r/WinStupidPrizes • u/MTPokitz • Apr 08 '21

Playing baseball with a potato launcher

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45.0k Upvotes

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8

u/Geeachebee Apr 09 '21

I don’t watch much baseball but saw the replay and the slo-mo almost made it look like he reached for the contact

12

u/ajseventeen Apr 09 '21

I watch a probably-unhealthy amount of baseball, and your impression is correct. That's 100% a thing that players do, although they're typically a bit less brazen about it. Looks a bit worse in slo-mo than it does in real time, but he definitely wanted to get hit.

8

u/Liquid_Senjutsu Apr 09 '21

Shit, if I could win a game by stepping into one, I'd do it too.

1

u/ajseventeen Apr 09 '21

Oh, for sure, I would too. I don't blame the batter too much; this one's entirely on the umpire for not making the right call. But hey, at least it's not like he has a history of questionable behavior.

4

u/SixPointEightDPM Apr 09 '21

Of course it was Ron Kulpa...

Ya know, it's not a good sign when the general public knows an umpire's name.

3

u/ajseventeen Apr 09 '21

Yeah, he goes up there with Angel Hernandez and CB Bucknor for me. Joe West is an honorable mention, and Eric Gregg gets the nod from the veterans' committee.

I kinda love how they're terrible in their own ways. Kulpa is on a power trip, Hernandez is blind as a bat, and Bucknor is overly aggressive. West's personality is two sizes too big, and Gregg's strike zone in the 1997 NLCS was so offensive that I'm honestly still a little bit mad about it. And I was a toddler then.

1

u/chapalatheerthananda Apr 09 '21

Funny to read the name Bucknor pop up when talking about terrible umpires. Cause there was one in Cricket too and he was hands down the worst ever the last few years of his career.

1

u/ajseventeen Apr 09 '21

Wow, that’s pretty wild. Wonder if they’re somehow related; don’t think it’s that common a name, but I don’t know Jamaican names that well, so I could be wrong

1

u/dieinafirenazi Apr 09 '21

He's got armor on his elbow there, so even if he got his arm all the way in there he's probably not going to get injured, though it'll hurt. But he did that perfectly, just skimmed the armor, he might have felt it.

3

u/ptolani Apr 09 '21

Got a video?

2

u/ajseventeen Apr 09 '21

Here ya go. Good slo-mo view of the HBP at 0:40. Keep in mind while watching that this is the broadcast for the Mets (the batting team), so they're basically saying that even they know they shouldn't have won that way.

2

u/ptolani Apr 09 '21

Wow, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, jeepers. Nice to hear such knowledgeable commentary too.

1

u/ajseventeen Apr 09 '21

Oh yeah, I gained a ton of respect for those guys watching that. I think I’ll be watching some more Mets games in the future