Shohei Ohtani continues to be astounding, the Braves rallied in the ninth inning, and Mitch Haniger kicked some dude in the head

The best part about this weekly vanity column is that I’m actually aware of what’s happening around baseball. All week, every week, I’m actually paying attention to baseball now. Can you imagine? There are at least 20 Major League Baseball games every week, and suddenly, I’m following most of them. It helps me keep up with the successes and failures of different teams and players.

For example, did you know the White Sox are awful?

It’s true, and the statistics bear this assertion out. The White Sox are a bad baseball team, and we’ll have to make fun of them at some point.

But, say, do you know what isn’t awful? It’s funny, but it turns out that ...

Computer, show me the Mariners Fan Experience:

Yes, yes, that will do. And you can believe the computer is referring to the guy getting a cleat to the head, or the woman reacting like Mitch Haniger is doing something rude and unfortunate. Either way, welcome to the Mariners over the past decade.

But that’s probably not fair! The Mariners are vying for the AL West title at the moment, and they’re doing it with the help of stellar plays like this:

And, hackneyed jokes about the Mariners kicking their fans in the head for decades aside, I’m absolutely in love with this play. For starters, the dude who got kicked in the head decided at the last second to stand up, as if he were thinking, “A baseball heading this way, eh? I suppose I will join the rabble and get up. ”

What I like the most about this GIF, though, is that you can’t really see the act of catching a baseball, so there’s at least a chance that future civilizations will see this and think that baseball is an elaborate choreography where participants did flips into crowds of people, trying to kick them in the head. That’s why the people were cheering at the end, see. Haniger did a rolling McTwist and stuck the kick at the end, which is good for a 95, at least. The expected high score is why the kickface fans raised their arms in triumph.

Let’s rank the four major North American pro sports in order of how likely fans are to get kicked in the head.

4. Hockey

People would die. This is almost certainly a good place for hockey to rank.

3. Football

Though there’s always the chance of a disturbed Packers player going full Enter the Dragon at Lambeau Field, I guess.

2. Basketball

A true kick to the head would be hard to achieve, but certainly not impossible. Basketball has a better chance of a player jumping from head to head, like someone leaping from stone to stone in a creek, until he or she reaches the concourse, but I’ll still give baseball a better chance of kicking someone in the head.

1. Baseball

boop

Is it good that people get kicked in the head occasionally? Probably not, but it’s nice that baseball is a sport where someone can dive into the stands and make a successful play. Basketball allows players to jump into the stands and save a play, but baseball allows for the stands-bound player to be the instant hero and collect hosannas from everyone around him.

Now let’s check in with an article from Grant Brisbee, Public Scold and Concerned Pundit, after someone gets seriously injured by a baseball player diving into the stands.

Yeah, well, that’s my brand, but until a small child is crushed under a baseball player falling from the heavens, I’ll believe that it’s a good thing for this kind of fan-foot interaction.

It’s always a good time to study the Braves, apparently, as they’ve become one of the most watchable teams in baseball. This escalated quickly, as now I find myself setting up Twitter search alerts for Ronald Acuña, Jr. GIFs.

For the last four years, it felt like the Braves were Nick Markakis and Williams Perez, spiritually and metaphorically, and now they’re the nuclear-powered home of some of the most exciting players in baseball. Oh, and Markakis is great again? Still working that part out.

On Sunday, the Braves had one of those games that seems to be more than just 1/162. It was a statement game, the kind that just might define the entire season when people look back at it for years to come. Trailing 9-4 in the bottom of the ninth, the Braves scored six runs against the Marlins to win. It looked like this:

The most delightful part has to be that the inning started with an out, which made all of the people thinking “all they need is a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a blast” sigh. I am very much one of those people when watching my team in a lopsided game in the ninth, forever waiting for the time when they somehow string together five or six runs exactly when they need to. But the first out is always a kick in the chops. It makes you feel dumb for even entertaining that notion.

According to Baseball-Reference, after all, the win probability dropped from 1 percent to 0 percent.

And then there was calamity. Our job is to look at every successful plate appearance of the bottom of the ninth and determine if it was more of a result of the Marlins screwing up or the Braves playing great baseball.

