NEWSLETTER
Thanks to yesterday’s off-day and today’s game being of the late-night variety, we’re having to wait a very long time between games.
For that reason, I very much appreciated today’s random flashback from the Daily Random Cub account, which took me back to one of my favorite regular season moments in recent-ish memory:
We’ll ignore what ultimately wound up happening to those 2009 Cubs, and thus avoid interrogating whether this catch actually “meant” anything, and will instead just focus on how thrilling it was in the moment. Sunday Night Baseball (back when that was actually a meaningful thing), division rivals early in the year, in the middle of a tense moment of a could-soon-be-very-tight game. And Prince Fielder, already a young star, crushes one that looks like a sure game-tying grand slam.
But Reed Johnson, ever the solid defender in his signature high socks, goes well over the wall to snag it and convert a grand slam into a mostly-harmless sac fly.
The catch was so good and so unexpected that you could see it all over Prince Fielders face as he jogged to first base. “Wait. Wait. Did he seriously just catch that? Are we sure?” And then the gentlemanly tip of the cap for the robbery.
A few stray fun facts about the robbery.
Although Johnson was always a solid defender, the metrics did trail off a bit in his 30s (he played until he was 38). Indeed, that 2009 season, when he was 32, was the only post-age-30 season where Johnson posted a positive DRS number in his time in outfield. That particular play surely helped!
Famously, Prince Fielder finished his career with 319 home runs, exactly tied with his dad, Cecil. Just one of those crazy can’t-predict-baseball things everyone knows and thinks is wild. But now thinking about the Johnson robbery, what if he’d missed? Then Fielder The Younger finishes his career with 320 homers, and has bragging rights over his pops, rather than a crazy coincidence of numbers!
If you didn’t listen with sound to hear the crowd reactions, go back and do it. While doing so, you’ll hear the other fun thing: at second base at the time was Craig Counsell, future Brewers manager and current Cubs manager, tagging up to go to third base. On a play like that, it’s pretty darn smart to stay close to the bag at second. A catch is highly unlikely, but even if it’s not caught, you figure you can probably still score from standing on second if that ball gets down. And since the catch was improbably made, at least he got to move up 90 feet. It didn’t matter in the final score, but it did matter that inning, since Counsell scored when the next batter grounded out.
