Runners Advance On Umpire's Armpit Catch

Weird stuff happens in baseball. Maybe it’s that there are so many games, and so many repetitions of the same process, that the timeline for seeing every possible outcome is condensed by sheer volume. At any rate, you have probably never seen this one before:

That’s home plate umpire Dan Bellino catching a 91-mph fastball from Rockies pitcher Mike Dunn with his right armpit. As impressed as I am by the clamping force of Bellino’s underarm, I am perhaps more impressed by his cool management of the situation. Before he’s even pried the thing out of there he’s signaling the runners to advance, like a true pro. It was, after all, a wild pitch. The wildest pitch of them all.