There are many different kinds of triple plays.
The most exciting triple play is the quick-as-fire around-the-horn number, with a third baseman and a second baseman firing off the ball like their lives depend upon it: “5! 4! 3! They turned three!”
Those bear multiple replays and should be featured on highlight shows.
Down the list from that a bit are the ones where one player -- usually a shortstop -- drives the action, maybe catching a hot shot on a leap, coming down and touching the bag and then running down the guy who left first base and who couldn’t get his brain around what the hell was going on until the shortstop already tagged him. Those are fun too. Individual showcases.
After that there are, say, a half dozen other triple plays, then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’s this one the Red Sox just ran themselves into against the Orioles in the bottom of the eighth inning of tonight’s game. Watch:
Todo el mundo perdido, excepto Jonathan Schoop, en triple de #Orioles a #RedSox pic.twitter.com/04JUdFXBeQ
— Enrique Rojas/ESPN (@Enrique_Rojas1) May 3, 2017
Yep: a dropped pop fly + brain dead runners and that’s about it.
It doesn’t matter much as the Sox beat the Orioles 5-2. And because, hey, three outs are three outs. But at least we now have a baseline for triple plays.
