A pitcher caught a baseball with his shirt. … A team scored 20 runs in an inning on three hits. … A man who never saw a pitch scored two runs. … And did you know it’s possible to challenge a pitch, and wake up those robot umpires, by accident?
We’ll cover all of that and lots more in his brand new edition of the Weird and Wild column. But first, let’s head for Wrigley Field and …
Feel the goosebumps
It’s a major motion picture just waiting to happen. Remember how “Angels in the Outfield” once turned into an all-time Hollywood baseball classic? Well, here at Weird and Wild World Productions, have we got a sequel for you. Get ready for …
“Geese in the Outfield,” coming soon to an ivy-covered theater near you.
We even got a sneak preview Monday night at Wrigley Field. And we knew we were onto something, if only because … the whole audience got (what else?) goosebumps.
All it took was one look at an athletic, baseball-loving Canada goose, waddling around the outfield in the third inning, and Wrigley couldn’t have rocked with more energy if that goose had burst into song and led the crowd in a rendition of “Go, Cubs, Go.”
So is America ready for this epic Hollywood production, endearing folks around the continent to Chicago’s most lovable fowl ball?
“You mean some kind of Disney animated picture – like ‘The Goose that Played Left Field?’ Why not?” said friend of the column Jim Deshaies, who was calling that Cubs-Phillies game for Marquee Sports Network when the goose hit the fan. “I think that works:
“‘Hey, pal-ly, you’re in left tonight.’
“‘Yeah, I’m down with that.’
“Boom. Roll out all the dad jokes.”
C’mon, who the heck wouldn’t be down with that? Our only fear is, it’s also possible that before we can cast this goose in our studio-row blockbuster, some big-league team could sign him as a defensive specialist.
Seriously. If you watched that goose amble into short left field as Michael Busch dug into the box Monday, you might even have thought: Could he possibly be any worse out there than Manny Ramirez?
“His defensive instincts were really good,” Deshaies said. “Because he started out kind of shallow, more in right-center. But then, when Bushy got up there, he shifted over (into short left). He was playing him as an oppo-field hitter, and Michael hit the ball right over his head. It looked like he was a little too shallow, but Mike was able to dump one in there between the goose and the left fielder.”
So as Busch’s single floated above the goose’s outstretched beak, Deshaies provided the kind of sage multi-species analysis he’s known for.
“The goose,” he said, on live TV, “had him played right.”
Well, maybe that was no accident. Had this goose taken a peak at the defensive-positioning card? Who can prove he hadn’t?
“I think he had the card tucked underneath his tail feathers,” Deshaies told Weird and Wild. “He’s coachable. He’s a coachable goose.”
Then, as the baseball floated by, the goose took off. Literally. Just proved all the scouting reports that said: “He can fly.”
“Great burst,” Deshaies agreed. “I was looking at his Baseball Savant page, and he doesn’t get great jumps. But once he gets going, yeah, he can really fly.”
In fact, he can literally fly. And you don’t hear that much at the old ballpark.
🚨GOOSE ON THE LOOSE AT WRIGLEY🚨
(via @aokstott) pic.twitter.com/vj7ZBgYpHo
— OnPattison (@OnPattison) April 21, 2026
Then Deshaies had another inspired idea. How about a race: The goose versus, say, Pete Crow-Armstrong. Love it. So before that duel arrives on some betting board, you should ask yourself: Which of those two should you throw a few bird-seed pellets on if that race ever happens?
“Well, I think the goose,” Deshaies said. “You’ve got to give the goose a little bit of a head start and let it get up to speed. In a short burst, PCA is going to win. But over the long haul, I’ll take the goose. You know, at our place in New York (State), on the river, we get a billion geese down there. So I’m very familiar with their work. They’re tough to bet against.”
It’s also important, if we’re going to make this flick, that we pay tribute to the long line of “Gooses” in baseball history: Goose Gossage, Goose Goslin, Goose Tatum, Greg Goossen and that other famed Canada Goose, Tom Henke. So no wonder this goose was drawn to Wrigley. Almost all of those famous baseball Geese played there once.
“Well, if you were a goose, you would not go to a football stadium,” Deshaies said. “You would go to a ballpark. You know, we use ‘goose eggs’ in the parlance of baseball: ‘He’s stringing up a bunch of goose eggs on the scoreboard.’ Now, (with our star attraction waddling to the mound) we actually could.”
Of course, if we’re going down that road, we should recognize there’s competition for stardom in baseball’s animal kingdom. Heck, there was a rat scampering around Wrigley the very next night. But Deshaies has seen them all come and go — the bees, the seagulls, the cats, the squirrels, the rodents and now … the geese.
Since it’s NFL Draft week in America, how could I not then ask Deshaies: “So if we held a draft of baseball wildlife, which of those would be your first pick? The commissioner steps to the podium and says: `With the first pick in the baseball wildlife draft, Jim Deshaies picks … ?’”
“Oh, the Canada Goose,” Deshaies said, proudly. “Obviously.”
“I mean, I know there’s a recency bias here, but I really enjoyed watching that goose just walk across the field,” he told us draftniks. “He had the neck bob, and there was just an arrogance. There’s a confidence about that goose that I don’t think I’ve seen from any other wildlife.”
So here at Weird and Wild World Productions, we ask: How could you not take the kids to the premiere of “Geese in the Outfield?” Our star literally has it all. The beak. The feathers. The confidence. The defensive savvy. And never forget: He can flat out fly.
Michael Busch hit a single that scared off a goose at Wrigley Field. #MLB pic.twitter.com/u9oRETrNtx
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 21, 2026
Trivia time!
It’s time to debut a spectacular new feature of the Weird and Wild column – trivia!
Here’s this week’s question: Jose Altuve just became the third player, whose career began in the 2000s, to play at least 2,000 regular-season games, all for one team. Can you name the other two? (Answer at the bottom of the column.)
Trout fishing in the Bronx
Mike Trout put on a show in New York. Not many Yankees in history have matched his five homers in a series. (Dustin Satloff / Getty Images)
Normally, if you were on a quest to find the finest trout in America, you’d head for, say, the Bighorn River. But not this month. You should have just pointed your rod and reel toward the Bronx, where Mike Trout was doing things that did not involve swimming upstream.
From April 13-16, the Angels were at Yankee Stadium. It might have been the most fun series any two teams have played all season. A dude named Aaron Judge hit four home runs in those four games — and he wasn’t even the best hitter on the field.
That’s because Trout also stopped by, jumped in his time machine and one-upped Judge, which isn’t easy. Trout homered in all four games of the series, and bashed five altogether. It was the first series in which two multi-time MVPs hit at least four apiece since a Mickey Mantle-Roger Maris bomb-fest in 1962.
But Judge gets plenty of attention. So what do you say we focus on Trout?
Change for a Five — This edition of Yankee Stadium opened in 2009. Want to guess how many players had ever hit five homers in a series at this Yankee Stadium — for the Yankees or against the Yankees? As always, zero would be an excellent guess.
Stop by the Visitors Center — How many other visiting players do you think have ever hit five home runs in one series (of four games or shorter) in any edition of Yankee Stadium, dating all the way back to 1923? Again, don’t be afraid to guess zero, because you’d be absolutely correct.
George Bell, Darrell Evans and Jimmie Foxx did hit five against the Yankees in a series through the years, but you know where those games happened? Not in New York, of course.
Yankee Doodle — Once I got through digging that up, I asked myself a really fun question: How many Yankees have hit five in one series (again, four games or shorter) at any version of The Stadium?
All right, so this answer is not zero. But it won’t take long to spit out the list.
• It’s happened once in the last 60 years: Darryl Strawberry, 1996.
• It’s happened twice in the last 70 years: Strawberry and Mickey Mantle, 1965.
• It’s happened three times in the last 80 years: Strawberry, Mantle and Yogi Berra. 1955.
And that’s not just weird (and wild). It means it’s time for one final list …
Are We Forgetting Somebody — So if that’s the complete group of players who have hit five homers in a series at any incarnation of Yankee Stadium, that means some pretty freaking famous Yankees didn’t hit five home runs (or more) in any series they ever played there. Just for fun, let’s run through a few of them you might have heard of:
Aaron Judge
Giancarlo Stanton
Derek Jeter
Alex Rodriguez
Don Mattingly
Reginald M. Jackson
Roger Maris
Joe DiMaggio
(You get the idea)
Who? Oh, them. So all those Yankees legends never did this. But a man who doesn’t play for the Yankees just did. His name is Trout. And he just put on a show for the ages.
ABS-olutely challenging
It’s been two weeks since the last edition of this column. So as a public service, it’s time to recap more Great Moments in Robot Umpiring.
Accidents Will Happen — Nothing we love more around here than an accidental challenge. So how great was this: The Pirates’ Bubba Chandler threw a first-inning pitch to the Cubs’ Moisés Ballesteros on April 12, then inadvertently tugged the back of his cap. But it sure looked advertent to plate ump Alan Porter … who announced Chandler had challenged the call.
