Photo : Ted S. Warren ( AP Photo

You can keep your filthy “dingers,” your “dongs,” your “mashed taters,” you damn dirty apes! Corkscrew yourselves into hell for all I care! Give me a ruthless speedster thieving his way around the bases, as the Mariners’ Mallex Smith did to the pathetic Rangers in the bottom of the eighth inning last night in Seattle:



That’s three stolen bases in one trip around the bases for Smith, who finished the 6-2 Mariners win with four steals and is my favorite baseball player for at least the rest of today. After drawing a walk off Kyle Bird, Smith snatched second base on the very next pitch, beating a throw from catcher Jeff Mathis. Two pitches after that, he swiped third, again easily ahead of Mathis’s throw. A few pitches (and a Mitch Haniger walk) later, Bird foolishly threw over to first to keep Haniger on the bag, and Smith, who’d taken a walking lead off third, broke for home, easily beating Ronald Guzman’s throw.


I hope Bird and Mathis sobbed themselves to sleep. I hope they had nightmares about the mighty Mallex Smith sprinting through their homes, stealing the food off their dinner plates. Stealing their dogs! You don’t deserve the unconditional loyalty of a dog if Mallex Smith is out here mercilessly snatching bases away from you on television!

In conclusion, it rules when baseball players steal bases, it rules extra hard when they steal consecutive bases, and stealing home is one of the most savage things a professional athlete can do in a professional sports contest. Stealing your way around the bases in one go should be an automatic Nobel Prize. In my opinion, there should be more of this, and fewer strikeouts.