When Delmon Young Threw A Baseball
By Kyle Davis
Predicting baseball is for suckers. Never has this been more evident than during last night’s contest. Justin Verlander was knocked around for five runs in four innings. He gave up two home runs, in San Francisco, at night. He was bested by Barry Zito, who was relieved by Tim Lincecum. Pablo Sandoval hit three home runs. A ground ball hit third base and shot sideways into the outfield. You get the idea. Much craziness was afoot last night and no amount of prognosticating or analysis or accepted baseball truth could account for it. Verlander is Zito, Zito is Verlander. Pablo Sandoval is Vladimir Guerrero. Chaos reigns. The baseball gods laugh heartily at our attempts to quantify their machinations.
Except for maybe one thing. That thing being the Tiger’s abysmal defense, and more specifically, Delmon Young manning left field. Leading up to the Series, I didn’t read a single preview or column or blog post that didn’t cite Detroit’s questionable glovework as a major weakness, and adventures in the corner were predicted for Delmon with no exception. We all made our jokes and had our fun and waited for the game to start. And then this happened:
I’m sort of at a loss as to where to go next with this piece. I’m overwhelmed with inspiration. The opportunities are almost endless. I could go super over the top and enthusiastic, use some Caps Lock and exclamation points and ha ha ha my way through the throw. I could try faux-profundity, whip out the thesaurus and turn this thing into a metaphor for human frailty. I could write a poem, because this GIF is poetry. Since I’ve already established that I can’t decide (how fortunate for me), and because I’m lazy (indeed), I’ll leave the interpretation of Delmon’s throw to the reader. This throw is whatever you want it to be, it’s a gift from baseball to you, the loyal and deserving fanatic. Cherish it. Hold on to it and don’t let it go. Predicting baseball is a fool’s errand, it’s folly, but there is no substitute for the satisfaction of being right.
Kyle writes baseball nonsense at The Trance of Waiting. You can follow him on Twitter @AgainstKyle.