Back on Oct. 8, 2012, the St. Louis Cardinals hosted a playoff game against the Washington Nationals. In this game, Carlos Beltran hit a home run in the sixth inning to push the Cardinals’ lead to 8-3.
Beltran trots, Harper flops, Cards up 8-4
Why are you reading this? Because here’s a piece of trivia: That’s the same Nationals/Cardinals game that is still going on this very minute. I’m assuming it’s Oct. 14, 2023, and we have flying cars now. One of these days, I’ll go outside and ride in one.
Which is all an elaborate way of saying, damn, this game is taking forever.
But it’s not without its finer points, though. With a runner on first and no outs, Bryce Harper doubled, giving the Nationals a little hope. And Matt Holliday played a game-within-a-game with Bryce Harper: a game of rookie/veteran.
Rookies take unnecessary risks and go from second to third when they don’t need to.
Veterans play rope-a-dope and bounce their throws to the cutoff man, hoping to goad overly aggressive rookies into making a mistake.
Now that’s a wily veteran move. Also: lol. Harper was gunned out on a weird and unfortunate quasi-double play, and the rally died. This was what Raul Ibanez was trying to do all along, everybody.
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