minot should have been named "Valley City," in recognition of being in the Souris River Valley, with much of it tucked between North Hill and South Hill, but by the time Minot was founded in 1886, that name had already been taken by Valley City, 208 miles to the southeast, twelve years earlier.

Minot was named after Henry Minot, an investor in the Great Northern and a close friend of that company's originator, James J. Hill.  Since its inception, Minot has always been a railroad town.  As a hub for freight trains heading for the mountains and the Pacific coast, its population grew so quickly with railroad workers (not to mention saloon owners, hookers and innkeepers) that it became known as the "Magic City," a nickname still in place to this day.  When I went to high school there in the mid-sixties, Minot, with a population of 36,000, was the third largest city in the state, trailing only megalopolis Fargo and Grand Forks. Since then, Minot's population has grown by 5,000, partially due to the recent oil boom southwest of town, but has been surpassed  by Bismarck, relegating the Magic City to fourth place.  The closest interstate highway is 120 miles away, so Minot's growth is a testament to its attractive way of life, among other things. Many towns which were bypassed by major highways, especially interstates, did not fare nearly as well.

Now that you have a little background on my town -- yes, I still like to call it that -- it's time for me to get into the main topic of my post, viz., my career as a bagger and stock boy at Piggly Wiggly.  The title of my post includes "South Hill" so that, when my life's story is written  (cough, cough!), there will be no confusion over which of Minot's two Piggly Wiggly stores employed me.  It would be an easy mistake to make, thinking that I worked at the PW on US Highway 2, over by the State Fairgrounds on the east side of town, because I lived in a development just two blocks away called Green Valley.  (I know what you're thinking and yes, I agree; it sounds like the name of a soap opera, or even an institution of some sort.)  "My" PW was about a mile south of downtown, on the lower slope of South Hill.  Along with Newberry's Department Store, PW was an anchor tenant in the Town & Country Shopping Center.

Although there were several neighborhood grocery stores spread throughout the city, there were only two supermarkets, the PW on South Hill, and our arch rival, Red Owl, perched near the crest of South Hill about seven blocks up Broadway.  I would venture a guess that almost 80% of the grocery business in Minot went to those two stores.  It was a friendly rivalry, I guess, but I used to get irked at Pook when she'd buy her meat at Red Owl.  She claimed The Pig had better produce and The Owl had better meat.  Of course my mock revulsion toward the Red Owl product did not keep me from eating it.

I got the job at The Pig the same way I got my first-ever job at Arlan's Department Store in Bettendorf, Iowa.  The Marquis was a cash register salesman for NCR, and when a new store opened up in his territory he not only sold them the registers but also trained the cashiers so that they'd be in mid-season form come opening day.  Unlike the Arlan's gig, when The Marquis had to lie about my age -- 16 instead of 14 -- to get me hired, this time I was offered employment as a real sixteen year old.  And unlike many teenagers of yesteryear and today, I usually took my father's advice.  Maybe the fact that he was right almost all of the time had something to do with that.  His advice was this:  When a new store opens, the manager is going to hire at least twice as much help as he needs.  One reason is that customers' first impressions count for a lot, and the manager is going to want the peace of mind that comes with having enough employees on hand to give excellent customer service.  But the second reason for over-staffing is that he will be observing who the best workers are versus the slackers.  If you want the job to last beyond Grand Opening Week, you need to be in that first category.

Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.  Half the people who were working there that first week never made it into the next month.  Chalk another one up for The Marquis!

A week or so before the Grand Opening, all of the newly hired stock boys and baggers were handed instructional booklets showing the proper way to bag groceries.  This twelve page, multi-color book was produced by the corporate headquarters in Tennessee.  Remembering my father's advice, I studied that little instructional as if I were cramming for a final exam.  I can still recite some of the precepts: when the customer puts her groceries on the runner in front of the cashier, estimate how many bags you're going to need so you can balance the weight of the items evenly among the bags; put the cans on the bottom for a firm base; build the walls (of the bag) with boxes; place the fragile stuff on top.  Almost everything went into a regular size grocery bag, but of course since bags cost money and the store ran on an extremely thin profit margin -- an alleged fact drilled into the employees every week -- we crammed as much as we could into each bag, within the "rules."  (An aside: Every time I see how Cub and Target send their shoppers home with a multitude of little plastic bags, each filled with just a few items, I am disgusted.)

