Todd Frazier has been a (very) good baseball player for quite some time, and in 2017, the 31-year-old has already exceeded 25 home runs while being a useful piece for the New York Yankees. On Friday evening, however, Frazier was in the news for less stellar reasons, as he was the victim of an old-school baseball play that was a real crowd pleaser.
In short, Frazier doubled to lead off the third inning against the Toronto Blue Jays, and after a harmless pop out, he was on second base when Jacoby Ellsbury came to the plate with one down in the frame.
From there, the Blue Jays’ official Twitter feed takes over, and you will want to pay close attention to the last few seconds of what transpired.
You snooze, you lose. 😴 https://t.co/s9fcwsVjPl
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) September 23, 2017
Blue Jays second base Ryan Goins pulled off a beautiful version of the “Hidden Ball Trick” in which Frazier was duped into stepping off the bag while the infielder still had the ball in his glove. In some ways, this was not the traditional execution in that the pitcher and first baseman were not involved, but in the same breath, it takes a beautiful amount of ingenuity for Goins to even think to do this on the fly.
To be fair to Todd Frazier, many players would have fallen for this, if only because it was so unexpected. Still, he was duped nonetheless, and he won’t soon forget this one.
