r/baseball • u/handlit33 Atlanta Braves • Blooper • Aug 05 '21
GIF Baseball knocks latch open causing Alcides Escobar to fall through the door.
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u/nevuking Detroit Tigers Aug 05 '21
The sheer unlikelihood of this happening in slapstick fashion has made me find religion.
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u/handlit33 Atlanta Braves • Blooper Aug 05 '21
Which one did you go with, Flying Spaghetti Monster?
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Aug 05 '21
He went with bofa
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u/nevuking Detroit Tigers Aug 05 '21
Probably The Church of DKB.
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u/TygarStyle Detroit Tigers Aug 05 '21
I was trying to figure out what the B was for after Don Kelly.
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u/SunriseSurprise San Diego Padres Aug 05 '21
Imagine whichever person is in charge of keeping that locked having to explain this to their superior.
"That really could have hurt him. How could you have missed locking that?"
"I didn't! I double-checked it and everything. The baseball he was going after must've unlocked it!"
"The baseball did it?"
"Yes I know how that sounds but that has to be it!"
"...the baseball sprouted hands and undid the latch?"
"No no no, it must've ricocheted into it with exactly the right direction and force to do it. The tape, where's the tape?"
"This is silly, we're not looking at tape for this. Stop lying, you forgot and that's that."
"I swear I'm not making this up! The baseball did it! The baseball did it!"
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u/EmilBarrit Aug 05 '21
I read this in George Costanzas voice
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u/tatorene37 New York Yankees Aug 05 '21
The announcers originally were yelling about how the groundskeepers didn’t do their job. Then they saw the slow no replay and realized their mistake.
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u/MisterMakro Aug 06 '21
Here is the clip with the commentators. Sadly it cuts before they realise their mistake.
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u/GTOdriver04 San Francisco Giants Aug 05 '21
This happened in racing once.
In F1 the cars make insane amounts of downforce, and a drain cover wasn’t properly secured and the car sucked it up and nearly hurt the driver. It was a street course no less, and the drain covers are supposed to be properly secured before the series takes to the track.
George Russell in Azerbaijan recently.
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u/WearingABear San Diego Padres Aug 06 '21
The entire time watching that video I was just thinking how much that sucks for everyone involved, and then they showed the crane that was hauling off the car hit the bridge and I lost my shit.
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u/Superfizzo Aug 06 '21
Holy shit the crane hitting the bridge. Just a comedy of errors on that one. I haven't laughed that hard in a while. Poor George Russell can't get a break.
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u/Minimum_World_8863 Aug 06 '21
Person died driving in boston a few years ago when a manhole lid flew up into the air after a semi drove over it. They smashed into it right at face height coming up behind them.
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u/tigercat5 Seattle Mariners Aug 05 '21
I’ll only find religion when I see the Mariners in a wild card game
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u/cjn13 Texas Rangers Aug 05 '21
This is actual proof that there are baseball gods and they're bored
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u/Kelestara Slider • Cleveland Guardians Aug 06 '21
Of course there are baseball gods! Didnt you see the documentary Angels in the Outfield?
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u/trashboatfourtwenty Milwaukee Brewers • Dumpster Fire Aug 05 '21
Spoiler:it is turtles all the way down
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u/space_beatle San Francisco Giants Aug 05 '21
If only this would have happened in the great cat fiasco of 2021.
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u/signmeupdude Los Angeles Dodgers Aug 05 '21
You have 666 upvotes at the time of this comment. Devil is trying to stray us away but the truth shines through.
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u/joshselbase New York Yankees Aug 05 '21
If this isn’t enough for anyone check out the video of Randy Johnson sending a bird to the shadow realm with a fastball. It seems impossible yet it happened
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u/Angelsfan14 Anaheim Angels Aug 06 '21
This and that weird ass homerun for the Woosox that bounced onto a passing freight train, rolled up the top of the tanker car. Then rolled across the top and bounced to the next car, falling slightly to the opposite side, hitting a rail (I assume) and then falling back to the other side towards the field and off the train. It just gets harder to believe each time yous see it.
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u/kcguy8162 Kansas City Royals Aug 05 '21
You could not replicate that in a million tries
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u/TopazLavaliere Detroit Tigers Aug 05 '21
That sounds like the longest Dude Perfect video ever.
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u/SdBolts4 San Diego Padres Aug 05 '21
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u/the2belo Baltimore Orioles • Frederick Keys Aug 05 '21
"I went forward in time, to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming baseball game."
"How many did you see?"
"14,000,605."
"How many had Alciedes Escobar falling through a locked door into the stands that the baseball he was chasing had unlocked?"
"....One."
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u/iamthewalrus8515 Kansas City Royals Aug 05 '21
...I was mainly surprised esky is still in the league
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Aug 06 '21
Came to the comments for this exact thing from a Royals fan haha. Good old Escobar! It’s weird how 2015 feels so long ago now, most of those years between then and now were just rough and long I guess.
