magic wizard base bases trick runner basepath second first "Brendan donley" "big inning"

Game 132 // Third Inning // Lorenzo The Magician

The Big InningBlog

Lorenzo Cain just pulled off baseball magic on the basepaths.

And one of the smartest plays in years.

 

 

 

 

Before the game, things were already looking hopeless for the Cubs.

“We might not win this one,” your dad says as he turns on the game feed.

“It’s Tyler Chatwood Day.”

 

 

 

If you were to see the next morning’s headlines, you would’ve turned back before the first pitch was thrown. You would’ve abandoned all hope. Ye wouldn’t have entered here. You would’ve skipped, as we now know we should, this part of the rotation entirely.

For when it’s Chatwood Day, you get wise and take a vacation from baseball.

 

 

 

Not just bad baseball, in this loss. But a whole new side of it. As if some educational lesson exists within a loss like this. A discovery of science, of anthropology, tapping into a phenomenon never before observed.

“Crikey!” some Steve Irwin esque figure would’ve said on camera, crouching in the dugout, peering out between Gatorade tanks.

“Would you get a look at that!?”

  

 

 

The Brewers are up 2-0. They’ve lost the first of a three game-set, at home. Christian Yelich is on second. Lorenzo Cain hits a hard ground ball up the middle, fielded by Baez, and, well… just watch it in full:

 

 

 

An out, an easy out. A double play in the making.

Then: panic, sheer panic. An entire infield panicking together, at once.

Panic on the streets of London.

Panic in the infield at Milwaukee. 

 

 

 

Cain is safe at first. Yelich is safe at second. A pickle is turned inside out.

No outs. And the ball, where it so obviously, cruelly must be, is in the hands of Tyler Chatwood.

A moment later, it’s bouncing down the line in right field as both men come home to score on a double, and the Brewers lead 4-0.

Tyler Chatwood Day has come.

What else could you expect, but this?

 

Nick Offerman GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

 

 

You watch it again, from the second angle.

Then you realize. Lorenzo Cain did this all on purpose. This wasn’t some accidental stroke of good luck, from the Brewers. You see him pointing his fingers at the ground, guiding Yelich to the base as he waits to run back to first, decoying his way into both runners safe.

This was advanced-level baseball magic.

 

 

 

I should add, by the way, that this may not be so new a phenomenon after all. In 2013, in Milwaukee, against the Cubs, there was the “Segura Steals First” Incident.

See below:

 

 

 

And so, this week’s Tyler Chatwood Day—a notch more hopeless than its normally scheduled hopelessness.

A day that brings out nothing good at all. Something to avoid, to cover your eyes at, to leave behind entirely and forget the TV and couch ever existed.

But a day that makes one man happy. One special man that much closer to the bliss he’s been searching for his entire life.

At last, at long, long psychotic last… the great Kato Kaelin will calm down.

 

 

 

Relax, my man. Your Brewers are back in first.