Baseball is the best sport on Earth.
I can say that with confidence and without blinking. Well, not like in public. In public, people would call me crazy, but we know the only real crazies are soccer fans – those weirdos. It’s like, score more often, ya know?
But despite how much love I have for the sport of baseball, I must say it can be a devastatingly cruel game. Things that are supposed to happen never do, and the impossible seems to happen just about every single day. Enter the TLU Bulldogs.
When the 9th inning began last Saturday afternoon, the Bulldogs carried a 9-5 lead into the inning. All TLU pitcher Jacob Wieder had to do was record the final three outs of the game without giving up four runs. Unfortunately, Schreiner University came back and brought the game within one run (9-8, TLU) on a nice rally culminating in a wild pitch.
But it was the next wild pitch, however, that changed everything.
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With the tying run on third, Wieder let go of another wild pitch that went all the way to the backstop. Normally, this would have provided plenty of time for the runner on third to score, but you know baseball … it’s cruel:
That ball didn’t just provide a nice bounce off the backstop; it was a perfectly-placed, perfectly-time, tiny little baseball miracle (or disaster, depending on your perspective). Obviously, we’ve seen balls bounce back towards the plate plenty of times, but never have I seen it bounce over the catcher and directly into the pitcher’s mitt precisely as the runner was running by. Absolutely amazing.
Wieder was able to retire the next batter on a fly ball to right field, and the game was over.
This damn game, man.
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