Equally as important as abiding by the governing precepts described above, the Cardinal Rule was that the bagger absolutely had to be finished with the bagging of a customer's groceries before the cashier started ringing up the next customer's goods.  One of the worst things that can happen at the end of a check-out lane is mixing groceries from two different shoppers, resulting in unhappy customers and a miffed cashier, who now has her check-out waiting line extended while the groceries get sorted out.  A key to Cardinal Rule compliance was not only the speed of the bagger but the speed of the cashier.  Keep in mind that this was long before the invention of bar codes and scanners, so the cashier had to find the price sticker or stamp on each item and manually enter that on her cash register.  Speed was of the essence because the easiest way to figure out exactly how you (the bagger) were going to divvy up the items among the several bags was to have all the "rung-up" items sitting in front of you at the end of the lane.  A slow cashier gummed up the works, resulting in the bag boy having to unload and reload many bags due to the late arrival of several items.  It should be apparent from what I've written that in order to provide good customer service, teamwork between the cashier and the bagger was essential.  Each needed the other to do a good job; otherwise they both looked bad.

In view of the foregoing, you might say that I scored the Daily Double as a bag boy at The Pig.  On those days when we worked the same shift, I made it a point to be the bagger at the end of Debbie Pitts' check-out lane. Debbie was not only the most proficient cashier at The Pig, but also the youngest and the prettiest.  She was a sophomore at the same high school in which I was a junior.  Somehow standing at the end of a checkout lane for hours at a time did not seem so bad when Debbie was the cashier.  She was the first North Dakota girl I ever had a crush on, a fact I have never revealed until now.  To think she was only a few feet away for several hours a week, and on top of that, the store paid me for the privilege!  The epitome of my first year at Piggly Wiggly occurred at closing time one night, when Debbie asked me for a ride home. I could not believe my good fortune, although it was trimmed a little when it turned out she lived relatively close to the store.  I was hoping she lived at the Air Force Base, about a twenty-five minute ride away.

Coming in a very distant second in my list of enjoyable times at The Pig that first year would be the watermelon delivery days.  The trailer of the truck which carried the melons to our store would be too long to be able to maneuver up to our loading dock in the back, so the driver would pull up on the sidewalk in front of the store.  This inevitably occurred mid-afternoon, when the daytime employees were wrapping up their shifts, and the evening employees had just arrived to start theirs.  All hands were on deck to unload the truck, and all other activity within the store came to a temporary standstill.  The male employees would form a conveyor line from the end of the truck, across the sidewalk and through the front door, all the way to the produce department in the back.  We would stand about six or seven feet away from each other and horizontally toss the melons, most of which were relatively heavy, to the next guy in the line.  Sometimes the melons were wet and slippery, and even if they weren't, we usually ended up splattering four or five of them either on the outside pavement (the lesser of two evils) or the store's floor before we had emptied the truck. The ritual was a lot of fun, and even though it was heavy lifting, the respite from dealing with the customers was a blessing.

The third thing which merits mentioning as an unusual, if not pleasurable, activity involved a bit of what you might label "espionage."  The break room, invisible to the customers, was in the rear of the building, behind a wall separating the butchers' meat counter from the warehouse/storage room (the "storeroom").  On that wall was a two- way mirror which allowed the employees in the break room to look straight down the aisle containing small items such as toiletries, over-the-counter medicines, cosmetics and candy bars.   To the customers in that aisle, all they saw was what appeared to them as a regular mirror.  The employees had an ongoing contest to see who could spot the most shoplifters in a given month.  It does not speak well for our store's customers to report that there was at least one incident of shoplifting each month.  Almost every one of the culprits was reported by a store employee simply eating her lunch while simultaneously looking through the mirror.  I only did the "I Spy" thing a few times, and never caught anybody shoplifting.  Most of my breaks were spent loitering in Newberry's record department, wondering if I should spend $4 of my hard-earned wages on the latest album from a British Invasion band.

