Best bloopers of 2022

Professional athletes defy belief. They stand roughly eight feet tall, bench press hundreds of pounds without breaking a sweat, and can throw or hit 98 mph fastballs with ease (and if you’re Shohei Ohtani, you do both.) It’s easy to forget that they’re not gods, but human beings made of flesh and blood.

Fortunately, there’s the blooper, the oopsie, the how-could-that-happen plays. These are the ones where our baseballing idols come down from Mount Olympus and join the rest of us bozos who struggle to reply to emails on time and often leave the house with our keys still locked inside.

So, as we head into a new year and start looking ahead to the next baseball season, let’s take one last peek in the rearview mirror and remember the best bloopers from 2022. Click here to check out 2021.

10. The Hidden Ball Trick

It’s a play that has seemingly died out of baseball, being relegated to children’s sports movies for and books with titles like “Baseball’s Goofiest Plays Ever Told.” So, when Rangers Minor Leaguer Trey Hair (his name being like the fourth-funniest thing about this play) pulled off the hidden ball trick on May 20th, well, we have no choice but to applaud.

Sure, he may not be the second coming of Marty Barrett, who was the master of the move, but as long as Hair can continue this kind of deception there should always be a place in baseball for him.

As Astros farmhand Shay Whitcomb could only say while watching the play: “Wow.”

9. The glove flip to no one

Jeremy Peña had a great year. The Rhode Island rookie bashed 22 home runs, won a Gold Glove, and picked up a World Series title — getting the World Series MVP Award along the way. Still, even stars can make gorgeous looking mistakes.

In Game 2 of the World Series, Peña raced behind the bag to snag J.T. Realmuto’s ground ball. Instead of covering second base, Jose Altuve instead took a kneeling stance like a video game character who had frozen in the simulation.

This is what a classic baseball play looks like:

8. Dee Strange-Gordon brings the chin music

The year saw more position players pitching than ever before and many of them weren’t all that entertaining. Enter: the fireballing Dee Strange-Gordon. Facing Atlanta’s Travis D’Arnaud, Gordon reared back and … softly tossed a pitch up to the plate as if he were Henry Rowengartner at the end of “Rookie of the Year.”

Unfortunately, this pitch got away from the infielder and D’Arnaud somehow escaped the at-bat without injury.

Sure, we can pretend like we’re not part of the animal world. We can stand on two legs, wear pants (looking at you, Donald Duck), and construct enormous baseball stadiums filled with 40,000 people.

Every now and then, though, nature breaks through. On June 20, when the Cubs were visiting the Pirates in PNC Park, a squirrel made it inside the gates. Cue up the Benny Hill music because the grounds crew first tried to corral the little guy by … chasing him with a net. The only problem? The holes in the net were larger than the squirrel’s body:

That wasn’t the only moment of animal madness. In Game 2 of the NLCS between the Padres and Dodgers, a humble goose decided to land on the field and then just kind of hang out. Given its chill vibes, the umpires first chose to continue play before the goose was given a more forceful ejection from the premises. Hey, those signs that say “no entering the field of play” aren’t just for ticket-buyers.

6. Don’t forget your phone

Whenever I leave the house, I tap each pocket to make sure my wallet, keys and — most importantly — my phone are in my pockets. Pirates second baseman Rodolfo Castro forgot to do the reverse when he ran the bases against the D-backs on Aug. 9. When Castro dove headfirst into third base, his phone flew out of his back pocket and he required the umpire to point it out to him before picking it back up.

While Castro would be suspended one game for having an electronic device on the field of play, he really missed a golden opportunity to film a TikTok dance on the base. I mean, if Joey Votto did it …

5. José Azocar gives an assist

There will certainly be more embarrassing home run assists (one of which we may see very soon). I mean, this is no Jose Canseco head bopper. But when the Cubs’ Alfonso Rivas went deep thanks to Azocar’s volleyball-like help, the Padres center fielder really sold the play with just abject despair after the play.

Hey, we’ve all been there before. We’re just usually alone in our apartments.

**4. When the stars collide **

I told you there was going to be an uglider attempted home run robbery, didn’t I? Not only did the Mariners help Luis Rengifo to a home run, but Julio Rodriguez and Jesse Winker collided in the air along the way. Honestly, you probably could try to recreate this play a hundred times and never pull it off as successfully (or unsuccessfully, as the case may be) as the M’s did here.

3. A most unexpected inside-the-park grand slam

There are plenty of ballplayers who lose a ball in the sun or the lights. Usually, at least, they’re in the same general vicinity of the baseball. But when Raimel Tapia hit a deep fly ball with the bases loaded against the Red Sox and pounded his bat in disgust, he wasn’t the only player who was confused. Boston’s Jarren Duran decided to cosplay as Tom Hanks in “Castaway” and found himself adrift in the vast expanse of Fenway’s outfield.

To add insult to it all, this was a game the Red Sox went on to lose, 28-5, and yet this is the play that stands out from the drubbing.

2. Julio Rodríguez runs his own obstacle course

J-Rod is loaded with talent. Every time he steps out onto the field, you can feel the mood shift, the air begins to crackle with possibility. Usually, that leads to a home run or a diving catch. You know, the kind of things that earned Rodríguez a Rookie of the Year Award.

Other times, it leads to things like this, with Rodríguez tripping and desperately crawling as if he was in some kind of boot camp on his way to third base.

1. That’s one way to win a game

While the previous plays are a mix of gutbusting errors and hilarious mistakes, none of them directly ended the game. But when the Tigers took on the Twins on April 26, they finished the contest with a true comedy of errors. Shakespeare couldn’t even guess at this madness when he used that title to name his play. 

Minnesota was trailing, 4-3, in the bottom of the ninth when Miguel Sano stepped to the plate with Gio Urshela and Trevor Larnach on base with one out. Sano hit a hard liner to right field, but the ball bounced off outfielder Robbie Grossman’s glove. That’s error No. 1. 

After the ball got away, Sano took off for second, which forced Urshela and Larnach to run, too. It looked like the Twins were about to run themselves into an out. Instead, Detroit catcher Tucker Barnhart tried to get a rundown going, but instead airmailed the throw into left field. The toss allowed the two baserunners to race around and score the winning run to end the game. 

But those are words and in this case, you just have to see it to believe it. This is blooper glory.