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In a moment of profound muscle confusion, Ronald Belisario forgot how to float an easy outside ball while attempting to intentionally walk Michael Brantley at the end of Monday night’s game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cleveland Indians.

Facing a two-run deficit with runners on second and third, Belisario lofted a high-arcing ball of yarn wide of the plate. All 5’10” of Rene Rivera attempted to reel in the wild pitch, but the ball sailed past his glove and skipped to the backstop, bringing home Jason Kipnis from third.

The bizarre mistake helped Cleveland turn the game into a 7-1 rout. Best of all, Kipnis looked completely winded after running from third to home.

I made a bumper sticker to celebrate your 90-foot race, Jason: 

Good job. Good effort.

Dan is on Twitter. 26.2 is just the number of chicken nuggets he can eat in a sitting.

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The air horn prank, as a means of terrifying people, is one of the more reliable scare tactics in the anarchist playbook.

The target is alarmed, no one is punched in the neck (usually) and everyone goes home with a fun, dull ringing in their ears.

Of course, combining the air horn with any other number of surprising elements only adds to the pants-soiling factor, as Minnesota Twins bullpen coach Eddie Guardado found out after Monday night’s 13-2 evisceration of the Chicago White Sox.

Guardado stepped near his locker after the post-blowout revelry and was quickly blasted across the room by what I can only assume was a Coast Guard-certified air signaler.

Twins pitcher Glen Perkins captured video of the prank. Guardado threw up the Dez Bryant “X” and ran off. He might still be running.

MLB.com’s Michael Clair and Rhett Bollinger hypothesize pitcher Brian Duensing (originator of the locker room air horn prank) was behind the sneak attack.

Pray for Guardado, and pour some out for his collapsed eardrums.

Dan is on Twitter. He learned how to harness the power of the air horn drive-by in high school.

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With the game on the line and an opponent in scoring position, first-year Texas Rangers pitcher Keone Kela made a mistake that cost his team Thursday night’s game against the Dodgers.

In the bottom of the ninth with Jimmy Rollins at the plate and pinch runner Kike Hernandez on third, home plate umpire Marvin Hudson and first-base ump Jim Joyce called Kela for a balk after a slight but noticeable twitch of the shoulder while preparing to throw.

Kela’s balk brought Hernandez home and sealed a 1-0 win for the Dodgers. 

Hernandez, a fellow rookie, told the Associated Press (h/t USA Today) he faked a run to home in the hopes of disrupting Kela’s concentration—and the ploy worked.

“I just tried to do something to distract the pitcher,” Hernandez said. “I faked him, and he fell for it.”

Rangers manager Jeff Banister knew his pitcher had committed the infraction and accepted the call on the field.

“I didn’t need for them to tell me. We could see it,” Banister said. “You could see [Hernandez’s] little fake-break down the line, and you saw the little shoulder turn by Leone (sic). It was a balk.”

Yep. Rules are rules, and although Kela’s balk amounted to little more than a nervous shudder, it’s enough to count as a break in his approach.

According to the MLB, the Dodgers’ 1-0 win marks the first time in at least 42 seasons a team has won a game with the lone run coming on a balk.

So yes, this is clearly not Kela’s finest moment.

On the other hand, the 22-year-old has fared decently in his first season as a major leaguer. He’s 4-4 on the mound so far and recorded his first MLB save Wednesday against the Dodgers despite being thrust into the role of closer.

So chin up, Kela. And keep a stiff upper arm.

Dan is on Twitter. He thinks balk is a funny word. 

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Typically a harbinger of all things joyful and good, Yasiel Puig took an angry turn during the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 4-1 loss to the Texas Rangers on Monday night.

After a resurgent return from the disabled list, the Dodgers outfielder struck out three times in four at-bats, with his final go at the dish ending in frustration and a shattered bat.

After going down swinging with two men on base in the eighth, Puig turned from the plate and snapped his bat over his knee.

Puig would quickly add to the carnage, according to the Associated Press (h/t FoxSports.com), by tossing the broken bat and shattering a light in the tunnel behind the Dodgers dugout.

After the game, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said Puig‘s bat-snapping was an understandable but dangerous way to metabolize a rough night at the dish.

“I think anyone, obviously, in a big situation, you want to get a hit. He didn’t and he reacted,” Mattingly said. “I’d probably rather see a bat flip than a bat break. I don’t want anyone to injure themselves. That’s the only thing I worry about when slamming helmets or slamming bats.”

Puig‘s woes derailed his hot streak.

Prior to Monday night, he was hitting .481 and had knocked a homer and three doubles in his past seven games. Puig will look to bounce back Tuesday night against probable Rangers starter Chi Chi Gonzalez.

Dan is on Twitter. Flips over breaks all day.

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Tom Willis, a man born without arms, crushed the ceremonial first pitch before Monday night’s game between the Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park.

Stepping to the mound sans socks and shoes, Willis delivered a barefoot strike over home plate all the way from the rubber.

This isn’t the first time Willis has thrown heat with his bare feet. A motivational speaker for Pitch for Awareness, he’s traveled across the United States tossing out first pitches and speaking on his unique life journey.

So yes, Willis is a pretty impressive guy—and somewhere, 50 Cent is watching this footage and weeping.