I don't wish to give the impression that life at The Pig was always the best of times.  To paraphrase Dickens, it could also be the worst of times, including one scary incident when I actually thought I might die.  But before describing that nightmare, I must briefly mention a couple of other unpleasantries.  I wrote above that it would be par for the course to accidentally drop watermelons when we were unloading the delivery truck. And every once in awhile someone would break a bottle of milk or pop.  Although the result was a mess, those were nothing compared to the time I knocked a large glass bottle of shampoo off the shelf.  Talk about "cleanup in Aisle 3!"  I could not sweep up the glass because the shards were stuck to the shampoo.  I tried using a wet mop, but the shampoo simply soaped up and foamed up on the floor from the water, thus creating a bigger problem than when I started.  I was afraid someone was going to slip, fall and cut herself. It took me almost twenty minutes to clean off the floor, and even with that effort it still wasn't dry.

Another unpleasantry was the after-hours meetings that our store manager, Jerry Cochrane, used to call every few months.  These were command performances, so even if we were not scheduled to work that night, we still had to show up.  We did not get paid for our attendance.  In fact, if we had worked the night shift we were instructed to clock out before the meeting started.  I expressed my displeasure with this arrangement to The Marquis, who opined that Cochrane's practice of conducting such unpaid meetings was undoubtedly against the law.  However, fearing retaliation and being a weenie at heart, I never registered a complaint with management.  As an aside, I will tell you that I have always hated meetings from that time forward throughout my working career.

Lest you think that I'm overstating Cochrane's vindictiveness, consider the following.  As you know, baseball has always been my favorite sport, and the Mid-Summer Classic (aka All-Star Game) of 1964 was hyped up to be a particularly good one.  Mickey Mantle, Harmon Killebrew, Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays (all future Hall Of Famers) were just some of the many big names elected to play in the game.  I always had watched the All-Star Game on television, going back to my Libertyville days, so I wanted to make sure that Cochrane wasn't going to schedule me to work on that Tuesday night.  I had been working about thirty-two hours a week that summer, but the schedule was different each week, including both day and evening shifts. I went up to Coachrane two days before he was going to post the schedule for that All-Star week, and asked him not to schedule me for that Tuesday night.  Coachrane barely looked at me and just grunted.  I wasn't sure until the day that week's schedule was up whether he was going to grant my simple request.  Well, he did not schedule me for that Tuesday.  The bad news is that he only gave me four hours for the entire week, and of course those four were on Saturday night.  To go from thirty-two hours to four really was a financial hit for me.  I guess Cochrane didn't appreciate my asking him for a clear Tuesday night. What a guy.

And now for my horror story.  Saturday nights were notoriously slow at The Pig, and the staff level in the store was minimal.  On one such autumn night our assistant manager, a young guy named Larry, let everyone except me leave minutes after the store closed.  Usually there was not a whole lot left for us to do "after hours," because once things started winding down while the store was open for business, the employees began stocking the shelves and sweeping the floors, putting things in order for the next morning.  The final thing Larry asked me to do before I punched out was to go back to the storeroom, break down all of the dozens of empty boxes, and throw them into the incinerator.  Even though I had now been working at the store for seven or eight months, I had never performed this task before.  Yet, it seemed simple enough. Larry disappeared into the manager's office near the front of the store, and I went to the back.

The incinerator was in the back corner of the storeroom, on the opposite end from our loading dock.  The incinerator was segregated from the rest of the storeroom by a very thick, obviously fireproof, metal wall which encapsulated the incinerator on two sides.  (The other two sides of the incinerator were up against the exterior walls, comprised of cinder blocks.)  It was as if the incinerator, which was about six feet high, was in a fireproof closet.  To gain access to the aperture for the incinerator, one had to open a very heavy metal door built into the wall of the closet, and once inside the closet, push a lever on the exterior of the incinerator which opened the incinerator's metal aperture. The space between the outside of the incinerator and the inside of the closet wall was less than two feet, barely enough to turn around.