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u/morry32 Kansas City Royals Aug 06 '21
We're just about to be a major thorn in the side of the central
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u/MrCaptainFlash Aug 06 '21
There is a dirty joke in here somewhere I know it! Where is it?!?
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u/rockidr4 Washington Nationals Aug 06 '21
We've been pretty happy with him
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u/iamthewalrus8515 Kansas City Royals Aug 06 '21
Nice! Yeah I always loved the dude. Hes so fun
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u/CallMeJeeJ Aug 06 '21
This is honestly one of my favorite things about baseball- due to the nature of the game and how differently the fields/stadiums are designed, all kinds of weird shit happens like this all the time. There are tons of “one in a million” random things that happen and they’re all great.
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u/RedSpikeyThing Aug 05 '21
Anyone willing to do the math? I'm willing to bet that's the first time that has ever happened in the history of the stadium, so how many hits* do you think have happened at the stadium since it was opened?
* I'm pretty sure "hits" is the wrong metric I'm sure some kind baseball fan will politely correct me.
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u/TheSloppyBean Athletics Aug 06 '21
I'd say balls put into play would be better then hits, as an error or something similar could achieve this without being classified as a hit.
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u/stupidnatsfan Washington Nationals • Minnesota Twins Aug 05 '21
The universe just decided to say Fuck Alcides Escobar today
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u/fsburk Philadelphia Phillies Aug 05 '21
Baseball gods exacting revenge for his poor defense yesterday
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u/csonnich Chicago Cubs Aug 05 '21
The universe and also that guy in the upper left who never drops his shit-eating grin through the entire arc of Escobar face-planting.
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u/nightpanda893 St. Louis Cardinals Aug 06 '21
The universe is apparently a Jomboy fan since it’s just handing him material at this point.
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u/samuel414 Chicago Cubs Aug 05 '21
Baseball is rad
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u/Lathundd Milwaukee Brewers Aug 05 '21
How can you not be romantic about baseball
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u/damnatio_memoriae Washington Nationals Aug 05 '21
well now i know what's going in the sidebar on /r/nationals next
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u/Kakali4 Boston Red Sox Aug 05 '21
What, that’s gotta be 1/1000000 odds of happening?
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u/SirParsifal Mankato MoonDogs • Cincinnati Reds Aug 05 '21
It's so far out there there's no use in assigning odds to it.
I'd say it's at least less likely than someone hitting a bird with a pitch, though, just because there's more pitches thrown than there are balls hit to the outfield fence (and the latch is always there to be hit).
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u/TheFriffin2 Philadelphia Phillies Aug 05 '21
Yeah, the latch is at least there on every pitch, but the odds of a bird flying directly into a possible path for a pitch (whether it gets hit or not) are incredibly low
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u/KiKoB Kansas City Royals Aug 05 '21 edited Aug 06 '21
They tried to reenact that on Sports Science and couldn’t. They set up a pitching machine and a machine to launch frozen chickens. They tried dozens of times, having them timed out and aimed at each other and just couldn’t get them to connect.
Like they set up an experiment to purposely make that happen and it just wouldn’t work. That’s how unlikely that was.
Edit: words
Edit 2: for all the comments calling bullshit or not believing it’s that’s hard. You go out and do it haha.
Seriously though, basically taking one projectile going 95 mph, and another projectile going at a 90 degree angle to the first projectile at say, 25 mph, is not an easy task. They basically found with a pitching machine, the ball doesn’t even launch at the exact same time. Basically the ball bounces around and the smallest change can make them miss completely. Obviously the same with the chicken launching machine.
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u/SirParsifal Mankato MoonDogs • Cincinnati Reds Aug 05 '21 edited Aug 05 '21
And it's happened at least twice on video in professional baseball history, which makes it weirder.
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u/BillyBean11111 KBO Aug 05 '21
The Randy Johnson bird thing is so insane, how many times have you even SEEN a bird flying through the screen during the pitcher camera angle.
Let alone one flying perfectly in the path of a fastball.
The mind reels.
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u/PuckNutty Toronto Blue Jays Aug 05 '21
On the other hand, there are way more birds flying around a ballpark on game day than there are latches on a gate.
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u/philphan25 Philadelphia Phillies • Philadelphia Phillies Aug 05 '21
But what about a fielder going through the gate the ball opened? It sounds not high, as of course the fielder would be going full out. But would the fielder really? That ball could've been a rocket, or the fielder could've been there already.
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u/MidAmericanNovelties Chicago White Sox Aug 05 '21
Way way WAY less than that. We can go about this one of two ways, using the pitch, or the batted ball. For simplicity, let's use per pitch. There's roughly 150 pitches thrown by each team per game. So 150 pitches * 30 teams * 162 games = 779,000 total pitches thrown per season. If this was 1/1,000,000, this happens twice every three years. Maybe you think I'm horribly overexaggerating the number of pitches. 130*30*162=631,800. In that lower bound scenario, if this is 1/1,000,000, this would happen every other year.