And then … a hilarious thing happened as Chandler was frantically trying to signal that he wasn’t challenging anything: He won the challenge!
Well… this is a new one! 🫨
Bubba accidentally challenged a pitch by adjusting his cap, but he ended up winning it 🤣 🧢 pic.twitter.com/xM3mTUyqvO
— SportsNet Pittsburgh (@SNPittsburgh) April 12, 2026
Accidents Will Happen, Part 2 — When we say we can’t take our eyes off Shohei Ohtani, that’s not always a good thing! He, too, tugged his cap after his first pitch of the game in an April 8 start in Toronto. And this time, it was his catcher, Will Smith, who thought: I guess he wants to challenge.
Whoops! This pitch was nearly 2 inches below the zone. Asked afterward what he thought of that accidental challenge, Ohtani quipped: “I thought it was a ball.”
With the new ABS challenge system, I’ve been wondering how often something like this would become an issue 😅
Ohtani went to adjust his hat, but Will Smith thought he was asking for a challenge and tapped his head to confirm. pic.twitter.com/UvqFmrj8wk
— Michaela Bennett (@MichaelaB_22) April 8, 2026
One Challenge, Two Pitchers — And now for something completely different — a challenge that turned a strikeout by one pitcher into a walk by another pitcher!
Follow this closely, because it will make your brain explode. In the ninth inning of Thursday’s Cubs-Phillies game, the Phillies’ Trea Turner challenged a 3-2 pitch thrown by Riley Martin. If he’d lost that challenge, he would have struck out against Martin. Instead …
Turner won that challenge, which meant he’d just drawn a walk against a pitcher who wasn’t even on the field at the time. Got all that? The guy who was charged with “issuing” that walk was Cubs reliever Caleb Thielbar, who missed the whole thing because he’d just left with an injury in the middle of this at-bat.
It’s a Tap-off! Once upon a time in baseball, it used to be impossible to win a game with a pat of your head. Boy, are those days done. We had two games end this week via my favorite new baseball thing: the tap-off. That’s a challenge that turns a ball into a game-ending strikeout, and I’m here for it.
The Reds won like that Sunday. The Cubs won like that Wednesday. And since I coined the term “tap-off,” we know what to call it. What’s way harder is how to mark it on your scorecard. Here with that answer is Statcast guru Tom Tango.
Well @dougglanville , we’ve got all 4 rotations for marking a strikeout on a scoresheet… pic.twitter.com/BoW9J1SFIX
— Tangotiger 🍁 (@tangotiger) March 28, 2026
It’s a Double No-Tapper! Finally, just when you thought you’d never see another game without a challenge in your lifetime, we had two of them back-to-back last weekend — involving the same two teams (the Blue Jays and Diamondbacks). The question is what catchy name are we going to use to describe a game with no challenges by anybody.
Luckily, we polled you, our loyal readers, on that very question in the last Weird and Wild column. And that verdict is …
“No-tapper” — 44.9 percent
“Umperfecto”” — 19.9 percent
“ABStention” — 19.9 percent
“No-bot” — 15.2 percent
You people are the best. Thank you. And also, since “no-tapper” was my idea … you’re welcome.
Stuff I can’t believe happened this month
Never mind — Thanks to the miracle of replay, the Phillies’ Adolis García took a home run trot in the middle of a strikeout Wednesday. (Oops! Foul ball upon further review.) And Tuesday, the Marlins’ Jakob Marsee got tagged out at third during a home run trot. (Oops! Upon further review, that ball went over the fence, not off it.) So pretend you never saw this stuff!
Inside out — White Sox rookie Sam Antonacci’s first career homer Tuesday was just your average inside-the-parker that hit the ball boy. (Or at least that was Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s excuse for not chasing it down.)
Beat the clock — Is there a rule that says a team has to have nine defensive players on the field? Apparently, because in the eighth inning of an April 15 game against the Reds, the Giants took the field with no right fielder. So who got penalized for that? Somehow, the pitcher, JT Brubaker, got hit with a clock violation for waiting until Jerar Encarnacion could make it to the outfield.
“He didn’t know where his glove was,” Giants manager Tony Vitello said afterward. “Which would be a lot more funny if we won the game.”
Hang 10 — The Pirates went 41 straight starts without scoring more than five runs in any game while Paul Skenes was on the mound. And then, in an April 13 game against Washington, they scored 10 in one inning, because … baseball!