I broke down about a half dozen large boxes and made my way to the incinerator for the first of what I figured would take me eight or nine trips to finish the entire assigned task.  The fire, which had been burning throughout the day, was blazing.  I opened the closet door with boxes in hand, but I needed a third hand to operate the aperture lever.  In a split second as I reached for the lever, I heard the closet's metal door slam shut behind me.  I was trapped inside the closet, as the door could not be opened from the inside!  (I learned later the inability to open the closet door from the inside was by design, so that burglars could not gain access to the store by coming in through the chimney in the middle of the night when there was no fire.)  The heat from the fire was unbearable, plus I was worried that the boxes I'd brought with me inside the closet might catch on fire.

Panic set in while I banged on the closet door for help.  I knew Larry was way in the front of the store, perhaps with the office door shut and the radio on.  What if he forgot about me?  He was the only other person in the store.  Since it was Saturday night, my parents wouldn't miss me until I was a no show at home after midnight.  By that time I'd either be fried or suffocated.  Other than a few scary airplane rides I've been on, it was the only time in my life I really thought I was going to die.

The nightmare ended about twenty minutes later when Larry finally rescued me.  If the same type of incident happened today, the news-starved local TV stations probably would have made it their lead item, and OSHA would have been on the scene the next day.  I would file suit for emotional distress based on the store's gross negligence, conveniently forgetting my contributory negligence.  Instead, it stayed under the radar.  That's how it was in 1964.  Larry mumbled an apology and Cochrane, as expected the next time I saw him, never said a word.

Months and seasons went by.  Pretty soon I was a high school senior.  Now when I think back I wonder how I held down the Piggly Wiggly job and still managed to get my homework done.  There was a ton of it, but I knew time management was expected once I got to college.  I usually worked most of my grocery store hours over the weekend, and took on just a handful of night shifts a week.

I've already written about the highlight of my first year at The Pig.  Coincidentally, the highlight of my second year also directly pertained to a girl, although this time it did not really have much to do with my job at all.  In late May of my senior year, 1965, I finally got up the nerve to ask Corrine Damberger for a date, and to my astonishment she said yes.  If I had known that she would have said yes on my first attempt, I would not have fiddled around for so long.  We went out on a couple of dates before the school year ended, but now that it was summer I wondered if any of her friends were aware of our new relationship.  In a small town such as Minot and a small school such as Ryan, there were few secrets.  However, because we hadn't started dating until summer vacation was practically upon us, maybe she never let her friends know.  I'm not sure why I cared about this.  I guess my thought was that if she had apprised her friends that we were going out, I could deduct that she was interested in me to a larger extent than if she had not.  Who knows for sure how a seventeen year old thinks?  We were probably a legend in my own mind.

Be that as it may, the Big Moment for me occurred on a Saturday afternoon in June.  The store was crawling with customers, and I was working my tail off at the front of the store.  There was a huge picture window which ran the length of the store front, and as I was carrying bags from the cashier line to the drive-through pick-up, there was Corrine, sitting on a bike on the sidewalk right in front of the store, looking at me through the window. She was with Mary Louise Muus, another classmate of ours, who was also on a bike.  I was taken aback, as Corrine lived in northwestern Minot, not a short distance for biking to and up South Hill. I waved and smiled through the window, and they did the same.  There was no way I could take even a quick brake at that instant to go out and visit.  They briefly watched me for a moment and then off they went, pedaling up South Hill.  The whole encounter could not have lasted more than thirty seconds.  But that was enough for me; I was on Cloud 9.

When I got off work I called my buddy, Tim Mueller, who worked at Red Owl and was Mary Louise's boyfriend.  He told me the two girls had made their way up to his store, but just like me, he was too busy to talk to them.  It is sometimes said, "Timing is everything." So true.

