March 28, 2024

The Hidden Ball Trick

Mike Lowell of the Florida Marlins pulled the hidden ball trick to help beat the Diamondbacks in last night’s game.  The recount from Fox Sports:

With the Diamondbacks trailing 6-5, Terrero hit a leadoff single against Marlins closer Todd Jones. Terrero advanced on Quinton McCracken‘s sacrifice and went to third on Tony Clark‘s pinch-hit single to left.

Lowell, who caught Montreal’s Brian Schneider with a hidden-ball play last Sept. 15, quickly sized up another opportunity to pull the rare trick after catching Cabrera’s throw to the infield.

“I looked to first to see if Tony Clark was going to advance, then I looked at third base,” Lowell said. “Both
guys had their heads down so I just held onto the ball to see what would happen.”

Despite the absence of any signal from Lowell, Jones – who said he hadn’t seen the play since 1986, when he was in high school – understood what his teammate was up to.

“When I didn’t get the ball, I figured it out by the process of elimination,” Jones said. “I just walked around and tried to stall. I was running out of things to do. I was going to touch my toes.”

Just as Jones was getting ready to give up the charade, Terrero took his lead off third base. Lowell sauntered over and tagged the stunned baserunner, who was immediately called out by third base umpire Ed Rapuano, drawing a roar of approval from the crowd of 20,443.

“It was the coolest thing I’ve done on the field in a while,” said Jones, who singled in the bottom half of the inning for his fourth career hit – his first since July 27, 1995.

Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin came out of the dugout to argue the call, to no avail.

And I bet you thought they only did this in movies.

(Visited 21 times, 1 visits today)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge