Watch: MLB team channels '3 Stooges,' completely forgets how to catch ball
One of the oldest tricks in the sports movie book is the montage where a baseball team is established as being terrible through a series of comical errors that serve the dual purpose of setting up their improvement during the film and getting moviegoers to act like a Little League parent and root for them to get better.
Which, in past years, would have made the Chicago Cubs a perfect candidate for a real-life version of this.
Unfortunately, the Cubs aren’t “lovable losers” anymore, not since the 2016 World Series, which makes what happened to them Sunday less “Major League” and more “Shaqtin’ A Fool: Baseball Edition.”
Granted, the Reds’ Billy Hamilton is pretty good at making fools out of professionals, but this sequence … well, just watch it for youself.
YOU BLEW IT! pic.twitter.com/hb4ZYQ4daQ
— MLB (@MLB) July 8, 2018
Hamilton steals second, where the throw from the plate went into center field for an error on catcher Willson Contreras; Hamilton was on his way to third.
This in itself isn’t too unusual; putting a throw on point, especially against a guy like Hamilton who has 99 speed in video game terms, is fiendishly difficult.
What is unusual is center fielder Albert Almora Jr. then failing to field the ball; he knocked it several feet away from himself like a kid banished to the outfield who suddenly finds himself involved in the defense rather than watching a butterfly or picking dandelions.
Hamilton, figuring “go big or go home,” decided to go big by going for home.
Almora, recovering his wits, fired a great throw that should’ve had Hamilton dead to rights and out by a mile.
Except that Contreras, who started the whole mess by throwing the ball into center field in the first place, then failed to catch the ball. Hamilton was safe, and the Reds had a 4-3 lead.
You had one job, Willson. It’s right there in the name of your position. You’re a catcher. Catch the ball.
The baseball box score was invented by Henry Chadwick, an Englishman by birth, a nation well-known for comic understatement.
And considering this one went into the scorer’s book as “Hamilton scored on throwing error by catcher Contreras” …. well, somewhere in sports heaven, Chadwick’s having a jolly good laugh about it, because that is the single most British way to describe that sequence.
There was, however, some silver lining for the Cubs in all this.
In the 10th inning, Contreras led off with a walk, took second on a wild pitch, and took third when Joey Votto committed an error with one out that might, under better circumstances, either set up the end of the inning or at the very least left first base open.
Then, because one good screw-up deserves another, Jackson Stephens issued his third walk of the inning to David Bote and Contreras crossed the plate for the winning run.
The game ended 6-5, and the stolen base became an amusing footnote rather than the play that cost the Cubs an ugly game.
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