The rest of my last months and weeks at The Pig passed unremarkably.  More watermelons, more spying on customers, more Saturday night shifts, and of course more bagging and shelf stocking.  I was dreading the day when I'd have to give my two week notice of resignation to Cochrane, but I needed to be at Notre Dame on Labor Day weekend.  Even though that All Star game request had occurred more than a year ago, the memory of it had not disappeared from my little brain.  What if I gave him my notice and he did not schedule me at all for those final two August weeks?  That would be a lot of missed dough for me, money I was counting on.

I did not feel I had any choice but to let him know my intentions exactly two weeks from the day that I wanted to be my last.  I can still (forty-eight years later) remember the exact spot where the dreaded, albeit short, conversation took place -- in the middle of Aisle 1 right outside the manager's office.  Somehow I got the words out that two weeks from then would be my last day, because I was heading off to college.  Did he thank me for the year and a half of service, for never calling in sick, never missing a scheduled shift or never being late?  Did he ask what my future plans were or where I was going to school?  Did he say it was nice having me around, that I would be missed, or that I should be sure to stop in for a visit next time I was back in town?  Well, not exactly.  Jerry simply was not wired that way; he didn't have it in him.  Instead, these were Jerry's words, verbatim, as only Jerry could say, or even think of saying: "Don't worry, John.  We'll get some fat nine year old girl to replace you."  That was it.  If that was his attempt at humor, he laid an egg.  As I wrote above, what a guy.  On a positive note, and to be fair, he did not short-change me for shifts during those last two weeks.  But, following our Aisle 1 tete-a-tete, we never spoke again.

You might say the postscript to my story was written on June 25, 1976, the day I married Mary.  When she was in high school in Minneapolis, she worked at Red Owl.      

Movie Review: "Captain Phillips"

"Captain Phillips": A.  The timing for Momma Cuan and I to attend Captain Phillips last Friday afternoon probably could have been better.  We were still worn out from having attended the tension-packed Fool For Love at the Jungle Theater the night before.  The Tom Hanks high seas piracy drama was likewise relentless with its depiction of a commercial cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, sailing under a US flag on its way from Oman to Kenya, churning through the Indian Ocean.  Although the waters off the coast of eastern Africa, particularly near Somalia, are known to be infested with pirates, the best defense the Alabama could muster, as two motor boats carrying armed baddies approached, was a high power water spray from hoses aimed outward on each side of the ship.  This amounted to a mere inconvenience, as the young pirates had little problem attaching their portable ladder to the Alabama's deck railing and climbing aboard.

Before we get too far into the action, director Paul Greengrass provides us viewers with some background on the central characters.  We might expect extensive background concerning Phillips (Hanks), if for no other reason than he is the title character.  But what makes this movie admirable, and sets it apart from your ordinary good vs. evil motion picture, is the time spent developing Muse (Minneapolitan Barkhad Abdi), the skinny baby-faced leader of the pirates.  Muse and his cronies are very young adults -- and in one case, a teenager -- who live a tough existence in their homeland, Somalia.  Their day job is fishing, but they are under the thumb of the local warlord, who pressures them into committing crimes on the high seas. Greengrass' objective does not appear to be an attempt to gain sympathy for the young men, but a better understanding of how the world should work from their perspective.

 

Phillips is a veteran naval career man, but unlike the chief officer on a warship, most of his crew consists of civilians who cannot be expected to deal with the crisis in the same manner military enlisted men would.  One of the best, albeit short, scenes in the movie occurs several minutes before the motor boats catch up to the Alabama.  Phillips gives instructions to his men on the tactics they will employ should there be a boarding by the pirates.  The crew members protest, reminding Phillips that they did not sign on to fight; they are civil sailors (not Navy seamen) who are not interested in engaging, or paid to engage, in hand-to-hand combat with armed pirates.  Phillips' retort is that every man knew when he signed on that the charted course was going to take them through seas known to be fertile ground for pirates.  The fact that they are soon to be confronted should not take them by surprise.