Runner #1 - Ryan Flaherty walk

There will always be some overlap between a team screwing up and another team taking advantage. Brad Ziegler screwed up by walking a batter with a five-run lead, but Flaherty had to be patient enough to accept the walk against a crafty pitcher. It’s not a binary situation where there’s only blame or praise to assign.

But as long as we’re assigning more of one than the other, good gravy, Brad Ziegler, why are you walking Ryan Flaherty with a five-run lead?

Ziegler was this close to ringing him up:

The movement of the pitch went away from the catcher and made for an impossible pitch to frame, so it was actually an easy call for the ump. but the idea was to nip the bottom part of the zone, and Ziegler almost did it. He makes a living being that crafty, after all.

He also makes a living by throwing strikes when he needs to, which reminds me of the old Mitch Hedberg bit:

In this analogy, Ziegler is like the tightrope walker of strike throwers. That is, he’s someone who has spent as much time developing this particular talent and skill as anyone else on the planet. And by walking Flaherty with a five-run lead and one out in the ninth, he fell. Down the storm drain. Where Pennywise was lurking. It was completely unacceptable.

Conclusion: Marlins screwed up.

Runner #2 - Ozzie Albies single

It was a meatball, but with a five-run lead, it’s better to throw this pitch than the four balls to Flaherty.

I’ve seen better 0-1 pitchers, but more credit goes to Albies for putting a good swing on a hittable pitch.

Conclusion: Braves doin’ good.

Runner #3 — Freddie Freeman single

Note that there was a sac fly before this, so there were two outs, and the Marlins were still leading by four.

Freeman hit the ball sharply, but Miguel Rojas made a nice play to stop it. Unfortunately, Ziegler waited a beat to break for first, and his mind was more on getting to the base than catching the ball.

He should have caught the ball.

Conclusion: Marlins screwed up.

Runner #4 — Nick Markakis single

Markakis had a 2-2 count, so it’s not like Ziegler had to come in. With a three-run lead and the tying run on deck, though, there was no sense in being too cute. He threw an 84-mph sinker right in the middle of the plate, which is a pitch that Markakis can hit, apparently.

I’m tempted to ding Ziegler for the location, but there are a lot of ways for a ball in play to be converted into an out. Considering that the game still would have been the Marlins’ to lose with a home run, I’ll credit Markakis more.

Conclusion: Braves doin’ good.

Intermission — Don Mattingly makes a pitching change

Conclusion: Marlins screwed up.

(This conclusion will apply to future games, too.)

Runner #5 — Tyler Flowers walk

Tayron Guerrero is in the game now, but he buried his control deep below the bullpen mound before coming in. He threw four easy takes out of five pitches, allowing the Braves to get the winning run to the plate.

Conclusion: Marlins screwed up. And how.

Runner #6 — Kurt Suzuki single

This was a first-pitch fastball down the middle, and Suzuki was waiting for it. While this was a great swing and at-bat, I’m going to call it a Marlins screw-up because it was an extension of the previous pitch. The reason Suzuki was sitting on a first-pitch fastball is because Guerrero was desperate to get back in the strike zone.

You can call it a tie, if you prefer. I’m going with ...

Conclusion: Marlins screwed up.

Runner #7 — Johan Carmargo walk

None of the pitches were close. One of them was a wild pitch. What an absolute mess.

Conclusion: Marlins screwed up. And how!

Runner #8 — Dansby Swanson single

The 1-1 pitch was a 98-mph sinker.

It’s hyperbolic to suggest that was one of the nastiest pitches ever thrown, but I firmly believe that if Mel Ott had seen that pitch, he would have sprouted wings and shouted, “Well, that’s it for me! I have to leave this planet” before flying to the moon. It was a completely unfair pitch, and the Marlins were one strike away.

The next pitch was a 98-mph fastball thrown RIGHT AT SWANSON’S FACE. After looking at one of the nastier pitches you’ll ever see and then contemplating your mortality on the next pitch, Swanson would have been justified in following Ott to the moon. Instead, he fouled off two tough pitches off the plate before ripping a belt-high fastball for the game winner.

Conclusion: Braves doin’ good.

It was a terrible pitch, but it was remarkable that Swanson stayed alive in that at-bat. It was also remarkable that he stayed alive, too. As in “alive.”

