Mound Visits: Peak Puig and 2 Bud Lights

Welcome to Mound Visits, your weekly recap of the best things you might have missed in baseball every week. This week brings us Matt Carpenter’s daughter making salsa, Yasiel Puig trying to steal home, and Corey Kluber’s beard going to the great barbershop in the sky.

Have a favorite baseball moment from the week? Tweet it at me, and I’ll include it in next week’s column.

One of the most standard features of any sports broadcast is B-roll of whatever city the game happens to be in. Local channels do it, national channels do it, everyone does it. When CSN Philadelphia traveled to Toronto for a series against the Blue Jays this week, they went out and shot some B-roll outside the CN Tower.

And promptly got a shot of a naked dude just hanging out in his chair, tanning, in their panning shot. Whoops!

The only good news (besides how funny it is for all of us to see) is that his legs were crossed. He’s a polite, classy naked dude. Although for a second you definitely thought when he re-appeared on the other side of the on-screen graphic that his legs would be uncrossed right?

Giancarlo Stanton hit his 300th home run on Thursday night, and the fan who caught it (expectedly) got a whole bunch of cool stuff from the Yankees in exchange for the ball. A tour, a meet and great, all the usual stuff a team offers.

Plus, apparently, two Bud Lights. Yep, on top of the field tour and free tickets, this guy just wanted a couple of beers. Bud Lights specifically. He knew exactly what he wanted a he got it.

Fun fact, this is everyone who lives in Iowa in one place.

Matt Carpenter has been raking all season, hitting .274/.387/.577 with a 159 OPS+ and 34 home runs. He’s surpassed his best dingers season by six already and the season isn’t even over. He credits his success to his salsa, which he calls “Magic Salsa” and makes with vegetables planted in his garden by Adam Wainwright.

Based on a new Instagram post this week, Carpenter isn’t the only one with the magic salsa touch in the family.

How adorable is that “it’s gotta be the salsa”? If part of the key to his offense this year is that his daughter has been helping out in the kitchen, then more major leaguers should think about getting their toddlers in the kitchen for bonding time — and secret recipe crafting.

This bat dog has one job, and it’s to go pick up bats from home plate. This guy dropped his bat, so legally it belongs to the bat dog now. That’s how laws work. Don’t ask questions.

As soon as that bat hit the dirt, bat dog gets it. Find a new bat, buddy. There are plenty of them around. But the dog knows his job and he’s just trying to do it. Good bat dog.

Listen, I don’t like it any more than you do. But we’re here. And they did a good thing. So we’re going to include it. Miami announced that next year they’ll encourage fans to bring instruments and flags to the field and celebrate the team in a section they will be calling Communidad 305.

It’s very soccer of them, and, honestly, it’s a stellar idea. Part of the new owners’ whole shtick was that they were going to include the community and the fans’ heritage and at the time it seemed like empty promises, as every other plan did as well. But they’re making strides and not only will this go a long way towards (hopefully) involving more fans, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun too.

Indians ace Corey Kluber bet his wife he wouldn’t shave until the season was over, and hadn’t shaved since Christmas until this week. But his wife Amanda finally thought things had gone too far and called off the bet, and he immediately went to get his razor.

The full Klubeard didn’t look that nasty when he was rocking it on the field, but now that half of it is gone and you can see the proportions of his actually face to beard ... it’s probably good he finally chopped it off.

Mariners manager Scott Servais lost a bet of his own this week when Edwin Diaz notched his 50th save of the season. The pair made the bet back in the early parts of the season, when Diaz’s remarkable year wasn’t close to guaranteed, so Servais had to get Diaz’s signature hair lines shaved into the side of his head too.

The best part is that Diaz flew his own barber from Tacoma to San Diego to do the honors. Who doesn’t love a last minute trip to sunny San Diego to help your friend and loyal customer celebrate his 50th save and winning a fun bet?

If there were ever a sequence of events that you could describe as Peak Puig and fully, wholeheartedly mean it, this week gave it to us. First, Puig ate it while sliding into third on a triple. And because it’s Yasiel Puig, he had his tongue out as he did it.

This is art.

Then, he tried to steal home and failed. One of the reasons he failed? Because Dodgers fans gave the Rangers a heads up! Incredible.

The Twins pulled off a four-outfielder shift against Cleveland slugger Jose Ramirez, and robbed him of a double.

The best part of it was Ramirez’s reaction when he saw what Minnesota was doing. This is the look you give when your friend walks into a party with your ex and you can’t process what your eyes are seeing.