📓 The Magic of a Little League Walk-off Home Run

I cannot decide what music to put behind this masterpiece.

• Should it be the Bad News Bears theme song (which, I guess, Georges Bizet originally wrote for his opera Carmen — but you know old George had to be thinking, “I’ll bet this music will play well behind baseball blunders!))?

• Should it be Walkin’ Home, the song This Week In Baseball would sometimes use when showing the delightful bloopers of the week?

I’ve tried both.

And frankly … both work.

But I think you could put any music behind this play, and it would work wonderfully. This once choreographs itself.

The Giants are off to their magical start. I can’t fully explain it — but that's not surprising. I've never quite been able to explain the San Francisco Giants.

They’re like a baseball team designed by Studio Ghibli: I know the stuff is good, but I don't understand it at all.

Anyway, the Giants are in first place ahead of the Dodgers, Padres, and Diamondbacks.
Saturday, they beat the Rangers with a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth.
Sunday, they were tied again with the Rangers going into the bottom of the ninth.

Heliot Ramos led off against Luke Jackson — who, after 10 up-and-down years (literally up in the majors and down to Gwinnett, up to San Francisco and down to San Jose) — is now a big-league closer.

Jackson got Ramos to hit a slow chopper to the left side.

Exit velocity: 58.9 mph.

If Ramos’ chopper was in the left lane of the highway, you'd be furious.

Texas’ third baseman Josh Smith was playing back, so Jackson raced over to make the play. He barehanded the ball, spun, and made the off-balance throw toward first. It was probably the right decision — if the throw had been on line, Ramos would have been out.

Unfortunately, the throw was nowhere near on line — it bounced past a diving Jake Burger at first base and bounded happily into foul ground in right field.

Ramos is not slow, but he’s not fast either, and he seemed perfectly content to take second base and put himself in position to score the walk-off run for the second straight day.

But a funny thing happened: The ball, after joyfully skipping around, decided to suddenly just stop. It hit a wall and settled down and there were no Rangers anywhere around. Rangers right fielder Adolis Garcia never got anywhere close to the ball. It was left to Burger, the first baseman who had dived for the ball in the first place, to get up and chase it down. That took a while.

Ramos didn’t seem too interesting in all that but Giants third-base coach Matt Williams saw it all happening — and frantically motioned for Ramos to take third base. Ramos gave a sort of “If you say so” shrug and started running to third. That’s when Burger finally got to the ball, picked it up, and tried to make the hero throw that would save the day.

The hero throw was... well, let’s just say it was way offline. It got away — and Ramos ran home for one of the great Little League Walk-off Home Runs of all time.

I’ve watched the play a couple hundred times by now — I’m sure you have too — and I keep asking myself:

Why do I love this so much?

I don’t tend to enjoy watching people make mistakes. I can barely stand watching golfers miss short putts, or game show contestants answer questions wrong, or tennis players double fault in big moments.

I think it’s this: Baseball bloopers are funny because you know there’s tomorrow.

You know what I mean? Every game is just one of 162. Every play is just one of thousands. Wins are nice but fading. Losses sting but not for very long. Yes, this was a tough loss for the Rangers — but they’ve got Sacramento in town for a four-game set, and then the Mariners, and life goes on.

It’s nice to think about life going on.

The other thing I love about these sorts of plays is that they remind you: It’s unbelievably hard to play baseball well.

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