Ozzie Albies might be the funnest player in baseball, more players should fall down on the bases, and fewer players should barf on the mound

It turns out that the Astros can also hit, and the rest of the season has been canceled. Sorry about that. And if that’s not enough, the Dodgers are hot again, and we can all see where this is heading. As much as we enjoy the idea of the Brewers against the Mariners in the World Series because variety is the spice of life, you know that we’re probably getting Cavs-Warriors again, so to speak.

That’s okay. I don’t think the world is ready for Brewers-Mariners. It would be selfish of us to expect “Mitch Haniger vs. Jhoulys Chacin” in a little FOX “Keys to the Game” graphic, even if it is a beautiful dream.

Nope. You get Astros and Dodgers again. Hope you like hearing about things Justin Verlander has done in previous offseasons.

Whatever, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This is the weekly look back at the baseball that was, and as always, we start with an invocation that ...

Not because of this play, specifically, and ...

... not because it led to the creation of this GIF of a play that shouldn’t exist on a baseball field, complete with an umpire startled that there is a center fielder running at him ...

... but because it’s as good of a jumping point as any to talk about Ozzie Albies, who just might be the funnest baseball player alive.

Note that this isn’t to be confused with other superlatives.

The best baseball player alive is the player who helps his team win more baseball games than anyone else, and in this case, we know that’s Willie Mays But Somehow Boring. Not boring as a player, but boring as a FarmersOnly match who mentions cumulonimbus clouds before the appetizers arrive.

The most exciting baseball player is the guy who can hit a ball 500 feet or steal home or charge the mound or bite an umpire’s nose off in an argument or do something worth watching almost every day. I would argue that this used to be Yasiel Puig, but it’s probably Jose Altuve or Mookie Betts or Aaron Judge now. We can have a weeklong argument about the most exciting player without reaching a consensus.

No, we’re here to talk about the funnest baseball player, which is defined as the player who fills you with the childlike spirit of baseball. This player is the human embodiment of playing Rundown* on a Slip ‘N Slide. And it’s my assertion that the current champion just might be Ozzie Albies.

* I have also heard “Baserunner” and “Pickle” as names for this game, but they were used mostly by weirdo cousins from different countries, like Illinois.

It’s a tough call. Either Andrew McCutchen or Adrian Beltre used to be the winner, and they’re still contagiously fun, but at some point they passed their torch to Francisco Lindor, and it’s not right to take it from him in his fun-loving prime. But no player is making me smile more than Albies right now. His talent, his hustle, his awareness, and, most importantly, his obvious enjoyment of this weird sport. It is not in doubt that he agrees that baseball is good, actually.

You can see this when he hits a grand slam.

You can see it when he’s within 15 feet of Ronald Acuña, Jr.

And you can even see it when he’s asked by the team to do some boring, paint-by-numbers promo shoot.

No player looks like he’s having more fun than Albies, which makes him the funnest player. Or the most fun. Can’t believe I haven’t settled on one over the last few decades. Either one is applicable to Albies, though, even if his on-base percentage is under .300 and he’s hitting .225/.266/.396 since the start of May. When he does something good, he shares the feeling of what it’s like to do something good on a baseball field. As someone whose career stalled out in high school because of “lack of talent,” I need players like Albies. They allow me to live my dreams vicariously through them.

I’d like to think that if I were a baseball player, I’d be so excited and thrilled all the time about it. Then again, I’m a baseball writer, and I’m so stressed out about it, I can’t open emails, so I’d probably be a grump who stopped signing for kids after five seconds.

But I’d like to think I’d be an Ozzie. Boy, does it look like he’s having fun out there.

There needs to be more of this in baseball:

There needs to be more called bullshit from the dugout. This is something that Florida will do from time to time.

It’s incredibly Bush League. And you know what kind of sport they play in the Bush Leagues? Super fun baseball. A sport where players fall down to let their teammates score, that’s what kind of sport.

Let the record show that this most recent steal of home was with two outs. With two outs, the coach had a baserunner trip in the middle of the base path. I know it’s-so-crazy-it-just-might-work is a cliché, but it was invented for plays like this.

However, it’s an open question whether it would work in the majors. Like the Stanford Swing or the read-option in football, there’s a sense that, yeah, it might work against a certainly level of play, but not in the bigs.

My suggestion is this: Maybe try it and see?

There is room for more hidden-ball tricks in baseball. There is room for a team to try the Skunk in the Outfield. I am absolutely into the idea of a pitcher faking a pickoff throw to first, the first baseman scrambling down the line to chase the ghost ball, and the pitcher running toward the confused runner to steal an out.