This Week in Useless Info
Parker Messick’s no-hit bid against the Orioles on April 16 was broken up in the ninth. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)
Just since their last no-hitter (in 1981) … the Guardians/Indians have won five Cy Young Awards! (That’s two by Corey Kluber, and one from each of CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee and Shane Bieber). But every time they take a no-hitter into the ninth, somebody breaks it up. But maybe they’ll enjoy hearing that …
Just since their last Cy Young Award (to Jack McDowell in 1993) … the White Sox have thrown five no-hitters! (That’s two by Mark Buehrle, one by each of Carlos Rodón, Lucas Giolito and Philip Humber.)
Speaking of the White Sox … Munetaka Murakami just visited scenic West Sacramento for the first time … and hit a home run in all three games of a series against the A’s. So what’s so weird and wild about that?
Over the last 100 years, the White Sox have played the A’s in Oakland, Kansas City and Philadelphia — and nobody on the roster homered three games in a row in the same series in any of those places. But in Murakami’s first three games ever in West Sacramento … yep.
I’ll see your 10 and raise you — How did the Cubs kick off this nine-game winning streak they’re currently riding? By scoring 10 runs, then 11, then 12, in three games against the Phillies and Mets. So when was the last time any Cubs team had a streak of three straight games scoring at least 10 in a game while scoring more runs in each of them than the game before? Of course I had to know.
It happened as recently as … 1930, when they put up 10-11-12 against the Reds. How long ago was that? Rogers Hornsby and Hack Wilson hit two home runs apiece in that streak.
Out-Spidering the Spiders — Here’s how smoothly things are going for the Phillies: Going into their game Thursday, they were allowing a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of — you might want to sit down before you read this — .357!
Does that seem high? You have no idea how high. Only one team in history has allowed a BABIP of .350 or higher over a full season … and it was merely the worst team of all time, Harry Colliflower’s 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who coughed up a .355 BABIP en route to going an attractive 20-134. (Hat tip: my ever-attentive Athletic colleague, Matt Gelb.)
Weeper by the dozen — In other upbeat NL East news …
The Mets — just lost 12 games in a row.
The rest of the NL East — now in their combined 118th season since each of the Mets’ four division rivals had a losing streak that long (65 for the Phillies, 18 for the Nationals, 11 for the Braves and 34 and counting for the Marlins, who somehow have never lost 12 in a row).
Across the RFK/Triborough Bridge — the Yankees are into their 118th season just by themselves since the last time they lost that many games in a row. Wid Conroy’s 1908 Highlanders were the last team to have that tough a fortnight. And how long ago was that team’s 12-game skid? So long that the Yankees franchise had won zero World Series at the time … and the Yankees would then play 53 more seasons of baseball before the Mets even came into the world.
New York, New York — I’m still trying to comprehend what happened when the A’s visited New York this month … and did some weird, wild stuff.
For their first trick, they threw back-to-back shutouts in the same city, but against two different teams — the Yankees on April 9, the Mets on April 10. So did I wonder how long it had been since any team threw back-to-back shutouts in New York but not against the same team? Are you familiar with this column?
So I recruited the great Katie Sharp, of Baseball Reference, to help with this project. And I learned this happened as recently as 101 years ago. Last to do it was Dolf Luque’s 1925 Reds. Rube Benton tossed a July 17 shutout of Brooklyn at Ebbets Field. Then, the next day, Luque did the same to the Giants at the Polo Grounds.
To find the three other times it happened, you’d have to travel back to the dead-ball era: The Reds did it on Aug. 15-16, 1919. The Cubs did it on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, 1909. And the Pirates pulled it off on July 12-13, 1909. All of those teams turned that trick against the Giants and whatever they were calling Brooklyn that year.
For their other astounding trick, the A’s won 1-0 games over both the Yankees and Mets on the same road trip. And let’s just say you don’t see that much.
Baseball Reference’s incredible Kenny Jackelen dug in on that one — and found just one other team in history that won 1-0 games in New York on the same trip against two different teams. That was Burleigh Grimes’ 1917 Pirates, who did it on their most bizarre road trip of the year.
They set out on a 14-game trip — and 11 games into it, they’d won only two of them. Guess which two? Uh-huh. Won a 1-0 game in Brooklyn on Aug. 20. Won another 1-0 special at the Polo Grounds a week later. How they wound up in a 2026 edition of the Weird and Wild column is a testament to the never-ending nuttiness of …
Baseball!
