{"id":3625,"date":"2011-04-19T08:30:17","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T13:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/?p=3625"},"modified":"2011-04-19T14:24:01","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T19:24:01","slug":"holy-balk-justin-verlander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/archives\/3625","title":{"rendered":"Holy balk, Justin Verlander"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Considering the swing-and-miss arsenal that Justin Verlander<\/a><\/strong> possesses, he\u2019s always been someone who lets his nastiness do the talking, rather than try to out-think opposing hitters.\u00a0 After all, that\u2019s essentially the catcher\u2019s job anyway. Verlander is a pitcher who\u2019s at his best when he isn\u2019t over-thinking a given situation.<\/p>\n

Well, it seems that his little brain might have been working a bit too hard as he prepared to face the A\u2019s David DeJesus<\/a><\/strong>, with Daric Barton<\/a><\/strong> (always a threat to steal) taking a baby lead at first base.<\/p>\n

What happened next is totally unprecedented and perhaps the wackiest balk in the history of the game.\u00a0 Believe me, I have seen some crazy stuff on the baseball field, but nothing as bizarre as this.<\/p>\n

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My best explanation: Prior to taking the sign from Victor Martinez<\/a><\/strong>, Verlander made up his mind that he\u2019d throw over to first base and hopefully catch Barton off-guard and in between steps in his lead off.\u00a0 However, he became mentally incapacitated while pretending to take the sign from Martinez, and ultimately trapped between decisions. There\u2019s a decent chance that Verlander might have gotten him had he actually turned his body the necessary 90 degrees to execute the pick.<\/p>\n

I think that Bob Uecker said it best, \u201cThat play could be a finalist for the Trojan-Enz Boner of the Week Award.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Considering the swing-and-miss arsenal that Justin Verlander possesses, he\u2019s always been someone who lets his nastiness do the talking, rather than try to out-think opposing hitters.\u00a0 After all, that\u2019s essentially the catcher\u2019s job anyway. Verlander is a pitcher who\u2019s at his best when he isn\u2019t over-thinking a given situation. Well, it seems that his little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1300,6,16,11,13,14,775],"tags":[2133,335,2129,179,2130,2131,560,1376,2132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3625"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3632,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions\/3632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}