Managers love to manage.

You can't blame them. Writers like to write, policemen like to police, bakers like to bake, and carpenters like to ... well, you know what I mean.

Like I said, you can't blame anyone. People like to do things, especially if they're being watched by the eyes of a nation. This is the best way to explain crazy things like, oh ... putting three infielders on the right side of second base when there's a left-handed hitter at the plate.

The shift is nothing new. It's said that in the 1920s, National League managers employed such tactics to thwart Phillies center fielder Cy Williams, a powerful left-handed hitter who pulled everything and thrice led the league in home runs.

But the most famous shift was used against Ted Williams, first in 1941 and later (and more famously) in 1946 and afterward. It's generally believed that Indians player-manager Lou Boudreau invented the shift -- it was even called "the Boudreau Shift" -- but as Glenn Stout notes in Red Sox Century, the first to use a shift against Williams was White Sox manager Jimmy Dykes, on July 23, 1941.

"... [W]hen Williams came to bat," Stout writes, "Dykes moved his shortstop into shallow right center, moved his third baseman into the vacant hole at short, and put all three outfielders on the right side of the field... But it didn't work... Facing the shift in the seventh inning he punched the ball to left field and loped into second base as the White Sox chased down the bounding ball. Dykes never used it again."

Five years later, Boudreau brought it back. In the first game of an Indians-Red Sox doubleheader at Fenway, Williams hit three homers and drove in eight runs in Boston's 11-10 victory. In his first at-bat in the second game, Williams doubled down the right-field line. And so the next time Williams batted, Boudreau - who was playing shortstop - ordered his fielders into what he called the "C formation."

This wasn't like any shift you've seen on television. Boudreau's shift left just one defender -- left fielder George Case -- in the opposite field. And Case was very shallow, almost as if he were playing deep shortstop. Williams grounded out to Boudreau, who was playing where the second baseman normally would have been.

Stout writes, "The shift, or variations of it, was employed against Williams for much of the remainder of his career. But since it was usually used with no runners in scoring position, and Williams eventually began to hit to left field more often, its effectiveness was more limited than most people realize. The shift cost Williams only ten or fifteen hits a year."

I'm not at all sure about that. Ten or 15 hits means 20 or 30 points of batting average, and it's hard for me to believe that Williams could have been that much better than he actually was. From 1947 through the end of his career, Williams batted .340. Does it seem reasonable that without the shift, he'd have batted .360 or better?

Thanks to some advice from Paul Waner, Williams did learn to go the opposite way, and would later recall, "I know this. I beat that damn shift a lot more than people realize." In fact, that very season, 1946, Williams hit the only inside-the-park home run of his career, against the Indians when he poked the ball over the left fielder's head and circled the bases.

Of course, the shift is still employed against extreme pull hitters, though in less extreme fashion. When Jason Giambi heads to the plate in the Division Series, the Angels start flying all over, with third baseman Troy Glaus moving over near second base. Tuesday night, Giambi even hit into a rarely-seen 3-5-3 double play.

But does that mean the shift is a great strategy? Later in that same game, Giambi ripped an RBI single right into the teeth of the shift. As yesterday's New York Daily News noted,

The shift -- that dastardly telestration come to life -- went into effect. Giambi ignored it. In fact, he welcomed it. Scott Schoeneweis had changed his pitching pattern to match the formation, and Giambi correctly figured that every fastball and slider was coming inside.

"He just continued to pound me in, pitching to the shift," he said.

With the location a given, Giambi timed the fastballs and sliders. He ripped a 2-2 pitch hard off the glove of first baseman Scott Spiezio into short right field for a single.

It's not something I'd ever considered before, but now it's as plain as the nose on your face. A pitcher has two advantages in his battle with the hitter: speed, and location. The batter (usually) doesn't know how fast the pitch will fly, and he doesn't know where it will be. He can guess, but he can't know.

Unless most of the infield is east of second base, in which case the batter has a pretty good idea that every pitch will fly across the inside half of the plate. And what happens if a hitter like Jim Thome, Barry Bonds, or Jason Giambi can focus on the inside half of the plate? Often as not, he's going to hit the ball real hard. So hard that unless he hits the ball directly at one of those many fielders, it's going to be a hit.

And that's why the shift doesn't make much difference. Sure, it might make the manager look smarter. But it probably doesn't make the great hitter any less great, unless he's both stubborn and stupid.