"The baseball gods don’t toy with the players, but they enjoy writing tough little S.A.T.s on the odd evening."
Writes Roger Angell, who's written about baseball for a very long time. "I’ve been watching baseball since 1930 and have never seen...." What was it that he'd never seen that broke his career long silence about the baseball gods? Perhaps you were watching the other night.
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I was watching. Trust me the baseball gods are not going to waste their time on some fucking Canadian team. Rangers just sucked.
You spelled Rangers wrong. It is spelled Elvis!
It's an unusual play, but it happens. Usually when the catcher is trying to throw out a runner attempting to steal. The dude's 95, he probably has seen it before but just can't remember.
Now you want an unusual play? Happened when I was coaching my older son in little league. Bases loaded, opponent hits a line drive up the middle. Ball hits the pitching rubber and ends up in foul ground between home and third. The kids are off running, coaches and parents screaming, and after a series of bad throws the batter ends up scoring...a "grand slam".
Or did he?
A ball that strikes the pitcher's plate (aka rubber) without being touched by a defensive player and ends up in foul territory is a foul ball. No runner may advance.
Never seen it happen.
I always thought Rougned was a girl's name.
I don't know who said it first, but baseball announcers often repeat an old saying that if you stick around long enough at almost any baseball game, you'll see something that you've never seen before.
Correct Livermoron. I knew the rule, let all the chaos happen, and then had the play called correctly. Never had seen it before or since.
I wish he had resisted using "baseball gods" a little longer. The "good writing gods" would have been pleased.
The Boy named Rougned will be a Superstar. Did you ever hear Ron Washington try to pronounce it?
It's always interesting to watch the pros look like 10-year-olds once in awhile.
mccullough, yes, or my recreational slow pitch coed softball team. yikes.
I, for one, lament the extension of the baseball season to include parts of winter in the northern states. The World Series should be over by now.
That said, seeing things that are statistically unlikely is what makes watching baseball fun. Hitting the damn ball with the bat is pretty unlikely, doing so in order to get on base is even less likely, and players sequentially doing so often and well enough to score runs is preposterously difficult. Yet it is done almost every game.
Now, football on grass fields in bad, bad weather is really fun to watch, because things happen that nobody intends to happen on every play. College football teams playing in mud and rain is almost worth paying to watch, just for the laughs.
Joe Posnanski and Michael Schurr wrote a long article on that game that was pretty funny. It was absolutely crazy. And probably craziest thing was that baseball had a rule covering exactly what happened.
I've seen a single player make 3 errors in an inning (Willie Davis, '66 World Series) but have never seen an MLB team melt down like that.
I thought it interesting the Rangers didn't try to make more of the plate umpire calling time almost immediately after Martin hit the bat with his throw. No one had a play on the runner anyway (who was unusually alert) and the errant timeout call should not have prevented the run from scoring.
Go Cubs.
Last night, Mets 2b Daniel Murphy was on first and stole third on the batter's walk because the Dodgers had overshifted and left third uncovered. Never saw *that* before, either.
LET'S GO METS!
mikeski wrote Last night, Mets 2b Daniel Murphy was on first and stole third on the batter's walk because the Dodgers had overshifted and left third uncovered. Never saw *that* before, either.
David Ortiz tried that kind of steal this season and the third baseman positioned in the short outfield still beat him to the bag for the out. The catcher probably could have run to third with the ball before Ortiz got there.
I have been surprised the last few years to find out that run-of-the-mill hitters like Murphy have overshift-worthy spray charts just as pronounced as mashers like Ortiz.
Curious George wrote: It's an unusual play, but it happens. Usually when the catcher is trying to throw out a runner attempting to steal. The dude's 95, he probably has seen it before but just can't remember.
Cole Hamels said he had seen it before.
I have actually seen the "no one covering the bag" stolen base on the college level, though it was not caused by an overshift or a walk.
Ann, if you watch baseball enough you will see things you have never seen before. It is one of the glories of the games. That 7th inning had two things that almost never happen: a run scored on a throw back to the pitcher from the catcher that went off the batter's bat, and a Canadian near riot. Add to that a team making three straight errors (rare and even more so given the last one was an extremely easy play), a dramatic home run with a bat flip, a near brawl, all of which is in a win or go home playoff game between a team that no one expected to get to the playoffs and a team that has not been in the playoffs and really has not been good for twenty years, topped off with the winning team winning three straight elimination games after dropping the first two games of the series. It would qualify as bad script writing if it was not reality. Sometimes things are so weird that they defy explanation. Baseball gods indeed.
Andrus bailed out the catcher for Toronto. Rather than stand up to return the ball to the pitcher with the go ahead run at third in a crucial situation, he stayed squatted and hit the bat which was not in a place where interference could be called. The batter, Choo, has a habit of stretching his arms out. The umpires handled it well.
As a Rangers fan, Elvis is dead to me now.
Speaking of "the baseball gods," these events sound like something determined by the "Extraordinary Occurrences Chart" in Robert Coover's 1968 novel "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universal_Baseball_Association,_Inc.,_J._Henry_Waugh,_Prop.
The Cubs had six homers the other night, a playoff record. And they were done one each by the 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 hitters in the line up.
"mikeski said...
Last night, Mets 2b Daniel Murphy was on first and stole third on the batter's walk because the Dodgers had overshifted and left third uncovered. Never saw *that* before, either.
LET'S GO METS!"
I've seen similar, runner on first attempts a steal for second against the shift, pops up and just keeps running to third.
Without even looking at the link yet, it has to be that wild seventh inning in the Texas-Toronto Game 5. The Rangers went ahead in about the flukiest way possible, then had a complete defensive collapse in the bottom of the inning with three consecutive errors setting up the Blue Jays' comeback, capped by Joey Bats' three-run blast and epic bat flip. That was about the craziest inning I've ever seen.
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