Kurt Suzuki needed to move fast. He’d been on first base with two outs, and there was a throwing error on Jordan Schafer’s infield single that allowed him to go all the way from first to third. But it didn’t quite go far enough to allow Schafer to get to second. This meant his goal was clear: he had to get home before Schafer got caught in his rundown.
Kurt Suzuki slides, collapses, ends up face-first on ground with only himself to blame
Slides are supposed to be graceful and help you to avoid tags. This one ends up with a face in the dirt and did not avoid any tag.
It did not go well (via @cjzero).
Schafer got tagged as he began his slide, and then the slide itself looked kinda like one of those car wrecks where the car keeps rolling and disintegrating long after human decency put a stop to its horrific, screeching slide. He flails and sputters, and eventually ends up with his hands on home plate ... which didn’t matter, because the inning was already over.
Perhaps if Suzuki had decided to run through the plate instead of sliding, he would’ve made it safely. But we are so glad he did not, because then we wouldn’t have seen this.
Ended up better than this, at least.
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