Mostly on the Baseball highlight reels you see the home runs. These are boring. Offered for your consideration are some of the great amazing defensive plays from Major League Baseball. At least, the ones I can find video for.
1954 World Series, New York Giants vs. Cleveland Indians, Willie Mays - "The Catch"
1970 World Series, Baltimore Orioles vs. Cincinnati Reds, Brooks Robinson - "The Throw"
1975 World Series, Boston Red Sox vs. Cincinnati Reds, Dwight Evans Game 6 catch
In New England you just can't get away from the video of Carlton Fisk waving his home run fair in Game 6 of the '75 series. Most people don't know that Fisk never would have had the chance to hit that if it weren't for Dwight Evans' spectacular can't see the ball catch and spinning throw to first base to double up Ken Griffey, Sr. Evans couldn't see the ball to catch it, and couldn't see the base to throw to it, but his amazing arm made all the difference*.
June 1997 - Jim Edmonds, reprising Willie Mays.
The catch starts around 0:50.
September 2006, Tampa Bay vs. Seattle triple play
You score this 1-2-6-2.
1905 World Series, New York Giants vs. Philadelphia Athletics, Christy Matthewson 3 complete game shutouts
Sandy Koufax's amazing 1965 performance sadly has no video record that I can find to embed. He threw a complete game shutout to win game 5, and then came back on two days rest to throw another complete game shutout in Game 7 to win the series for the Dodgers. Truly Giants strode the earth in those days.
But Koufax's feat pales to what Christy Matthewson did in 1905, with three complete game shutouts, the last on only one day of rest. Defensively, pitching is where everything starts, and while good fielding can make a good pitcher into a great one, this is a whole different level that we, sadly, are unlikely to see in our day.
Kevin Mitchell's goofy 1989 barehanded catch
You have to wonder what he was thinking, but this cracks me up every time I see it.
The Greatest defensive play in Baseball history.
If that's all you're known for, that's not a bad thing at all.
* Boot note: #2 Son played on a Pop Warner team with Evan's nephew. One evening practice Evans came to see the kids work out. We Football Dads tried to play it cool, but the Football Moms had no such inhibition, and Dewie was mobbed by a bunch of suburban hausfraus.
5 comments:
Where's Bill Buckner's stunning work in '86?
Brooks Robinson's play that game was UNBELIEVABLE!
I know nothing about baseball, won't even pretend to. But that Rick Monday "catch"....that's gotta be the greatest thing I've ever seen. Icing on the cake would have been both dugouts emptying, everyone grabbing bats as they ran out, and the security guards "having the sun in their eyes for....five minutes or so...and didn't see anything, my bad, sir." Yeah. That would have been awesome.
For all of Ichiro's hits there's a fair few who remember him for a throw:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zS4KxxMYHM&t=3m5s
It was only the All-Star game ('78, I think), but Dave Parker's throw home from the warning track was something to see.
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