If you watch enough baseball over the years, you’ll probably find yourself saying, perhaps after an unusual play ,”Now I’ve seen it all.” Hang around longer and you’ll wind up shaking your head and muttering, “There’s always something new to see when it comes to the game of baseball.”
Often, too, something which happens during a game will remind you of a previous, somewhat similar play. Baseball provides us an elastic link allowing us to snap quickly between the present and the past.
Just recently, on September 9, a pickoff play in a game between the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals took place which was reminiscent of a couple other plays in big games which turned out to be fiascos for several teams on offense.
First, the Royals blunder from this season. It took place in the ninth inning and allowed the Tigers to squeeze by Kansas City to take over the lead in the American League Central.
Here’s how it played out: Joe Nathan entered the game in the ninth to nail down the win. This was, however, not quite the Joe Nathan of his glory years with the Twins and Rangers. His 2014 ERA stood near 5.00.
He promptly gave up back-to-back singles before striking Alex Gordon out. Down 4-2 with the potential tying run at first base, the Royals sent Jarrod Dyson in to run at second base. Dyson entered the game with 33 steals against just six times caught stealing.
However, on this occasion Nathan spun around and fired to Ian Kinsler to pick Dyson off after he had committed himself early to run on the front end of a double steal.
Had it worked, the tying run would have moved into scoring position. Instead, the next batter, Salvador Perez whiffed to end the key game.
By the way, exactly a week later Dyson pinch ran in the ninth inning and he did swipe third base. He then scored the game-tying run on a wild pitch in a game K.C. would go on to win, a victory they badly needed down the stretch.
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Another pick-off play proved to be much more egregious than the one which nailed Dyson. The scene: Game 4 of the 2013 World Series with Boston leading St. Louis 4-2 in the ninth.
Both teams were attempting to even the Series at two wins apiece. Allen Craig singled for the Cardinals and Kolten Wong, with just 32 regular season games on his big league resume, was put in to pinch run for Craig.
Then with two outs and nothing to gain by stealing second or by roaming too far off the first base bag Wolton nevertheless managed to get picked off by Boston closer Koji Uehara to end the game. This mistake marked the first time a World Series game ended on a pick-off, an unforgivable misstep.
Exacerbating matters the potential tying run was at the plate. Carlos Beltran was up, leaving Cardinal fans to wonder, “What would have happened if the Wong gaffe didn’t take Beltran’s bat out of his hands?”
After all, Beltran owned 16 post season home runs, the ninth best total ever. Further agony followed for the Cardinals when Boston rolled on with two straight wins to wrap things up.
The next faux pas requires a bit of a stretch to arrive at but the brain of a baseball fan can make leaps from one event and one century to another with ease.
This time the base running disaster was a bit different, an ill-advised caught stealing rather than a pickoff. Yet the result was the same– a glaring base running flaw led to a sudden and stunning defeat.
The year was 1926 and the New York Yankees were locked up in a World Series Game 7 clash with the Cardinals. With two men out in the ninth and the Cards up by a run at Yankee Stadium.
The legendary but aging Grover Alexander, 39, walked Babe Ruth bringing the dangerous Bob Meusel to the plate representing the potential winning run.
Meusel came to the plate all right, but he never got a chance to take the bat off his shoulders– Ruth was inexplicably gunned when he decided on his own to try to steal second base.
One can argue that plays involving huge blunders never should occur at the big league level but in a sort of perverse way many such events (e.g. the very wild pitch thrown by Cleveland’s C.C. Lee during an intentional walk on September 14th this year which helped Detroit win a 6-4 contest), even though they certainly do involve glaring mistakes, are nevertheless a part of the wonder of baseball.
After all, costly misplays made by men such as Fred Merkle and Leon Durham are as much a part of the lore of baseball as Babe Ruth and his exploits– well, most of his exploits, that is.