Crudball*

 (* - Suggested musical accompaniment: Yakety Sax)

Time now to check in with the Blob's favorite not-really-a-major-league-baseball-team, the cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates, and before you all start whining about how nobody cares about my stupid Pirates, let me say you might actually enjoy it this time.

In a, you know, SNL skit, Comedy Central, Yakety Sax sort of way.

We take you now to yesterday afternoon in P-town, where Javi Baez of the Cubs has just hit a routine grounder to third. The Pirates' third baseman scoops it up, fires it over to the first baseman, and then ...

Well. See for yourself. 

Now, some folks will applaud Baez for some heads-up baseball. Far more of us, however, will stare slack-jawed at the exquisite dumbness of the Cruds, who took stupid baseball to heretofore unimagined levels with the most Crudtastic display of Cruddiness since Fred Merkle did that stupid baserunning thing back in 1908.

Show of hands here. How many people watched this and shouted "JUST STEP ON THE BAG, DUMMY!" 

You? You? All of you?

And how many people shouted "DON'T SUDDENLY LOB THE BALL TO THE CATCHER, DUMMY!" 

You? You? All of you?

And how many people shouted "WHERE DO THE CRUDS GET THESE PEOPLE? TEE-BALL? THE MOE, LARRY AND CURLY INSTITUTE FOR PHYSICAL COMEDY?"

OK. So that was just me shouting that.

You hesitate to call this the dumbest defensive sequence in baseball history, because that covers a lot of waterfront. I'm sure, somewhere in the mustiest corners of baseball's past, there was a play where a routine groundout resulted in an entirely idiotic rundown, a run, two really bad throws and the grounder-outer winding up safe on second.

On second thought ... nah.

The Crud stands alone on this one. That's my conclusion.