Dan is on Twitter. He could only hope to have such solid mechanics.

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The Toronto Blue Jays and Washington Nationals locked horns in a low-scoring matchup Tuesday afternoon.

Virtually no one got on base, partially due to Josh Donaldson doing his best Nightcrawler routine out there.

The Blue Jays third baseman awkwardly snagged a chopper off Danny Espinosa’s bat, adjusted the ball and threw him out at first in one smooth motion.

Easy peasy.

Dan is on Twitter. He didn’t use his glove or nothing, Jesus.

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The New York Yankees spanked the Seattle Mariners 7-2 Monday night, thanks largely to a nuclear meltdown by Felix Hernandez.

After three innings of solid pitching, Hernandez buckled under some unseen force and began handing out walks, one of which Alex Rodriguez gladly accepted to advance to first in the fourth inning.

Of course, being 39, Rodriguez requires a little oiling to keep the hinges moving, and the Yankees designated hitter applied liberal amounts of stretching and aerobics while waiting at first base.

It’s like looking back at an Olivia Newton-John video:

Notice Rodriguez’s finishing move at the end—a hard adjustment of the peach tree. You can’t stay aero with things running loosey-goosey on you. Rodriguez appreciates that, and while he’s definitely the one major leaguer who jogs in place at stop lights, he sticks to his routine.

Also, A-Rod had more hits than Robinson Cano last night. He may be practicing downward dog between innings, but he’s doing something right.

Dan is on Twitter. He prefers the pigeon pose.

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Baseball babies are probably the gnarliest babies.

Not that there’s anything inherently better about baseball, but babies at baseball games so often seem to unwittingly find themselves in wild situations.

They dangle in front of dad, not blinking an eye as a sea of arms converge on a baseball flying toward their face. Once the baseball is theirs, they lick it or throw it back. They’re objectively great babies.

So it came as no surprise to see another hardcore baseball baby in the stands watching the Atlanta Braves get smacked around by the San Francisco Giants on a chilly night at AT&T Park on Thursday.

Cut4 posted a GIF of the child, who was weathering the cold and his Braves’ 7-0 shellacking by chilling in his father’s jersey like a papoose. He’s not bothered. He’s just bobbing his head to the good vibes of the Bay Area.

Solid baseball baby? Solid baseball baby.

Dan is on Twitter. Baseball babies stay winning.

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The span of an inch or two made all the difference for Carlos Gomez on Sunday.

The Milwaukee Brewers outfielder found himself flattened at home plate after taking a 97-mph Noah Syndergaard fastball to the head during the sixth inning of his team’s 5-1 loss to the New York Mets.

Syndergaard lost control trying to run a heater up and in on the righty, and the ball caught Gomez square in the face guard of his batter’s helmet. That material was all that prevented a Giancarlo Stanton-esque nightmare from playing out at Citi Field, and the outfielder managed to pass the concussion protocol after leaving the game for evaluation.

The scary incident was purely accidental, and Syndergaard’s first remark after the game was to relay a message of concern for Gomez’s well-being, per the Associated Press (h/t FoxSports.com).

“I hope Gomez is OK,” Syndergaard said. “It’s never really happened. [The accident] kind of rattled me a little bit.”

Images emerged of Gomez’s post-fastball face. He had a red temporary tattoo in the shape of a face protector imprinted on his jaw and cheek:

Now, traditional baseball man-law decrees that this incident should belch forth into existence a pointless blood feud between Milwaukee and the Mets—a hateful war of attrition that must be continually stoked with beanballs, bruised hips and mound-charges until no one can remember how it even started in the first place.

Not the case here. In a mutual showing of sportsmanship, Gomez and Syndergaard exchanged kind words on Twitter and put the incident behind them:

And that’s how grown-ups handle themselves.

Dan is on Twitter. If you use a special cheat code, you can say nice things to people on social media. It’s crazy.

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The Philadelphia Phillies had a nice, productive outing against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday. 

Riding the emotional wave of surviving the Mountain on Friday, Philadelphia’s bats and pitching collaborated to lay down a 6-0 blanking of Arizona, completing a three-game homestand sweep of its Western guests.

It was mostly a heartening performance, save for a weird accident that left pitcher Sean O’Sullivan massaging a bruised jugular.

After sailing a fastball in the top of the sixth, O’Sullivan took a moment to rue his rotten luck and pound his glove. In this moment, catcher Cameron Rupp threw the ball back to his unprepared pitcher, who caught it flush in the Adam’s apple.

And here it is, the face you make after taking a baseball to the throat:

Fortunately, O’Sullivan was uninjured and managed to close out the inning.

After the game, he told the media the shot had felt like a full-on sucker punch to the neck, per the Philadelphia Daily News‘ David Murphy:

It’s like I got punched in the throat from around the corner. It was kind of shocking. And then I realized, ‘OK, I can’t breathe and there’s runners on base so I have to go get this ball and then hope someone calls time out real fast.’ But after a couple minutes, it kind of eased up a little bit.

On the bright side, O’Sullivan earned the win with six scoreless innings pitched and sealed the Phillies’ sweep of the Diamondbacks.

Head on a swivel, guys.

Dan is on Twitter. Hell is a baseball to the throat.

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