The craziness in baseball isn’t limited to Seattle. This weekend has seen more ridiculousness, which should amuse you no matter what your level of interest in America’s pastime may be.
During Saturday’s Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim1 game, first basemen Kendry Morales managed to get hurt on a game-winning home run. After blasting a home run in the bottom of the 10th inning to give his team a 5-1 victory, Morales jogged around the bases, enjoying his moment. When he got to home plate, he leapt into the air, landed on the plate, and promptly broke his leg. He’ll be out for at least three months.
If you’re not familiar with baseball, a walk-off is so named because after the play is complete, your team can simply walk off the field having earned an immediate victory. When the home team scores the winning run(s) in the bottom of the 9th or later inning, they’ve had a walk-off. Morales’ grand slam has been referred to as a walk-off, but it seems clear that this is not the case at all. After breaking his leg, Morales isn’t walking anywhere for quite some time. Instead, it appears that Morales hit a “carted-off”.
On Memorial Day Monday, the Dodgers won a game in their own ridiculous fashion. In the bottom of the ninth, with Casey Blake on third, Arizona Diamondbacks relief pitcher Esmerling Vasquez balked. What the fuck is a balk, you wonder? Click this link to review. In short, it means the pitcher screwed up, and base runners get to advance one base. In this case, it meant that the Dodgers got the win, with an incredibly anti-climactic balk-off.
Finally, my friend SeoulBrother linked to a fantastic video. Watch this animated short detailing Dock Ellis’ LCD no-hitter, a feat which was accomplished almost exactly 40 years ago. I’ve heard the story itself before, but this video uses narration from Dock Ellis himself. He describes the story and it’s coupled with animation to bring the tale to life. The summary, a pitcher throwing a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD, really doesn’t even begin to tell the story.
Footnotes:
To sum up that team name in one word, “ugh”. ↩︎
