Where to get your lead?

When at 1st base where you take your lead is determined by the pitcher. Is the pitcher right handed or is he lefthanded?

If the pitcher is lefthanded we take our lead in the front of the bag. We do this for two primary reasons. 1st, if the pitcher is throwing to 1st and we are taking a "one way" lead, we will be back in plenty of time. Our positioning in the front of the bag might give us an opportunity to block the 1B from retrieving an errant throw. It is important that the runner anchor down as he returns to 1st. 2nd, we are on the inside in case we steal and the pitcher picks us off. If we are running on the inside lane it puts an emphasis on the 1B to gain ground to make a proper throw. Two very important reasons to be on the front of the base.

If the pitcher is a right hander we take our lead from the back of the bag. This is a very straight forward reason. When we steal we want to slide into the back edge of second base. In order to run in the shortest distance that would require us to run back edge to back edge.

Again, where we take our lead is predicated on what hand the pitcher throws with. If a team doesn't take one way leads and doesn't run on "first lift" then I wouldn't think that this would be a major issue. For our team, it is a major part of our running game.