And that’s the story of the Braves scoring six runs in the ninth and making the Marlins feel worse about themselves. We haven’t even gotten to the quirky part, though. The last time the Braves did something like this, coming back from a six-run-or-more deficit in the ninth inning to win, 10-9? It was also May 20, eight years earlier. You might know that game by its official name of The Brooks Conrad Game (No, Not That One), and eight years later, the Braves pulled the same kind of shenanigans in the ninth to win 10-9.

Mostly, though, I’m in awe of the Marlins screwing up. Boy, howdy, did they ever screw up. It’s a rough time to be a Marlins fan. Let me check the news, and ...

Last month, the super-fan who calls himself the “Marlins Man” flew to the British Virgin Islands to find the foreign headquarters that the team is using to avoid a county courtroom in a legal fight with Miami-Dade. His hunt took him to a rented post office.

Oh.

On his Twitter feed, Slater posted a video of Leavy, in his signature orange “Marlins Man” jersey, handing out Marlins gear to unimpressed employees of the mailbox center that he said houses the address for Abernue.

Oh.

Well, it’s a rough time to be a Marlins fan, alright, but, uh, Re2pect the Process, I guess?

Full disclosure: This section was supposed to be a way for me to write about the ups and downs of Shohei Ohtani as he entertained us throughout the long, long season. That’s why I decided on the Shohei-o-meter, which was supposed to be a mostly satirical reaction to the breathless hyperbole that would almost certainly follow every one of those ups and downs.

But there were supposed to be downs.

It turns out that Ohtani might be a freakier player than we could have possibly imagined. I figured that he would be a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell at first, then work his way up to being a combination In-N-Out and Pancho Villa. He was just 24, after all. After his disappointing spring, I outlined a column in my head about how Ohtani was definitely going to underperform relative to expectations, but only because the expectations were unrealistic.

It turns out that he’s ... better than expected. He’s making adjustments like a veteran, but he’s only 24. He’s only 24! What a baseball oddity this guy is.

An absolute freak of baseball. I’ll hold off on the breathless hyperbole for now, but here’s what he looks like as a pitcher:

As a hitter, he was just 3-for-15, but one of those hits was a dinger. And that’s not even the most impressive part.

He’s just out here hitting the Mickey Mantle home run, except in real life, and not just in the overactive imagination of a newspaper writer who wants to sell papers. The Shohei-o-meter remains stuck at half Tim Lincecum in his prime and half Bryce Harper, which seems good.

Is that good? That seems good.

The headline on MLB.com: “Bartolo withstands liner off gut.” It’s a very good headline, and it made me click so fast, I dented my computer.

This was almost the “Let us study this baseball thing,” but there’s nothing to study. Baseball hits belly, baseball falls down. It’s basically like this ...

... with minor modifications. The baseball hit the belly, and it hurt the baseball more. That’s almost all the studying that is necessary.

Almost all. For one, there are the bemused faces Colon made when he wasn’t hurt and realized he was going to delight the internet yet again.

He knew. He knew right away.

And there’s also the note that the play happened in one of those stupid Facebook games while the announcers were talking to the manager. Nobody likes in-game interviews. They’re a hassle for the production team. The managers hate them. The announcers would rather be calling the game. The viewers are indifferent, at best, but mostly against them. It’s impossible to come to a consensus on anything in this wacky world, but he we have one: In-game interviews are sewage, and nobody knows why they exist.

I’m salty because we were robbed of a “OFF BARTOLO’S BELLY” call that would have stood the test of time. Instead, we got, “So, manager, are your baseball men fixin’ to give 110 percent today?” or some variation thereof.

Death to the in-game interview.

Long live Bartolo Colon’s fifth or sixth renaissance.

Is this a violation of the unwritten rules? Will Buck Showalter get a fastball thrown at his butt the next time he’s walking through the clubhouse?

Yes, it’s a violation. But it’s not that egregious. Consider the spectrum, here:

Reaching the pitcher before the batter touches first base

Under the latest collective bargaining agreement, the pitcher would be forced into retirement if this happened, so you won’t see it very often.

Reaching the pitcher before the batter touches second base

Very much against the unwritten rules, and it would take a lot of hustle for the manager to get there before the runner rounds second. It would definitely be a message.

