Point: Theres no reason we should ever see a walk-off triple. Jerseys China NFL .If the batter can reach third safely, it means the runner ahead of him -- the one representing the game-ending run -- already has left third base, presumably scored and ended the game. The batters run is meaningless. There is no reward for stretching a double into a triple when the game is over.Meanwhile, the risk is minimal but existent: The batter might be thrown out at third base before the winning run scores. He might stumble, trip or get lost. Or the lead runner, the one who represents the game-ending run ahead of him, might be forced to retreat to third base, either by stumbling, tripping, getting lost or simply reassessing his plan. In that event, the batter now will have prohibited him from returning to safety.In stretching a double into a pointless triple, the batter has simultaneously opened up a second front by which his team can be attacked and removed the lead runners lone option for retreat. It is like trying to block a buzzer-beating 3-pointer when youre up by four. It is like a victorious quarterback trying to get yardage when taking a knee will expire the clock. It is an absurd act to go to third base in a walk-off situation.Counterpoint: But they happen anyway. What gives?There were four walk-off triples in 2016. One of the four was a clear exception to our point: Josh Harrison hit a triple and advanced home with the winning run on a throwing error. This wasnt a walk-off triple, but a walk-off triple plus a one-base error. It is exempt. As to why the other three happened, we are prepared to deliver answers. Two answers apiece, in fact.1. Jay Bruce hits a walk-off triple for the Reds, April 10.0:06: The ball lands down the right-field line. The Pirates right fielder, Gregory Polanco, is roughly 1 million miles from it.0:08: [Brandon] Phillips on his way to third! Bruce, rounding first, glances over to see Phillips progress, about 120 feet ahead of Bruce. Bruce then looks back to right field, sees the location of the ball and Polanco, and keeps running. As Phillips gets to within 30 or so feet of scoring, Bruce rounds second and heads to third.0:14: Phillips touches home plate with the winning run. The throw home is about 40 feet away and bounces in mockingly. Catcher Chris Stewart?flips the incoming ball away in disgust.0:16 or so: Bruce touches third base, then he starts running back toward second to be swallowed up by teammates.Explanation 1: One of my favorite things about old-timey baseball -- real old-timey, back in the 1800s -- is that they played the bottom of the ninth inning no matter what. It wasnt how it is now, where the home team only bats if it needs to. What were those unnecessary bottom halves like, I often wonder. Was everybody still trying? Did the fans stick around to see it? Did the coachs son get to pitch? We never play that superfluous half-inning anymore because we all pretty much consider the point of baseball to be winning the game. Baseball exists to deliver a definitive victory or defeat.It is a reflection of a winner-take-all culture: Once youve won, youve already taken all, and once youve lost, there is nothing left to take, so we all go home. But when you play out the bottom of the ninth after the game has been decided, youre saying something matters about baseball even when a win is not on the line. Youre saying there is beauty and meaning inherent in baseball play, and that it means more than an opportunity to declare somebody the winner. You play, and you play hard, because baseball played hard, by its very nature, no matter the stakes, adds to the gross product of the sport.Jay Bruce went to third because a baseball player playing hard goes to third. Not all artists paint for fame and commissions. Some paint to make something beautiful.Explanation 2: Phillips was safe by plenty, but there was, at least, a nominal play at the plate. There was only one out. If Phillips had been thrown out, Bruce would have represented the winning run, and there would have been only two men out. By going to third, Bruce increased his teams chances of winning from 61 percent to 68 percent in the rare case where Phillips gets thrown out. Bruce determined this conditional advantage to be greater than the likelihood of his disrupting Phillips attempts at scoring on his own. He was still playing to win.2. Stephen Drew hits a walk-off triple for the Nationals, July 23.0:08: The ball lands at the wall in right-center field. There is one out.0:10: Padres center fielder Travis Jankowski picks it up and fires it toward his cutoff man, Ryan Schimpf.0:11: You check: Jankowski and Schimpf are definitely real people.0:12: Schimpf turns around and readies to throw. Drew is just circling second base; hell be out by forever if Schimpf throws to third, though Anthony Rendon would score the winning run. Wil Myers, the second cutoff man, stationed between Schimpf and home plate, points toward third.0:13: Schimpf throws toward home instead. On-deck hitter Ben Revere, anticipating the winning run scoring, is already in the field of play, ready to mob Stephen Drew.0:14: Rendon scores, ending the game. Drew, roughly 35 feet from third base, still is pumping his arms and running hard.Explanation 