Steve Pearce launches himself into stands to make crazy catch

Given the offensive prowess of both teams, the last thing we expected from Friday’s Toronto Blue Jays-Baltimore Orioles game at Camden Yards was a pitchers’ duel. So naturally, that’s exactly what we got. The AL East rivals played 12 innings without scoring a single run, before Baltimore ultimately walked off 1-0 on Jonathan Schoop’s double in the 13th.

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It was a crazy game that featured excellent pitching and some pretty stellar defense too. Without question the wildest best play of the game came during the eighth inning when Blue Jays first baseman Steve Pearce literally launched himself into the stands to catch a foul ball hit by Schoop.

Like Derek Jeter before him, Pearce truly had no regard for his body as he sacrificed himself. Truth be told, he didn’t have much regard for anything at that point. Fortunately, the fan he crashed into was not harmed.

The theme of the week seems to be extra effort.

We saw it Wednesday when the Chicago Cubs’ Ian Happ kept running for a cycle even after making an out. We saw it when Milwaukee’s Keon Broxton crashed into the wall to make a game-saving and perhaps season-saving home run robbery against the Cardinals. We even saw it in this game when Trey Mancini went all out to save the game with a diving catch against Pearce. And we certainly saw it from Pearce.

We don’t necessarily encourage players at any level to dive into the stands like this. But we can’t fault the effort either. Especially when it results in an out.

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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at bigleaguestew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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