Just before the 2017 season, Major League Baseball and the players union came together on an agreement that ended the four-pitch intentional walk. Instead of wasting the time to lob four balls to your catcher’s outstretched arm, the thinking went, we’ll just create a signal which informs the umpire to immediately send the batter on his way to first.
And while it wasn’t met with much love-lost, it’s a shame we won’t ever get to see the YIPS totally ruin someone’s night quite like this ever again:
It all goes down on the second batter of the clip, but you can see the suspense building during the first at-bat, right? It’s like you can feel it! And that poor pitcher! All he had to do was play the same game of catch he probably has throughout his entire life … but he just can’t get it done.
In fact, if I’m seeing this right, it looks like he threw the ball *behind* the batter … which, yikes. The winning run eventually comes into score, and he’ll be reliving this moment every night before he goes to bed for the rest of his life.