Monday, August 22, 2011

It's baseball....Don't leave early!

I've been around baseball most of my life, and I've been fortunate enough to have been involved in a number of different capacities: Player, manager, sportswriter, broadcaster and umpire. I don't know how many games I've actually been around, but I know I have umpired more than 1,500 at the high school, college and town team level, plus played at least a couple hundred more, gone to at least a couple hundred major league games....well, you get the picture.

And I'm not saying that to boast, I'm just saying it to help explain the notion that in baseball, there's no way you've ever "seen it all." No two games are alike, and as the cliche goes, you never know what can happen, as evidenced by these two clips.

The first is from a minor league game in Omaha, and involves a bizarre triple play that begins with two runners on, and the batter hitting a long drive to center field. The Nashville outfielder gets a glove on it, bobbles it off his head, makes the catch and doubles two runners off base for a triple play.

He makes the catch for the first out, and throws the ball in. When the infielder steps on second, the runner who started the play on second is out, and with the throw to first, the runner who started on first (and has already rounded second, not thinking the ball would be caught) becomes the third out of the play.



The second clip comes from Atlanta, where a Braves fan makes one of the greatest catches of a foul ball that I've ever seen. It's stuff like this that always makes me reluctant to ever leave a game early, because you never know what you'll see. Enjoy:

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