Saturday Night Live continued its tradition of inviting World Series players to do bizarre stuff on live TV, playing host to Jose Altuve, George Springer and Alex Bregman during a goofy segment of Weekend Update on Saturday.
If you haven’t seen SNL cast member Leslie Jones on Weekend Update before, here’s a brief overview of her typical Update segments: She tends to overshare about some aspect of her love life and hits on Update anchor and head SNL writer Colin Jost throughout her interviews. It’s not the most original bit, but she brings an energy to the piece that makes it entertaining, if not amusing.
That was the basic plot of SNL’s latest segment: Jones starts by complimenting Jost, which eventually feeds into her monologue about watching Yankees postseason baseball as a new fan and heckling players from the stands. “Hey, Gregorius! You can round my bases any time, because you are Gregor-geous!” she blurts. She then fixates on the Astros, comparing Springer to a “goofy mattress salesman” and cracking jokes about Altuve’s height -- and, predictably, turns around to find them standing behind her.
“Since we already know that you don’t actually watch baseball, we’d really like to give you a gift today,” Springer says, awkwardly proffering some free swag. Jones seems genuinely delighted, but can’t resist the urge to give them the Colin Jost treatment and pulls a red-faced Jose Altuve into her lap. “Come here,” she coos. “Let me tell you something. Now, this is not something I usually say at all -- I mean, never -- but good things do come in small packages.”
You can watch the full skit below:
The Astros may not have gotten the full perks accorded to the Cubs after their 2016 championship run, but they definitely got a taste of the weirdness that is Saturday Night Live (albeit without the striptease, dead grandma or barbershop quartet featured in last year’s sketches). Unfortunately, nothing has quite lived up to “Derek Jeter’s Taco Hole” -- and given last night’s cameo, I’m not sure anything ever will.