Reaching the pitcher before the batter touches third base

This is the most offensive, I think, because it maximizes the chances of the pitcher colliding with the hitter circling the bases. Or having to pause for the hitter. Or the hitter having to pause for the pitcher. Either way, it would be incredibly awkward, and this is to be done only to pitchers who are jerks.

Reaching the pitcher before the batter touches home

At least wait until you’re not cutting in front of the runner. Sheesh. On a scale of 1-to-10, I give this an 8, and Showalter should probably apologize.

On the other hand, if I were in charge of the Orioles’ rotation for the last couple years, this would probably be the tamest reaction I would have, so maybe we should back off.

There’s a time to giggle at the silly baseball pictures, and then there’s a time to appreciate a perfect, heartfelt picture of a human being. This is Stephen Piscotty after homering in his first game back from bereavement leave, where he mourned his mother’s passing.

I can’t look at this picture for more than three seconds before tearing up. That’s the sign of a powerful picture, alright.

The entire starting rotation for the White Sox has combined for 43 starts, a 7-20 record, and a 5.76 ERA this year, which means they’re pitching as if they were a very bad pitcher from the 1800s pitchers. Their rotation has formed an Awful Voltron, and they’re collectively, uh, Kid Rorko, who is 5’7”, suffering from malnutrition, and pitching inning after inning after inning because that’s just what happens back in 1888. It’s not good.

The White Sox are 13-30, which means they’re on pace for 50 wins, but to be fair, they’ve won three out of their last four games, which included a four-game series win against the Rangers. So why am I picking on them now?

Because I needed an excuse to fit this video in somewhere:

I hold no ill feelings toward the White Sox, but you don’t need them to find this video really, really funny. I used to get mad at Hawk Harrelson being a homer, but now I’m impressed by his commitment to the bit. That is the voice of a man who wasted three or more hours of his life and is gazing into the abyss, which is forever creeping closer and closer and closer.

If you find a video compilation of White Sox walk-off wins called by Hawk, please email me at the usual address. Thank you.

McGwire
26 AB this week
155 AB for the season

8 HR this week
24 for the season

.455/.571/1.409 this week
.323/.493/.839 for the season

Sosa
24 AB this week
192 AB for the season

1 HR this week
9 HR for the season

.292/.357/.458 this week
.333/.409/.521 for the season

McGwire entered the week with a .301 batting average, a .481 on-base percentage, and a .736 slugging percentage. He raised all of them.

This was the week where the entire continent figured that something was up. McGwire had a three-homer game against the Phillies, and the chase was absolutely on. He was on pace for 89 home runs, and it might have been the only acceptable time to use on-pace stats in baseball history. Eighty-nine home runs! Even a slump would allow him to topple Maris.

I can’t figure out when “Mark McGwire chasing Maris” becomes the McGwire-Sosa experience, though. Every week, I keep waiting, but every week, Sosa is in the middle of a very pleasant season, no more.

This is like a good horror movie, in other words. The cello is making creepy noises. The protagonist walks slowly toward the closet door. Slowly ... slowly ... slowly ... and eventually there will be a multitude of dingers unleashed.

Soon. Just not yet. Twenty years ago, Sammy Sosa was just another guy in the middle of a nice season.

In which we have a debate about the rules of order. When a simple spoonerism doesn’t work perfectly, it’s common practice to take the second letter along for the ride, too. For example, Lloyd Moseby wouldn’t be “Mloyd Loseby,” but rather “Moyd Lloseby.” It’s easier this way, and it expands the sheer number of workable spoonerisms.

We run into trouble with Rusty Greer, though. An astute e-mailer shared the following:

In telling my wife about your “Spoonerism of the week” segment, we came up with this:

Gusty Rreer

When the laughing died down after a few minutes, one of us said it again - and more laughter happened. Wine may have been involved.

After giggling myself for a few minutes, I was forced to reckon with the idea that Gusty Rreer isn’t canon. It should be Grusty Reer, which is also great, but lacks the certain elan of a Gusty Rreer*.

* because of farts

On the other hand, Grusty Reer seems like it could be a medical condition. Feels like something that a sailor would get after trying to cross the Atlanta without vitamin C.

But I think I’ll allow Gusty Rreer because it makes me giggle just ever-so-slightly more. Good old Gusty; he sure made life hell for opposing catchers. Bless him.