AJ Pierzynski's Invisible Balls

When you are in your mid 30s and in the last year of your contract, I'm sure that most baseball players would be a bit uncertain of the future come the end of the year. They might even start to get a bit edgy when they are struggling to keep their head above the Mendoza Line over a week in the season and things get even worse when your back up is hitting .333 in his pinch hits replacing you. Maybe that might do strange things to a player, maybe it might make them imagine things that didn't happen. That sounds far fetched but that's something that appeared to have happened to A.J. Pierzynski, catcher for the Chicago White Sox, on Tuesday in the game against the Toronto Blue Jays. After facing Blue Jays pitcher Ricky Romeo twice and striking out twice, he came up to the plate in the 8th inning and appeared to get hit on the foot by a 90mph fastball in the dirt.

From his reaction, like a sack of potatoes had just been dropped on his foot from a great height, it was clear to the viewer (and more importantly the umpire) that he had been hit by the pitch. However, the replays clearly showed that the ball never even grazed him. Perhaps this is a medical phenomenon - in such a way that amputees still claim feeling in their long since departed limbs, maybe Pierzynski wanted to reach base so badly that his mind fooled him into thinking he had been hit. Or maybe he is just a dirty old cheat. Sadly, we may never know.




I'll be keeping my fingers crossed and hoping this medical condition doesn't deteriorate like it seems to have done with Cristiano Ronaldo, the Real Madrid midfielder and 2008 Footballer Of The Year, who suffers a highly advanced case of Phantom Leg Syndrome. Whenever he gets near the opponents penalty area, he has a bad habit of tripping over the leg of a defender who doesn't exist. Here is was in action at the weekend where no amount of diving could prevent Barcelona beating Madrid 2-0 and become the favorites to win La Liga.





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