Worst. Wild Pitch. Ever.
Last night’s game against the Hanshin Tigers in Tokyo was epic. The 11:00 pm start time. The dueling national anthems. The boom sticks. The constant chants and fight songs. The lack of helpful graphics and scoreboard on the screen. The two rows of bowling alley seats in the dugouts. The homeruns from Big Papi and J.D. Drew. The typical closing shutdown by Papelbon. Watching a broadcast entirely in Japanese, and still- somehow- kind of sort of understanding what they were saying, just from the inflection of their voices.
But, oddly enough, the highlight of the game has to be one of the worst moments of the game. The kind of thing that, were this a regular season game, would give us all fits.
Kyle Snyder’s wild pitch. And I do mean WILD.
The ball smacks the dirt way in front of the left-hand batter’s box, and careens off of Jason Varitek’s chest and completely off camera. The gleeful reactions of the Japanese broadcast crew are priceless. The pitch is so horrible, it’s beautiful; so awful, it’s awesome.
I’ve got video of the Wild Pitch of Doom– and I included the entire at-bat so you could see some of the atmosphere in Tokyo. (if you want to go straight to the WP, try the 2:00 minute mark.)
video courtesy of MLB
I always wonder exactly what Tek is saying when he goes out to the mound. This time it must have been, “Next pitch I want you try for the wildest wild pitch ever. C’mon! It’ll be epic!” Seriously one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.
I kinda loved the announcers…other funny stuff was when they started laughing at Manny after he went to go to first on 3-2, thinking he’d got ball 4 instead of a strike. And then when Farrell came out to talk to Buch they were like “Oooooohhhhh,” kinda like the laugh-track on TV shows does when a character gets in trouble.
I can’t wait to watch again tonight, although graphics would be appreciated…I think I’m going to score it just so I can follow what the hell is going on a bit better:-P.
That’s what you get for letting Mr. Celery pitch! ;-)
what i kept wondering was why were the showing ellsbury’s shoes ?
Did you notice how they got so excited on a groundball?
Meghan you’ll have to get up at 6 AM tomorrow morning to catch the Sox play the Yomiuri Giants. The A’s have the 11:00 game tonight against Hanshin.
Another cool thing was the interview with Papi during the game.
They should’ve included this clip in the official highlights on redsox.com.
The Japanese announcers are fun. The homerun calls for Ortiz and Drew were spectacular.
yeah, that made me laugh. don’t know the language but just by the ooooooooooh,oooooooh you knew it was a homerun.
It’s a good thing Varitek has a lot of padding on him, and a face mask. Wow, that was one interesting pitch.
I love Tek’s death glare at 2:24
I couldn’t find the game last night. I’ve got the MLB channel and DirecTV. What freakin channel is it on?
Between the band, the vibrant props, chanting in Japanese… I would imagine the players must feel like they’re in some acid trip mardi gras scene of a 1970’s kung fu film. I was waiting for a cross between a clown and a tiger to randomly appear and do shots of Saki with Manny in the outfield.
Is it just me, or did that batter barely bend his knees at all?
Also: JEEZ, Kyle. That looks like something I might’ve thrown while playing around with a changeup or something if I was playing catch. :P Which is to say: it was way way way way way off its mark.
That death glare Kim mentioned? Yeah, it’s really, really hot…