And I’m very much into a runner falling down and screaming, “Aieeee! For I have fallen and will surely be tagged out!” as another runner scrambles home.

Will it happen in the majors? Nah. Seems like a play that would make another manager plunk a batter. The level of play is definitely at the highest level in Major League Baseball, but that means that people are stuffier and less fun.

Rob Manfred is considering making the shift illegal because that will, in some roundabout way, make kids like the game incrementally more? I say, start with more falling down in baseball and work backward from there. Look at how much fun that play was.

We’re big on sports fun here at SB Nation.

Yeah, so Shohei was broken, and my brain’s defense is to pretend that he was never fun in the first place. Really, what was the big deal about a guy who could hit monster home runs regularly, run like Kenny Lofton, and throw 99 mph with a devastating splitter? He can’t do it all in the same game, so big deal. Harrumph. Harrumph.

We’ll just shift this portion of the column over to the best player in baseball, Mike Trout, who is somehow getting better, even though that’s not supposed to happen.

We’ve already established that Trout is the best player in Angels history, even though he doesn’t turn 27 until August. He passed Harmon Killebrew in WAR over the weekend, and he should pass Dave Winfield and Willie McCovey before the year is over. But we don’t need to focus on historical nuggets to appreciate him in this space. We can only appreciate what he did in the previous week.

Stuff like this:

That was the first time anyone had consecutive multi-homer games at Safeco Field, where [checks] Trout does not play his home games. This is someone coming over, using my grill, and making better hamburgers than me. It’s against some sort of code. Unwritten rules, if you will.

He was also brilliant in the field, taking away extra bases from Nelson Cruz in the same series that he was smashing dingers.

And, of course, the Angels lost all of these games, which is something of a metaphor. Remember this series when some yokel argues that Trout isn’t that good because the Angels can’t even make the postseason. He’s trying, y’all.

Is he as exciting as a guy who hits and pitches? Yeah. That’s safe to say, but we’re just used to him, even though we shouldn’t be. Let’s take some time out of our busy schedules and appreciate him every Monday, so that ...

Hmmmmmmm. It would appear that this is someone else’s beat. That’s okay. I’ll just have Ted Berg arrested.

Or maybe I’ll still stick with the weekly look at what Ohtani is doing, even if he’s not doing anything on the field.

dammit, this is so depressing

The absolute best part of this clip is that the umpire doesn’t seem remotely apologetic. He has to know that he just clobbered someone in the head. You don’t not feel that, and he wasn’t tripping over himself to apologize, like almost any other human being would in that situation.

Listen, when Doug calls a strikeout, get out of the way of Doug. That’s all I’m saying, bro.

I guess when you put it like that ...

Do the Pirates win this game if Joe Musgrove doesn’t hit somebody in the butt with a baseball? Probably. The odds are good that Chris Owings is going to make an out — that any hitter is going to make an out in any plate appearance — and that out would have prevented the Diamondbacks from scoring five runs, tying the game, and eventually winning.

“That’s how the game is played,” Musgrove said of retaliating. “You’re willing to go out and hit somebody, you’ve got to be willing to deal with might come with that, putting the leadoff runner on base, especially late in the game like that. You don’t want to start a rally.”

Wait, run that last part by me again ...

You don’t want to start a rally.

But that’s exactly what you did.

Listen, I know how to wash a car. It’s with water from a hose and a moldering corpse of a possum found on the side of the road instead of a sponge. You’ve got to be willing to deal with what might come with that, like smearing messy, viscous possum chunks everywhere, just getting it all over the damned place. You don’t want to make your car dirtier.

As far as I can tell, the HBP was in retaliation for ... other HBPs, which is always the dumbest unwritten rule to enforce. There isn’t a pitcher alive who is thinking, “I didn’t want to hit anybody with a pitch, considering that would be an example of me being bad at my job, but now that I know their guy will enact frontier justice on one of my teammates? Boy, I really don’t want to be bad at my job now.” Nothing is solved. All that happened is some dude got a baseball to the butt.

That and the Pirates lost.

Well, this humiliating episode will certainly change the way things are done. At last, we’ve seen the very last of the unwritten rules being enforced by intentional HBPs.

Maybe just like the intentional walk rule has changed, there could be a way to streamline the whole process of retaliation.

STEP ONE: The dugout signals to the umpire that they would like to retaliate for the violation of an unwritten rule.

STEP TWO: The umpire gives the batter one quick and forceful spank. He doesn’t have to scream, “Go on! Git!” or anything, though that is recommended, and the batter will realize the transgression he (or his team) committed.

STEP THREE: That’s it. There’s no need for further retaliation, unless you want the umpire to spank someone else. But asking for two spanks gets you thrown out of the game, so be careful.

Yet again, I must ask you for your vote in the commissioner election. The automatic retaliation will save time and prevent injuries. Think about it.

Here, I’ll start:

Look, your foot speed isn’t going to allow you to catch your prey, and you aren’t able to digest the poisonous mushrooms that are plentiful in this region. Your best chance is to throw this white sphere in such a way that other people will give you money to exchange for foodstuffs. Once you’re well fed, you can pass your DNA along and create a strong lineage. Now go get ‘em.

Aw, that’s nice. Let’s see what the caption is on the video.

You have to love a manager who exhibits concern for his players. That’s how you get control of the clubhouse.

Now let’s just check on the video itself and see just what is going on here.

NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo. Don’t click on that, actually. Just look at Craig Counsell’s smile and the smile of Adam Houser in that thumbnail and know that everything turned out alright.

For my money, though, the best part is just how interested Houser was in the growth of a beautiful young vomit tree.

A little sun, a little water, a little love, and that baby is going to be a mighty vomit oak in no time. Adam is proud of his sturdy, bilious child, and I don’t blame him.

Anyway, don’t click on that video.

There are way too many pictures to choose from this week. We won’t even get to the nonchalance of a world-class athlete casually scaling a 10-foot fence to be disappointed, and nor will we get to the idea that Tim Anderson is an unlucky person with one very long thumb that is forever encased inside his skull.

No, we’ll have to ignore those and focus on these two. Here’s Alex Gordon, fresh from building a grain silo, blowing a bubble and being happy that he’s sliding:

I suppose I’ve never tried to blow a bubble while playing sports, so I could be overestimating just how difficult it is. But it sure seems like you have to be a next-level gum chewer to unconsciously blow a bubble while you’re diving into a dirt path.

Really, what I want to do is show this picture to someone who has never seen a baseball game and knows nothing about the sport. Then I want that person to guess at the rules of the sport. Go on, take a few thousand words and guess. There are no wrong answers! It’s a billion-dollar industry, and that’s a picture of something that happens in it. Now guess.

While that picture is a hoot, it’s at least tied with this one:

The beauty of the simple photograph is that you get to fill in the parts of the story that are unknown to you. Did Yangervis Solarte do this galloping tribute to the Horse Spirit above the entire time he rounded the bases? Probably, yeah, and he’ll do it again.

Whatever he was doing, it was captured perfectly. Either he’s playing volleyball with a delicate balloon or celebrating something happy in baseball, and both are fine with me.

He could be a member of the Queen’s Guard with that kind of focus, he could. Except it’s all fun and games until you realize that some poor clubbie is going to be responsible for washing that uniform.

McGwire
20 AB this week
227 AB for the season

2 HR this week
33 HR for the season

.300/.500/.600 this week
.313/.489/.797 for the season

Sosa
30 AB this week
283 AB for the season

9 HR this week
30 HR for the season

.433/.452/1.333 this week
.339/.403/.696 for the season

Oh. Hello, Sammy.

If you’re following along with the week-by-week progress of the 20-year-old home run chase, you can appreciate the idea that Sosa hit 17 home runs from June 1 to June 21. Sandy Koufax never even hit 17 home runs in his career, and he’s supposed to be one of the best players ever!

But, no, seriously, Rod Carew never hit 17 home runs in a season. Sosa did it in three weeks. It was a full Derek Jeter season’s worth of home runs in three weeks. McGwire started like a man on an island alone, and suddenly he had company.

I promise you, the 1998 season was wild. So entertaining. And these last two weeks are when it all started to crystallize.

I got nothing.

I looked through the rosters of the eight teams in the College World Series, expecting there to be a great spoonerism, but they couldn’t compete with the actual names in the tournament.

Cody Farhat becomes Fody Carhat, which is fun to say and a fine spoonerism. But is it better than Zebulon Vermillion? No, and that’s an actual name. No tricks needed for that majesty.

Cody Scroggins becomes Scrody Coggins, and I could say that name all day. Except this is also the tournament with Jax Biggers, who hits jumbo dingers, so your spoonerism is invalid.

So when it comes to someone like Nick Long, does it really matter what the spoonerism is? It can’t compete with the actual name of Rowdey Jordan, which is a name that will go atop a resume one day.

Lick Nong, though.

Okay, that’s a pretty good one.

Lick Nong.

Good, good, glad we’re in agreement. We’ll see you next week.