 

The cargo carried on the Alabama, comprised of various goods and materials, is not of much interest to the pirates.  Neither is the thirty thousand US dollars in cash which Phillips readily offers them from the Alabama's safe if they'll just go away.  The greenbacks are chump change for the Somalians.  They intend to commandeer the ship, bring it to a Somalian port, and hold the ship and the crew for ransom from Maersk's insurance company.  The asking price will be in the high seven figures, at least.

 

Any notion by Phillips or the the movie viewers that Muse is a chump who will be easy to outmaneuver or out-negotiate is quickly dispelled.  He is shrewd and ruthless.  That point is covered both in flashbacks and in his present day, on-board actions.  For much of the time Muse is actually likable.  Once Phillips tells him he is an Irish Catholic, Muse immediately bestows the nickname "Irish" on the captain.  Later in the story, when Phillips and Muse are having a "heart-to heart" conversation, Phillips opines that there must be other things Muse could do with his life besides fishing and risking his life obeying piracy orders from the warlord. Muse's reply is poignant: "Maybe in the US, Irish, but not in Somalia." 

 

Another memorable conversation occurs when Muse informs Phillips that their last haul netted them six million dollars in ransom money.  Phillips then asks, if that's the case, where did that six million go?  Isn't that enough to set you up for life?  Why are you still a pirate?  What are you doing here?  Muse does not have an answer for that, but Phillips' point is well made.

 

As smart and (at least in their own eyes) brave as the Somalians might be, there is one stumbling block they did not count on: the US Navy.  The pirates are repeatedly cautioned, "You can't win this!"  Do they?  The price of a theater ticket will enable you to find out.

 

I came away with one dominating thought.  Since the world knows that pirates pose a real and significant threat off the east coast of Africa, wouldn't it be smarter and more cost-efficient to have at least a small military escort accompany the cargo ships, rather than waiting for a crisis and then deploying naval troops to deal with the emergency?    

Shortstops: The Daylight Play & The Neighborhood Play

This weekend the American and National League Championship Series are wrapping up, and the World Series starts this Wednesday.  It's time for another baseball post.  All three of the teams still standing as of this writing (Red Sox, Tigers and Cardinals) have very good shortstops, which supports the contention that it's pretty difficult for a team without a good shortstop to make it this far in the playoffs.  Other than the catcher, the shortstop is the most important defensive player on the diamond.  It is fitting, therefore, that on this big baseball weekend this post should discuss two shortstop plays you're likely to see at some point during the Series. 

The Daylight Play:  One of the most talked-about plays of this year's post season occurred in Game 4 of the NLCS Tuesday night.  The Dodgers were trailing the Cards, 2 games to 1, in the best-of-seven series. To make matters worse, the Bums were down 4 to 2 with one out in the home half of the seventh inning, so their backs were up against the wall.  But the southern California crowd of almost 54,000 sensed a rally brewing when former Twin, Nick Punto, doubled to the gap. With the top of their order due up next, the Dodgers were ready to mount a comeback.  Then the unthinkable happened. Punto, a thirteen year veteran with twenty-six MLB playoff games under his belt, got picked off second on a quick move by Cardinal relief pitcher Carlos Martinez to kid shortstop Pete Kozma.  Punto, himself a shortstop, should have seen it coming.  The Dodgers' rally was over before it began, the end was near, and the final score stood with the Cardinals winning 4 to 2.

If you watch a replay of the Punto pick-off, it is a classic illustration of the old Daylight Play.  The Daylight Play can commence with a signal from the catcher, or as was the case last Tuesday, with a non-verbal acknowledgement between the pitcher and the shortstop.  Regardless of who instigates the play, the Daylight Play requires a split second decision by the pitcher on whether to throw the ball to the shortstop as the latter sneaks in behind the runner. The rule of thumb is this: When the pitcher spins around to face second base, if he sees "daylight" between the shortstop and the baserunner, he makes the throw; no daylight, no throw.  As long as his foot has not remained on the rubber, the pitcher will not be called for a balk if he does not make a throw, even if he fakes a throw.  On the Punto play, Martinez saw daylight between Punto and Kozma, made a perfect throw, and ol' Nick was thereupon embarrassed in front of the LA faithful, not to mention millions of television viewers.

