Bizarre scene in yesterday’s Mets/Marlins game, as Miami outfielder Esteury Ruiz, who had opened the top of the 8th with a single and then advanced to second when the next batter walked, repeatedly took his lead in front of second base, something I’m quite certain I’ve never seen before.
Ruiz did this for at least four pitches. Mets broadcaster Daniel Murphy said that Ruiz was probably trying to get a better view of pitcher Jonathan Pintaro’s glove so he could spot the grip and give a signal to the hitter, although that was just speculation. Maybe he was just trying to get into Pintaro’s head.
Whatever Ruiz’s objective, it looked seriously weird. Here are some additional shots:
I admit that I love the novelty of it. It really reaffirms the old cliché that you can watch baseball for your whole life and still routinely see things you’ve never seen before.
Of course, taking your lead in front of the baseline — or in back of it, for that matter — just puts you farther away from the next base, since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But that was the least of Ruiz’s problems: He was so engrossed in his own shenanigans that he forgot to run on a 3-2 pitch with two outs. (That pitch was fouled off, and he did remember to run on the subsequent pitch.)
Meanwhile, as you can see in those shots, the Mets wore 1986 throwbacks yesterday, because they were celebrating the 40th anniversary of their ’86 championship team. Plenty of game photos here, and here’s video of the pregame ceremony featuring a reunion of the surviving team members from the ’86 squad (for reasons that aren’t clear to me, the YouTube thumbnail image on this video is flopped):
Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.
My only unanswered question from yesterday was - were the players' sunames DYMO labelled onto the helmets? They got the blue squatechee right. I forget what color the underbrim of the cap should have been so I couldn't check that off.
This is one of those things where I wonder if it's something off the scouting report.
"You can get in this pitcher's head."
"OK, what can we do to get in his head?"
"Well ... let's try this:"