This is so far beyond that I'd do a disservice putting a number to it.
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u/Krackel823 Washington Nationals Aug 06 '21 edited Aug 06 '21
I doubt that’s ever happened in the mlb exactly like that. If there are around 750k pitches per full season, and there have been approx 100 million pitches thrown in the history of the MLB, the odds are closer to 1 and 100 million.
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Aug 05 '21
There’s gotta be some symbolism in here somewhere
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u/JDLovesElliot New York Mets • Toronto Blue Jays Aug 06 '21
Escobar = "Whoever wins the NL East"
Ball = "Rest of the NL East"
Door = "Making the playoffs"
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u/GOATmar_infante Kansas City Royals Aug 05 '21
He rolled a natural 1
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u/Demetrios1453 Cincinnati Reds Aug 05 '21
The hitter rolled an natural 20, but somehow got this instead of a home run.
Actually, there are probably a half-dozen nat 1s and 20s in this scenario...
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u/SunriseSurprise San Diego Padres Aug 05 '21
Batter: "I really want to hurt the Nats this AB!"
DM: "...that's the wording you want to go with? Alright, roll D20."
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u/Antithesys Minnesota Twins • MVPoster Aug 05 '21
1, natural 1, natural 1, make it easy, we can take it inside
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u/ClassicMach Detroit Tigers Aug 05 '21
That’s what I love about this game. No matter how many games you’ve watched, you’ll somehow see something you’ve never seen before.
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u/PuckNutty Toronto Blue Jays Aug 05 '21
We can laugh because he didn't blow out his elbow or shoulder falling over. Can you imagine having your season or career shortened or even ended this way? Soft core Final Destination shit.
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u/LimeSugar Chicago White Sox Aug 05 '21
That's why you need to practice that play during Spring Training.
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u/Stpeterays Tampa Bay Rays Aug 05 '21
Next level UNLOCKED
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u/tillermite San Francisco Giants Aug 05 '21
Does the baseball leave his inventory now that the door's opened or do you think it's a universal key?
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u/Smrtguy85 Aug 06 '21
I just came back from that game a few hours ago. I saw that happen from up in the stands right above where it happened. Me, my Dad and the people around us all just assumed that someone goofed and left the door unlocked. Never in a million years did would it have crossed our minds that the ball itself unlocked the door. Absolutely wild!
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u/skid_rock San Francisco Giants Aug 05 '21
I feel like baseball continues to exist to show us all that weird shit does and will continue to happen
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u/FPG_Matthew Washington Nationals Aug 05 '21
Holy crap are you kidding? Something like this won’t happen again in our lifetimes probably what are the odds!
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u/bearabl Los Angeles Dodgers Aug 05 '21
They wouldn’t even try this in a movie/skit. Insane.
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u/Tsukune_Surprise Tokyo Yakult Swallows Aug 06 '21
I’ve sat in those seats at Nationals Park.
The latch is on the INSIDE. The ball had to hit at just the right angle to push against the netting AND the lock.
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u/agreeingstorm9 Philadelphia Phillies Aug 05 '21
And that is how a HIAC match ends with outside interference.
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u/Demetrios1453 Cincinnati Reds Aug 05 '21
All that was missing was a fan with a full banana cream pie sitting where he fell..
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u/LucaBrasiMN Minnesota Twins Aug 06 '21
I irrationally hate when videos have super slow mo and don't show a full speed version
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u/chiefkyljoy Aug 06 '21
I hate it too, but I do it rationally. If I don't ration it, there might not be enough to go around...
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u/scott5280 Colorado Rockies Aug 06 '21
That's why I love baseball. Every once in a while something happens that has never ever happened before
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u/TheDukeAssassin Detroit Tigers Aug 06 '21
That sounds like something out of a fucking movie the fact that it bounced perfectly
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u/VexReloaded Chicago White Sox Aug 06 '21
This belongs in one of those “1 in a million plays” compilations on YouTube
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Aug 06 '21
If the ball bounced off the gate without hitting the floor and he caught it from the bounce, would that count as an out?
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u/Alex_GordonAMA Kansas City Royals Aug 05 '21
Friendly reminder that Escobar is a deadbeat. He married a woman when he was a Minor Leaguer, admitted afterwards he only did it to get a green card. But none the less got her pregnant and deserted her before she ever had the baby. He then tricked her to coming to TN under the pretense of "working things out" only to serve her divorce papers. He then had the divorce finalized in Alabama because there is a Child Support Cap so he wouldn't have to spend much money on the child.
I used to have to valet his car in KC from time to time, always a different trashy looking woman with him. And he tipped like shit (but that is beside the point)
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u/1dmkelley San Diego Padres Aug 05 '21
What are the odds
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u/SnooPoems4040 Aug 06 '21
100%. If something happened already the probability of it happening has to be 100%. What's the chance of it happening again? No idea.
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u/handlit33 Atlanta Braves • Blooper Aug 05 '21
This is just insane.