“You Can’t Make It Up.” That will be the title of the book, and for obvious reasons. The book is about Major League Baseball, when it is executed somewhat less than that level of ball might require.

The names have been deleted to protect the guilty, but the facts are true.

There is a major league manager who has a wonderful sense of humor (you better have one for that job) and who decided a month into this season that he and a coach had better start writing these anecdotes down.

He keeps the notebook in his office and recently let me in on some of the notations.

There was a player on his team who, for the entire first half of the season, had never once got the hit-and-run sign. It was given repeatedly and repeatedly unseen by the player who said, “I didn’t see the sign.”

After the All-Star break, the signs were changed. In the very first game with the new signs, the third base coach gave the batter the “take” sign. The runner on first, the player who never got the signs, broke for second on the next pitch. He was easily thrown out.

The manager asked the coach at the end of the inning, “Did you give him the steal sign?”

“No way,” was the response. “I gave the take sign to the hitter,” said the coach.

When the skipper asked the player what he was doing, he said, “I saw the hit-and-run sign.”

Upon further review with the coach, the manager discovered in the routine of sign giving, the hit-and-run sign for the first half of the year had been given as one of the dummy signs.

“Seventy games and he can’t get the hit-and-run,” sighs the manager with a shaking head. “The first day of the new signs and he sees the one signal we did away with.”

You couldn’t make it up.

In a recent close game in the late innings, with the tying run at second and a 3-0 count on the hitter, the “green light” sign is given to the hitter. He is free to swing if he gets his pitch.

On the next pitch the runner takes off for third, the hitter doesn’t swing, the runner is thrown out.

The runner says to the manager, “You gave me the green light.”

The situation is two down, runners at second and third, ninth inning of a tie game. The batter bunts toward first and is easily out.

Says the batter to the manager, “I thought I could get a base hit with a bunt to second.”

Or, the team is down by two in the ninth, runner at second. The No. 3 hitter is up and is a leader in home runs and RBIs. He hits the ball toward second base to move the runner to third.

Our manager’s eyes grow big. “If I’d wanted him to bat second or seventh, I’d let him know. You couldn’t make this up.”

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.