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The Polaroid Random Thoughts Baseball Thread

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46,000 attendance are some great numbers for Toronto.. I want to see a game in toronto from one of these Marriott hotel rooms

renaissance-toronto-downtown.jpg


Blue%20Jays%20Topless%20Woman(3).jpg
 
gregm
46,000 attendance are some great numbers for Toronto.. I want to see a game in toronto from one of these Marriott hotel rooms

renaissance-toronto-downtown.jpg


Blue%20Jays%20Topless%20Woman(3).jpg
Click to expand...

I am on the yankees and watching this game, another great crowd attendance wise. Doesnt seem to be many yankees fans, mainly jays fans I see. If this team starts winning games, look out. Sherwood from sportswagers.ca doesn't seem too impressed with the Jays manager John Gibbons and the money they paid for Johnson
 
gregm
I am on the yankees and watching this game, another great crowd attendance wise. Doesnt seem to be many yankees fans, mainly jays fans I see. If this team starts winning games, look out.
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The potential is there with Toronto and the Blue Jays. The team held the MLB attendance record for a number of years so it's not a stretch to imagine big things happening. It would just help a lot if there was something to cheer about.
 
Well sir, it's a weird one. In terms of MLB making an official scoring record of the events, it's not possible. They would basically have to lie just to get something entered in the computer. However it happened.

Ain't nothing to do here but copy a write-up. I'll bold the barebones description of events. The rest is discussion and analysis.



I think we just found baseball's version of Leon Lett.

I'm talking about Brewers shortstop Jean Segura, who, like the mixed-up grandma who made a U-turn on a one-way street, performed an act of baserunning madness Friday that he'll be seeing, on scoreboard video-screen blooper reels, for the rest of his life.

To even try to describe this adventure is almost as challenging as actually doing it. And all the jumbled online play-by-play accounts out there are living proof.

But here's the simplest way to sum it up:

This guy stole second. Then he tried to steal third but somehow wound up on first. Then he got thrown out trying to steal second again. All in a span of five pitches.

Just try that on your PlayStation sometime. Excellent chance smoke starts pouring out of it within seconds.
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Jean SeguraMike McGinnis/Getty Images Jean Segura stole second base in the eighth inning Friday night against the Cubs, but the Brewers' shortstop wouldn't stay there for long.

"Bizarre," umpire Tom Hallion told Brewers.com's Adam McCalvy. "Technically, he stole second, stole first then got thrown out stealing second."

Well, "technically" he didn't, because that's impossible. Here's what actually happened:

On a 2-2 pitch to Ryan Braun in the eighth inning of the Brewers' 5-4 win over the Cubs, Segura stole second. On the next pitch, Braun walked. So far, pretty standard stuff. But not for long.

Three pitches after that, Segura broke for third. But his first mistake was that he forgot to wait until pitcher Shawn Camp actually delivered the ball.

Camp whirled and got Segura hung up between second and third. That led Braun to follow Baseball 101 protocol and roar into second base. Which was proper and cool -- until Segura scrambled back to the bag to join him.

The Cubs started tagging everyone in the vicinity, and the rules say it was Braun who was out. But that was news to Segura, who thought he was the one who was out. So he started trotting toward the dugout.

Along the way, though, he got the memo that he wasn't out after all. So he pulled back into first base. And first-base coach Garth Iorg wouldn't let him leave.

Not until two pitches later, anyway -- when Segura burst toward second again and, in Take 2, was thrown out.

So there you have it -- a man who stole second and was caught stealing second in the same inning.

Without his team batting around.

Spiced up by a whole lot of mad sprinting around the infield in between.

"If I was him, I would've stole again too," Cubs second baseman Darwin Barney told MLB.com's Carrie Muskat. "I don't think anyone has ever stole second twice in the same inning in the same at-bat. That would've been history there. Luckily for us, that didn't happen."

But whatever happened, this goofy baserunning extravaganza raises lots and lots of questions. Let's try to answer them as best we can.

Was this actually legal?

The answer, amazingly, is yes.

"Some people are saying he violated the rules by running the bases backward, but he really didn't," said Retrosheet founder Dave Smith.

Incredibly, that's true. Yes, there is a rule in the books -- good old Rule 7:08(i) -- that prohibits runners from running the bases backward "for the purpose of confusing the defense or making a travesty of the game."

But there's an addendum to that rule that separates Segura's brand of travesty from players who are intentionally riding in reverse. That addendum allows runners who innocently get decoyed or confused to run in pretty much any direction, at their own risk. You can check it out here.

So that's Jean Segura. Even he wasn't sure how he wound up on first. He sure didn't mean to find himself back there. So he's covered.

"What's unbelievable," Smith said, "is that very few major league players know the rule or know what they're supposed to do if two guys wind up on the same base. If I were a coach, I'd say, 'Stand on that base until the umpire picks you up and tells you you're out.'"
How the heck do you score that?

This is almost a trick question. The stolen base of second -- that's easy. The rest? Good luck.
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Jean SeguraAP Photo/Morry GashAfter a mad dash that somehow brought him back to first base, Segura was unsuccessful in his second attempt at stealing second.

The part where a runner on second base finishes the next play on first base? It's not possible to score that without crashing every computer in America.

"There's no way to do that," longtime official scorer and SABR historian David Vincent said Saturday. "Not covered in the rules. A runner on second base going to first base? That's impossible."

Now obviously it's not "impossible," because it really happened. But tell that to the computer programmers of America.

"All the computer software -- none of it will handle that," Vincent said. "You don't run the bases [from] second to first. Any software that processes play-by-play won't accept that."

So because it's theoretically impossible, the official box score of this game listed Segura as having been thrown out stealing third -- even though he slid into second. Huh?

"That's because the play-by-play listed him as staying at second base [because it couldn't compute that he was actually on first]," Vincent said. "So then he had to be caught stealing third. But that never happened. So that has to get changed."

Right. But that's not all. The official box score and play-by-play also said that Braun got caught stealing second.

"That's not right either," Vincent said. "He was just out trying to advance to second base on a play being made on somebody else. So I'm pretty sure that has to get changed too."

Amazing the havoc one madcap baserunner can wreak on this sport, isn't it? But that is why we love it.
 
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