You're seeing double, eh? No, you're seeing Double-A.
Thursday night's game between Boston's Portland Sea Dogs and Colorado's Hartford Yard Goats produced a glitch-in-the-matrix moment so surreal you won't believe it until you see it. And even then, you're going to do a double take.
With one out in the top of the fourth inning, the score tied, 3-3, the Sea Dogs' Ahbram Liendo drilled an 0-1 pitch for a hot shot off the glove of Yard Goats third baseman Kyle Karros. The ball ricocheted back and to the left of Karros, into the glove of shortstop Jose Torres, who fired to first base in time to get the out.
Nifty play, but things didn't get truly freaky until...
With one out in the bottom of the fourth inning, the score tied, 3-3, the Yard Goats' Dyan Jorge drilled an 0-1 pitch for a hot shot off the glove of Sea Dogs third baseman Blaze Jordan. The ball ricocheted back and to the left of Jordan, into the glove of shortstop Mikey Romero, who fired to first base in time to get the out.
The two plays were an uncanny mirror image in just about every way -- both pitches were clocked at 83 mph, the pitchers (Connor Staine for Hartford and Blake Wehunt for Portland) were right-handers with a similar leg kick and delivery -- Staine making his 53rd pitch and Wehunt his 55th -- and the arc of the ball as it flew to the awaiting shortstop was nearly identical. Both the batters were 170-pound middle infielders playing second base.
You might think this kind of "anything you can do, I can do exactly the same" showing would have resulted in the 3-3 tie lasting until midnight exactly, when the game would have been called on account of a black hole opening up in center field or an announcement that the simulation in which we live has crashed.
Instead, the freaky fourth stood alone. The Yard Goats scored three runs in the fifth and the clubs -- go figure -- matched zeros the rest of the way, giving Hartford a 6-3 win.