3: It is, basically, irrational to go to third base if youre Drew. What Drew is banking on, though, is that the other team is as capable of acting irrationally as he might be, and that potential consequences of his irrational choice are far less costly than the potential consequences of the Padres irrational choice would be gainsome.Here, we see it almost happen: Myers, taking the role of field captain, points to third base and directs Schimpf to throw it there. This would be hilarious, of course. Drew as a runner doesnt matter (the premise of this inquiry!), and there is almost no chance that theyll tag him out before Rendon crosses home plate and ends the game. And yet: Theres Myers, worried about the meaningless trail runner, instead of the winning run, and trying to make his teammate do something ridiculous.Players know that they are fallible and they make mental errors. They know, just as confidently, that their opponents are fallible and will make mental errors. Drew, in this instance, gives the Padres the opportunity to make a mental error. He was doing game theory.Explanation 4: A few years ago, I wrote about Roy Halladays failure to complete a single game in 2012. Before that, Halladays complete games were a singular achievement: He had more complete games over the course of a decade than entire franchises. He had led the league in complete games in each of the previous five seasons, and he had bold ink in that category in seven of the previous nine seasons. He had eight complete games the season before. Then, suddenly, he had none. I argued at the time that Halladays lack of complete games was more than an odd blip, or even a typical decline, but rather the canary in the coal mine of his career. It represented a cliff that he had fallen off; he was a man suddenly old. The next year, Halladay had a 6.82 ERA and never pitched again.Stephen Drew was very good at many things in his long career, but he was especially notable for hitting triples. He wasnt that fast, but he had a knack for finding gaps, corners and 12-plus seconds for uninterrupted running. From 2008 to 2010, he led all major leaguers with 35 triples, hitting 11 or more in each of the three seasons. Drew is old now, and hes not very good at many things. This is apparent in all of his stats, and in the contracts he gets, and in the role he plays (he was pinch-hitting in this game), but perhaps nothing conveys his age and his decline like his triples totals:2013: 8 2014: 1 2015: 1Before this swing in this game, he had no triples in 2016. When the day comes that Stephen Drew cant hit even one triple, he might cease to be Stephen Drew. He is an exposed popsicle that, in the five minutes you ignore it, has turned into a stick. That triple wasnt just a triple but an entire career fighting for one more spring training invite. So he went for it. He just ... ran.And he made it. Notably, if you search for walk-off triples on MLB.coms highlights, this play is not returned.But thankfully -- for Drew -- baseballs official records are not kept in highlight-video metadata. Baseballs Rule 9.06 (f) guarantees his extra base went into the record books:The official scorer shall credit the batter with a base touched in the natural course of play, even if the winning run has scored moments before on the same play. For example, the score is tied in the bottom of the ninth inning with a runner on second base and the batter hits a ball to the outfield that falls for a base hit. The runner scores after the batter has touched first base and continued on to second base but shortly before the batter-runner reaches second base. If the batter-runner reaches second base, the official scorer shall credit the batter with a two-base hit.If he had been even one step past second base when Rendon crossed home plate and ended the game, he would have been allowed to complete the play, and the triple would have counted. He rounded second and saw nothing in his way. In a sense, Drew found the worlds emptiest highway, and he rode it. All night long.3. Derek Dietrich hits a walk-off triple for the Marlins, July 31.0:09: The ball lands in or around the glove of Cardinals center fielder Tommy Pham.0:10: Now its loose, rolling all the way to the left-field wall. Nobody is close to the ball. This play is over the second it gets past Pham.0:14: Adeiny Hechavarria, representing the winning run, lopes casually down the third-base line. He will score easily. Its not clear a Cardinal will ever even pick up the ball.0:19: Dietrich is mobbed by his teammates in foul territory past the third-base bag. They punch him, douse him with water and strip his jersey off.0:45: You notice, for the first time, what amazing shape Dietrich is in. Wow, you say, without any particular intent.Explanation 5: Two important things to know about on-field celebrations. The first is that the mob is going after the batter who drives in the winning run, not the runner who scores, in pretty much all cases. The second is that these celebrations are performative. There was a long period of baseball history in which even teams winning the World Series didnt celebrate on the field. They just jogged into the dugout and shook hands with one another. But once television became the sports