At Kaufmann Stadium about 12 years ago (I think 6-9-1996 was the date), Mike Macfarlane hit a ringing double to center. Despite the fact that Griffey’s throw to cutoff man Joey Cora and not to the bag, Macfarlane slid into second anyway. He got up and started dusting himself off, but forgot to ask the umpire for a time out. Cora, despite being about 40 feet away from the bag, started sprinting over to make the tag. Macfarlane, who could have just slid his foot over the the bag with no effort, remained oblivious to what was going on and was tagged out by the panting 2nd baseman to end the inning. Mike gave the umpire a quizzical look for one second, then raised his eyes to the sky when he realized how stupid he was.

That was one amazing game. Dan Wilson hit a homer that was slicing so much it hit the backside of the foul pole. Griffey later hit one over the seats and into the concourse. Later on, there was a promotion between innings sponsored by a local jeweler where a diamond ring was hidden in the outfield grass while the contestant was blindfolded. Once the blindfold came off, Griffey ran to the woman and pointed her to where the ring was hidden, ruining the contest, but making the woman very happy. I miss the old fun loving Junior.

Not too bright in the outfield. They played a montage on a Sportscenter or Baseball Tonight not too long ago.

Overunning 2nd last year ON A WALK with NOBODY out in the 9th. With a 3-2 count
Ronnie was off with the pitch which was ball 4. He overan 2nd and that little troll
Eckstein who was clearly waiting for a moment like this tags him out. I never knew before
that you could be out on a walk. Instead of runners on 1st & 2nd with NO outs the Cubs
had a runner on first with one out and where I believe only down by one run.

I am growing fonder of Ronnie but I will NEVER forget that play

I remember Tommy John racking up three errors on the same play…if I remember this correctly: there were runners on 1st and 2nd, the hitter bunted, John flubbed fielding it cleanly, then overthrew first base, then somehow got in the catcher’s way of the throw home to get the runner trying to score…

but on the list of dumb managerial moves, I’ll never forget his decision to pitch to Mike Lowell over Lenny Harris in the ‘03 playoffs because he liked the “match-up” better.

And i’m not sure if this qualifies, but on the list of dumb administrative moves, I’d nominate William Wrigley’s refusing to agree to the contract Bob Kennedy was about to sign Bruce Sutter to in 1980 because Wrigley didn’t want to defer any money. Wrigley apparently didn’t get that deferring money was beneficial to him because he could collect interest before it was paid out.

and tell of a bonehead/dumbass move I did in college.

Between my junior and senior year, my team (Mississippi State) took a team to play in an international tournament in Holland. We played against teams from Japan, Holland, Italy and 2 other teams from the USA. One of them was a USA allstar team, and that was the team we were playing on this particular day.

Besides our regular team, we got to bring 3 other players with us that were recruited from other teams. One was Mike Yastrzemski (Carl’s kid) and another guy was the University of Miami’s closer – Danny Smith. Danny (was a lefty), had the absolute best pickoff move I have ever seen in my entire life. You had no clue whether he was going to home or first at any given time.

We were in a tight game agaiinst the USA team and I was playing 1B. Chris Szabo was on first base and Wally Joyner was at bat. In his last AB, Joyner had hit a one hop shot that I had to backhand, so I was very concerned about getting off the bag as quickly as possible, so I could cover the hole. As I was holding Szabo on first, Danny Smith pulls one of his patented moves, and comes to first when it looked like he already was on his way home. Not only did he pick off Szabo with his move, he also picked me off because I was already off the bag getting ready for another one of Joyners rockets. Trying to react quickly, I had to dive back towards the bag to try and stop the ball from going down the right field line, and I was able to snatch it while laying out on the dirt. While I was tumbling to recover my mistake, Szabo was cruising towards 2nd base, and I made another dumb move by trying to make up for my mistake, and I through the ball into LF trying to nail Szabo and allowing him to go to third.

Talk about wanting to crawl into a hole, that was one time I wanted to dissappear.

I was at a D-Rays game about 8 years ago and the pitcher had just struck out the hitter. The catcher rolled the ball back to the mound and both he and the pitcher started walking