Baseball History?

After last Thursday night’s game Henry Bartlett said that baseball history was quite possibly made last night: probably never before in one inning has there been a triple play AND a strikeout / 1 – 3…where the dropped third strike is picked up by the pitcher, who threw out the batter at first. As Pete Van Weiren says, just when you thought you’ve seen everything in baseball…

The triple play was special. Like last time, it was the players on the field who immediately knew what to do, as opposed to us grown-ups pulling the strings. With runners on first and second, pitcher John Fulton’s pitch was blooped / lined to second-baseman Michael’s left. Michael scampered over and easily caught the ball. The runner on first was moving away from first and Michael was moving toward first, and Michael immediately knew to throw to Josiah to double off that runner. As Josiah was easily catching Michael’s throw, John Fulton began instructing Josiah to throw to second. Shortstop Curtis had moved toward the second-base bag on the hit, and was standing there ready for the throw. Josiah’s throw was perfect, just beating the runner desperately trying to get back. Curtis squeezed the ball…triple play!

Thanks to David Arasmith’s wonderful scorekeeping, I noticed this interesting note on the triple play: Only three batters came to the plate in that fifth inning, but they were retired in reverse order. The 3rd batter made the 1st out, the 2nd batter made the 2nd out, and the 1st batter made the 3rd out. Well, I thought it was interesting! Those Powder Springs Yankees were the same team that we turned a triple play on last fall…and John Fulton was pitching then as well.

The rare strikeout / pitcher to first-baseman putout happened in the bottom of the inning. Russell took a swing at a ball in the dirt, and when the catcher tried to scoop up the pitch, the ball popped up high and out in front of the plate. The catcher didn’t see the ball and turned to look behind him, and Russell took off to first. The pitcher charged in to recover the ball, and his throw to first barely beat Russell to the bag. Russell did good running straight up the foul line, as he was almost directly between the pitcher throwing and the first-baseman trying to catch the ball…something to be aware of when running the bases.

Last night Ceil was discouraged with the loss, but I was able to quickly rattle off several encouraging things. We did come closer to beating these Yankees back on April 28th, but Thursday their entire lineup was spraying base hits beyond our infielders and in front of the outfielders. David and John Fulton faced 39 batters and walked only one, which was excellent. David threw 79% strikes, and JF threw 67% strikes, which was great. David struck out seven batters in three innings, including four of the first six batters of the game.

Baseball is great because any night a lowly team can rise up and defeat the mighty. The Yankees hits were hardly ever hit at our fielders, but we seemed to always be hitting it right to their fielders. In the first four innings we only struck out twice and had 11 runners reach base, but hit into two straight tailor-made inning ending double plays. That’s baseball! Andrew doubled and scored on Jake’s sacrifice fly to center. Clay’s fourth inning hit knocked in Joey and Corey. Nick and Michael also had hits, and Curtis reached on an error.

In the field we had several highlights: first baseman Josiah fielded a grounder to his right and flipped to pitcher David covering to end a 1-2-3 first inning. Nick made a dramatic catch in left-centerfield, that I heard was caught on film (though I didn’t see it on SportsCenter). Corey ran a long way into right-center to make a fine catch, and I believe also caught another fly ball as well. Will ran all the way into foul territory to catch a fly behind third base. That’s what I’m talkin’bout…fly balls aren’t going to bounce far past you in the outfield, so all fielders should run full speed to try and catch them in the air. Do this and they give you an out, and a snack after the game. A few games ago Clay took his eye off a double-play ground ball and muffed it, but on the same exact play recorded the putout at second this time.

Triple Play Note: Saturday little Jack Regitz had an unassisted triple play, playing for the Pinto National Defenders. There could be more, but it is only the fourth triple play that I have heard about at Mt. Paran.