The Daylight Play is not as easy as it may at first seem.  Unlike a pickoff throw to first where the first baseman receiving the throw is stationary, on a pickoff throw to second the shortstop is moving, surreptitiously gliding to his left toward second base.  The pitcher has to lead his shortstop in a manner similar to a quarterback leading a receiver. Some pitchers might choose to simply aim for the second base bag, but if the shortstop can't get there the ball will end up rolling out to center field.  The better and safer choice is not to aim for the bag but to throw the ball between the shortstop and the bag. 

A skilled shortstop will not only be able to take the pickoff throw, he will be able to block the sack with one or both of his feet as he's applying the tag.  He does not have to worry about being spiked, because on 99% of the close plays of this type, the baserunner will be diving back head first.  The shortstop may get bitten, but he won't be spiked.

Sometimes, if the Daylight Play is not on, you will see the shortstop pounding his glove as he stands directly behind the baserunner.  He wants the baserunner to hear the glove and think the Daylight Play is on.  The idea is that if the runner thinks that play might be on, he will take a smaller lead.
 

Finally, on the subject of a baserunner taking a lead off second base, remember this.  The baserunner's job is to keep an eye on the second baseman.  The runner's lead off second should not be longer than the distance the second baseman is away from the bag.  However, it is the job of the third base coach to keep an eye on the shortstop, for the simple reason that the baserunner does not have eyes in the back of his head.  The third base coach, therefore, needs to keep the baserunner apprised of how close the shortstop is to the bag, so the runner can adjust his lead accordingly.  Good shortstops are tricky and stealth, and usually among the best athletes on the team.  (That partially explains why I played third base.) 
 

The Neighborhood Play:  The Neighborhood Play is deeply ingrained in baseball tradition, although you'll never see it in a rulebook.  You might say it is a gentlemen's agreement that on a force play at second which constitutes the front end of an attempted double play, the umpire will call the incoming baserunner at second "out" if the shortstop -- or less frequently, the second baseman -- accepts the throw somewhere reasonably close to the sack.  What usually happens on a Neighborhood Play is that, with a runner on first, a grounder is hit to the second baseman, the first baseman or the pitcher, and that fielder throws the ball to the shortstop in an attempt to start a double play.  A literal application of the rules of baseball requires the shortstop to have a foot (or other body part) on the bag at precisely the same moment he possesses the throw from his teammate.  But under the Neighborhood Play, that precision is not required. Have you heard that "close" only counts in horseshoes and grenades?  Well, now you know better; it counts in the Neighborhood Play as well.

The purpose of applying the Neighborhood Play "rule" is to provide for the safety of the shortstop.  The incoming runner will slide hard into second base in an attempt to break up the double play.  As long as the runner keeps his spikes low, it is not considered a dirty play.  Obviously, a shortstop who has to jump out of the way while he's throwing the ball to first is less likely to be accurate.  In order to minimize the risk to the shortstop's lower extremities, on such a bang-bang play a little leeway as described above is permitted and the mandated precision is, with the wink of the umpire's eye, not required.
 

Some of the baseball gurus in the media have predicted that the Neighborhood Play is not long for this world. Currently, umpires are only permitted to review filmed replays to determine whether a batted ball is a home run, e.g., whether a fly ball cleared the outfield wall in fair territory.  But starting next year, the replay rules are going to be greatly expanded to permit reviews of all kinds of plays (although not balls and strikes), and the precise timing on force plays at second required by a literal application of the rules of baseball will probably be enforced.  Why?  Because no umpire is going to claim that a runner is forced out if the replay shows clearly that the shortstop did not have his foot on the bag when he caught his teammate's throw.  I predict two other collateral effects.  More shortstops are going to get injured, and there will be fewer double plays.