primary broadcast medium, players began to celebrate in ways that fans expected them to: glove-throwing, teammate-assaulting, dogpiles, etc. They began to perform.So in one sense, the game-winning batters role ends the moment he reaches first base safely. In another, though, his role goes on long after the run scores. A camera will be isolated on him to capture his raised arms, his fist pumps, and, eventually, his disappearance under a flood of teammates. So what we see from Dietrich is pointless to the game but very important to the show. He keeps running partly because a triple is more exciting than a double, and partly because, with his team in the third-base dugout, he is really running to join them in merriment as they run to join him in merriment. For this latter detail, the existence of third base is irrelevant, a vestigial prop that he happens to pass on his way to the party. Third base is just a step on the way to showing off his torso, which, wow, check out that torso.Explanation 6: But third base is not totally perfunctory, either. Dietrich gives away his motives at 0:34 in that clip, when he takes a split-second glance at the bag before he reaches it. Hes going to make sure he touches it. He doesnt need to, but hes going to make sure he does. Thats because Dietrich cares about his slugging percentage. Ultimately, this is the explanation that probably holds the truest in all of these cases: Baseball players care about their slugging percentage. Maybe that extra base wont get him any more money in arbitration, and maybe that extra base wont be the one that makes him the Marlins all-time leader in slugging percentage. But your vote probably wont swing the presidential election, and you still vote, right? Derek Dietrich is voting for Derek Dietrichs slugging percentage. There are worse crimes.Thanks to Darin Padur, who has served as an official scorekeeper for major league and Triple-A games since 1992, for help with the scoring details. NFL Jerseys Wholesale . JOHNS, N. Wholesale Cheap Jerseys .05 million next season unless Graham and the Saints subsequently agree on a long-term deal. The designation was released Monday after the deadline passed for NFL teams to use franchise or transition tags on players becoming free agents. http://www.wholesalejerseyschinanflcheap.com/ . The 15th-ranked Canadian men lost the opening two games of their European tour: 19-15 to No. 17 Georgia and 21-20 to No. ARLINGTON, Texas -- Texas Rangers reliever Jeremy Jeffress, twice suspended in the minor leagues for violating drug rules, was away from the team Friday following his overnight arrest in Dallas on a drunken driving charge.The club placed Jeffress on the restricted list before a game against Cleveland, but general manager Jon Daniels said he expected the former Milwaukee closer acquired in a trade Aug. 1 to be back with the team Saturday.Daniels said the AL West leaders were exploring the matter while Dallas police and Major League Baseball also conducted investigations.Im glad no one was hurt from it, Daniels said. I dont want to minimize the severity of what couldve happened. Beyond that, we need to get our arms around some more of the specifics regarding the due process.A Dallas police spokesman said an officer made a traffic stop at 2:24 a.m. Friday and arrested the 28-year-old Jeffress after detecting a sign of intoxication.Online records for the Dallas County jail show he was booked around 5:15 a.m. on a driving while intoxicated charge and that he was released on $500 bond. No attorney information was available for Jeffress.Daniels said he spoke to Jeffress after the arrest, as did Texas catcher Jonathan Lucroy, the primary player acquired in the trading deadline deal with the Brewers.I know he fights some stuff on the personal level, Lucroy said. Whenever youre dealing with stuff in your personal life like that, that becomes way more importaant than the game. China NBA Jerseys. And we have to help him get through whatever hes trying to get through, to help him be OK in life.The Brewers drafted Jeffress as the 16th selection overall in 2006. The right-hander was suspended for 50 games in 2007 and for 100 games in 2009, both times when he was in the minors.Jeffress made his major league debut with the Brewers in 2010 before getting traded to Kansas City that offseason. He also spent time with Toronto before Milwaukee brought him back as a free agent two years ago.The hard-throwing right-hander became the closer this season, recording 27 of his 28 career saves. As one of the setup men for Texas closer Sam Dyson, Jeffress has no record and no saves with a 4.00 ERA in nine appearances with the Rangers.The arrest came after the first game of a 10-game homestand that includes Cleveland, Seattle and Houston. The Rangers have a slight edge on the Indians for the best record in the AL, while the Mariners and Astros are their top pursuers in the AL West.Theres never a good time for something like this, Daniels said. I dont even want to put it into baseball terms. Im more concerned now in trying to get our arms around the situation and look at the real-life element first, baseball second.To fill Jeffress spot, Texas recalled left-hander Dario Alvarez from Triple-A Round Rock. ' ' '