JUPITER, Fla. • The schedule is misleading, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny will remind people Tuesday. The abbreviation for the drill is "Live BP" and it stands for "Live Batting Practice."
That's what it goes by, traditionally.
That is not its purpose, in reality.
Matheny prefers to call it "Live Pitching Practice," because the focus of the drills is for pitchers to make their first throws against a hitter that will actually swing. Manager Tony La Russa used to cringe on the first day of Live BP and do what he could to avoid the drills because he feared a teammate-on-teammate injury.