The Phillies Pulled Off An Ultra-Rare Triple Play This Afternoon

If there’s one thing baseball needs more of, it’s inside-the-park dingers. If there’s a second thing baseball needs more of, it’s mascots racing everyday jamokes around the warning track. But if there’s a third thing baseball needs more of, surely it is the triple play. The Phillies turned a delightful, confusing, super-rare triple play today in their come-from-behind win over the Chicago Cubs.

Anthony Rizzo led off the inning with a walk and advanced to second on a Tommy La Stella single to center field. Javier Baez followed that up by lining a 1-1 pitch to Phillies outfielder * Rhys Hoskins, who snagged the catch right off the top of the grass. Rizzo and La Stella were either too aggressive on the base paths, or confused by whether the ball was caught at all, or both:

Triple play! The 7-4-3 triple play is a rare one—I scoured this database until my eyes started squirting hot blood all over the room and found only a couple: the Twins pulled one in 1988; the Brooklyn Dodgers pulled one in 1949; the Pirates pulled one in 1902; there are probably others, but, like I said, my eyeballs are now fountains of gore.

The people demand more triple plays.