Spring training not all about the muscles

Kansas City first-base coach Rusty Kuntz is busy getting the Royals ready for the season on the field, but has a classroom aspect to his teaching that also show what's lacking for so many major-leaguers these days.

Some of these are painfully easy – how far apart are the bases? - and some are a little more complex (if a batted ball hits an umpire, is it a dead ball or a live ball?)

And some of these major-leaguers – Kuntz didn't provide names to the Associated Press – didn't have a clue. Even some missed that it's 90 feet between the bases.

"Out of 50 questions, the guy got five correct," Kuntz said. "And this was a starting player in the major leagues, a very well-known guy. I thought, 'Oh, my gosh. Oh, my goodness.'"

You never know when a strange situation is going to come up. According to Kuntz:

"I'm trying to get them out of the box. I'm trying to feed them bits and pieces so they can apply it once the game starts. Such as, can you have an infield fly rule on a bunt play?"

That's one most of the Pirates two years ago and most of the Royals this spring got wrong.

"They say you can," Kuntz said. "The answer is no, you can't.”

And then there's that ball-hitting-the-umpire question.

"I had experienced baserunners say it's live," Kuntz said. "Well, it's actually dead. But if the same ball hits an umpire on the outfield grass, then the runners keep running because that's a live ball."

New to the site: Learn more about some fundamentals with step-by-step instructions on how to hit and how to bunt.

Photo: Coach Rusty Kuntz, now of the Kansas City Royals, poses for a portrait when he coached for Pirates in 2003. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)