The Hartford Yard Goats and Binghamton Rumble Ponies have two of the strangest—and also best—nicknames in baseball. On Friday night, they teamed up for one of the strangest—and also best—strikeouts in the history of AA baseball. Yard Goats third baseman Josh Fuentes was the unfortunate victim of an odd strikeout when he swung at a terrible, no-good very bad pitch from Rumble Ponies pitcher Cory Burns.
Please enjoy this extremely strange @MiLB strikeout: https://t.co/qCRHp8fK3H pic.twitter.com/coESfmeE6m
— Cut4 (@Cut4) May 27, 2017
Burns slipped and fired the pitch right into the ground. Seriously, he just hucked it about 10 feet just to the left of the mound. The Rumble Ponies catcher had to leave his spot behind the plate to go get the ball, leaving Fuentes and the umpire alone at the plate.
Amused, Fuentes gave a practice swing to get ready for the next pitch. He was then called out on a third strike by the umpire.
Why? Well, technically he swung at the pitch. The ball was still live, though it was rolling on the ground toward the first baseline. So umpire Patrick Sharshel called it a swinging strike, and Fuentes was out.
Thankfully, Fuentes didn’t freak out or challenge the umpire. He just made a silly mistake. Amazingly, this didn’t even make the game summary in the Hartford Courant. Binghamton’s paper didn’t mention it, either! Really seems like an oversight. It’s the only story that matters to me anymore.
(Via Deadspin)
