Oh No! Outfielders Have Forgotten How To Play Defense!

A late-May crisis has struck Major League Baseball. What seemed on May 16 like a funny, isolated incident, in which Shohei Ohtani scored a Little League home run (officially scored a triple and an error) against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, has turned out to be far more insidious. No one at the time could guess what would follow for the next week. No one knows when it will stop. A day from now? A week? Never? First, there was the Washington Nationals' James Wood, who, on May 19, notched his first-ever official grand slam off an inside-the-park homer. Naturally, this event took place against the Mets. The defining characteristic of this play was the ball ricocheting off the glove of Mets left fielder Nick Morabito as he jumped to the wall and then fell down in front of his teammate, center fielder Tyrone Taylor. While the ball trickled back into center field, Taylor stared at Morabito, who pointed futilely toward the ball, before taking matters into his own hands and running for the baseball. Wood, who is an average runner, would easily beat the off-target throw to home.