Rock, Paper, Scissors
Major league baseball players are a fiercely competitive bunch — they have to be, to rise from the ranks of lowly A-ball, all the way up through the minors and successfully make it onto a big league roster. So it should come as no surprise that when making important career-related decisions, such as what position bench players will take on the field, they of course utilize the ultimate competitive decisionmaking method: rock, paper, scissors.
During Sunday’s loss to the Rangers, there were not a whole lot of bright spots – but NESN managed to scrounge one up when they caught Mark Kotsay and Rocco Baldelli playing a game of rock, paper, scissors in the dugout to decide who would head into right field and who would take over center field duties from an injured Jacoby Ellsbury. Rocco clearly won the match, throwing down scissors to Mark’s paper on the deciding matchup… and then jauntily finishing up by making the scissor cutting motion in the direction of Mark’s hand.
“Obviously, both of us don’t really care where we play,” Kotsay said. “And he actually won the right to play right, but the manager selected and made the final decision. I went paper and then rock and he beat me. He must have been in my head or something.”
Even Don Orsillo and Dennis Eckersley weren’t exactly sure what they were looking at initially. In the top of the 6th, they showed the r-p-s contest on replay — but in the video below, I also included the original, longer footage they kept showing of Kotsay and Baldelli in the dugout in the bottom of the 5th (which DO and Eck originally let pass without comment).
great post! indeed, serious times call for serious measures.
Ah rock, paper, scissors solves all of my life problems. So does nose-goes but you need more than 2 people for that.
I love that Rocco follows through with the whole cutting motion. He seems like he would be fun to hang out with
That was pure awesomness. After the Sox game ended I had a softball game, this girl and I played rock, paper, Scissors to pick who would play 3rd base and who would play SS (I won and played SS btw). That was a pretty good idea! Love the post Texy!
@Angie: Agreed. The cutting motion was absolutely perfect. That video cracked me up and I had to watch it a couple times.
Very nice – the whole sequence, reassembled in chronological order.
** APPLAUSE **
Great post, and thanks for the video. (Although I do have to ask: shouldn’t the title of the post have been “Rocco, Paper, Scissors?”)