hit behind the runner (1898)

“If that failing did exist in [Buck] Freeman’s work he has manifestly overcome it, for his now one of Irwin’s very best place hitters and now sends them into left or centre, or hits behind the runner with better results than nine out of ten of the left-handed batsmen.” “Bucky Freeman’s Development,” Wilkes-Barre record, July 7, 1898, p3

No earliest use given in 2009 Dickson Baseball Dictionary

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