reds phillies thursday night

if you feign any sort of interest in baseball at all and you have 14 minutes on your hands, i'd encourage you to check out the condensed game of reds phillies from last night.

not to mention a botched suicide squeeze, blown save, and a walkoff homerun, this game had three plays in particular happened in this game that you might see once a season, . let alone in the same game. the first of the three is in the bottom of the third:

victorino hits a hard ground ball to 1st baseman, who knocks the ball down but into foul territory, who flips to pitcher covering only to have his glove knocked off his hand by the oncoming runner and the ball spills away. the runner starts for second, but thinks better of it, and is dead to rights, but only the pitcher can't catch the flip for the second time from the first baseman, because he doesn't have a glove. and jimi rollins scores and johnny cueto's ego is bruised, awesome.


the second is in the top of the 8th, w/ runners on 1st and 2nd and 2 outs, brandon phillips strikes out, has time to take off his helmet and set his bat on home plate before he realizes he should run to first base. meanwhile the pitcher has started for the ball in a freakout, allowing the alert runner to come all the way around from 2nd to score.

but the best and most unheralded might be in the bottom of the seventh. with jayson werth (who i've come to hate) on first, somebody hits a little flare towards phillips. instead of catching the ball in the air, he lets it drop at his feet and throws to first to eliminate the force. and werth is sitting there inches off the base with his thumb up his ass. beautiful. in all my years at second base i never got to do this and always wanted to. the only other player i've seen do it was robbie alomar back in the early nineties when the orioles were respectable.

oh, and why do they play a third place game? why not a 5th place game? or a 7th place game? what about horse socks?