A wise person online once said, “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” Such a quote can also be applied to the Baltimore Orioles this season. As a whole, the team has been a special kind of terrible that few people have ever seen before in their lives. Yet at least once a week, one player on this chamber-pot roster finds a way to stand out among the rest as the worst guy on the team. It’s happened to the likes of Chris Davis during his historic hitless streak, Anthony Santander with his terrible throw to home plate, and even local broadcaster Gary Thorne, whose wits always seems to be on the verge of collapsing whenever these birds take on the Yankees. Today’s unfortunate main character for Baltimore was catcher Chance Sisco.
Sisco’s very bad day was sadly not limited to the cringe-inducing GIF up above, though we don’t have to go to far back to see where it started. In the bottom of the sixth with a two-run lead over the Red Sox, Mitch Moreland hit a blooper into shallow left field. Three Orioles players lacking any sense made their way in the direction of where the ball was headed and allowed it to land in between all three of them. Jonathan Villar tried to limit the damage and made a quick throw to home, where Sisco was waiting in the direct path of Boston’s Sam Travis. The catcher was awkwardly knocked over and laid on the ground in pain as another run came in to tie things up. As Thorne notes, Sisco had terrible positioning as he was blocking the base path before he had the ball.
Sisco was able to get up and continue the game for the time being. The catcher had all of two batters worth of respite from any pain before a foul tip off the bat of Xander Bogaerts hit him right in the beans.
That hurt so bad to watch that even I feel the need to start wearing a cup more frequently in my day-to-day life. Thankfully, there was a silver lining for Chance as the training staff got him off the diamond: he got to stop playing for the Orioles three innings sooner than expected.