Adrian Beltre goes to one knee after being fooled by 61 mph eephus
Everyone loves Texas Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre. Everyone also loves eephus pitches. Put those two things together, and you’ve got a potent baseball combination on par with chocolate and peanut butter.
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For one brief moment, the baseball gods granted us that wish. In the sixth inning of Wednesday’s game against the Boston Red Sox, Beltre crossed paths with an eephus. The results were as entertaining as you would expect.
Red Sox reliever Fernando Abad delivers the pitch with an 0-1 count. As it slowly makes it way toward the plate, Beltre seems completely confused. He definitely has time to recognize the 61 mph offering. He knows it’s going to be a strike. But instead of swinging, he just falls to his knee in disbelief. The bat doesn’t move far from his shoulder.
Upon realizing what happened, Beltre immediately pops up and takes a walk out of the batter’s box. He needed a second to process everything, which is totally understandable.
He also gives Abad a look that we can’t fully identify. He’s either still dumbfounded by the whole thing, or he’s staring at Abad in a “c’mon, man” sort of way. We would like to think his lip curls up in the form of a twisted smile in that brief second, but we admit that might just be us projecting.
While Beltre looked foolish here, we don’t doubt that he still could have smacked the offering out of the park. Going to one knee isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Beltre. He’s hit home runs from that position before.
Beltre eventually recovered enough to work the count to 2-2 before lining out to short to end the inning. Though Beltre didn’t come through here, the Rangers still pulled out the 8-2 win.
And, hey, the baseball-loving public ought to be grateful the team had such a big lead. Without it, we may not have seen Abad take the risk and throw the eephus to Beltre. The end result was mild amusement, so we’re glad he did.
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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at christophercwik@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik
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