This Week in Strange But Trueness
Elly De La Cruz, a Strange But True regular, strikes again. (Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)
That’s a switch — Reds magician Elly De La Cruz is always a Strange But True phenomenon waiting to happen. So how ’bout this. He’s a switch-hitter — and on Tuesday in Tampa Bay, he hit home runs against a left-handed pitcher and a right-handed pitcher in the same game. But … here comes the Strange But True part …
He did not hit home runs from both sides of the plate.
Wait. What? How? He hit them both right-handed, because he batted right-handed in the ninth against a position player (Ben Williamson), even though Williamson “pitched” right-handed.
So how many times do you think that’s happened in the history of switch-hitting? Amazingly, that answer is not zero. According to Katie Sharp, Ian Happ did it on Aug. 2, 2023 … and Ozzie Albies also did it on June 30, 2021 … both of them because they batted right-handed against a position player. Modern baseball is something, isn’t it?
Why take one when you can grab a dozen — There were two outs in the ninth Monday in Kansas City. The Orioles and Royals were one strike away from a 1-0 game … and then … a 7-5 game busted out. The Orioles tied it in the ninth. Then the teams scored 10 runs in the 11th and 12th. And voila.
Want to guess how many games in history have been one strike (or even one out) away from a 1-0 game and ended up with a dozen runs scored? Once again, zero is a tremendous guess. Hat tip: Kenny Jackelen/Baseball Reference.
Also in that game … the Royals’ Nick Loftin hit a three-run bases-clearing double in extra innings … and his team still lost. Is it me, or does that seem almost impossible?
Oh, it’s possible. Katie Sharp found two other instances in the Baseball Reference database (which is mostly complete back to 1910) of teams that smoked three-run doubles in extra innings and still managed to lose that game.
On Aug. 17, 2022, the Rays got a bases-clearing double from Francisco Mejía in the 10th off Aroldis Chapman — but coughed up that lead in the bottom of the 10th.
And on June 24, 1990, the Padres got a three-run double in the 10th from a pitcher (Dennis Rasmussen, who was pinch-hitting) but still lost to the Braves.
They could have been heroes, but baseball happened.
Strangeness in Slam Diego — If you missed Padres-Rockies, April 9 in San Diego, I’m sorry. This was one of the craziest games you’ll ever see.
All the Padres did was … trail in the 10th and 11th innings … and still win … on a walk-off grand slam (by Xander Bogaerts) in the 12th.
SLAM DIEGO MADNESS
XANDER BOGAERTS WALK-OFF GRAND SLAM 😤 pic.twitter.com/kKJ85kWnfP
— MLB (@MLB) April 10, 2026
But believe it or not, that’s not even the Strangest But Truest part. Here it comes.
The Padres also scored four runs in that 12th inning on three pitches: Zombie runner…sac bunt on the first pitch … intentional walk … intentional walk … slam on the second pitch. What the heck!
So I know what you’re thinking: No way that had ever happened before — by which we mean any of that, right?
Right! Thanks to Katie Sharp, we can report that the Padres are the only team in the Baseball Reference/Retrosheet play-by-play annals to trail in the 10th, trail in the 11th and then win any game on a walk-off slam in the 12th inning or later.
They’re also the only team in the pitch-count era (1988-present) that has ever scored four runs on three pitches (or fewer). That would have been impossible before the no-pitch intentional walk. But is that our problem? Nope!
Where there’s a Will … there’s a Strange But True all-timer. On Sunday in Minnesota, the Reds’ Will Benson didn’t start, but did score two runs. That, of course, wasn’t even close to the Strange But True part.
The Strange But True part is, he never saw a single pitch at the plate.
He scored the first run as a pinch runner. He scored the second after one of those pitch-free intentional walks. Does that seem hard? It seemed so hard to Reds TV stats machine Joel Luckhaupt that he looked it up — and found …
The complete list of players in history to score two runs but see zero pitches consists of …
Will Benson, because that no-pitch intentional walk is the gift that keeps on giving to columns like this.
The old college try (Chapter One) — Ever heard of a pitcher who had a line like this:
2 outs, 1 win, 0 batters faced
No, you have not. Not in the big leagues anyway. But it happened in this Division III game between Muhlenberg and Washington College on April 11.
Here’s how the day went for your winning pitcher, Evan Virno: Arrived in a tie game with one out and two men on in the top of the ninth. Picked off the runner on third for the second out. Then his catcher threw out the runner on second trying to steal third. That’s three outs.
His team then walked it off in the bottom of the ninth. So that was a Strange But True wrap for the most unlikely winning pitcher of 2026. (Hat tip: Sports Info Solutions’ Mark Simon.)
The old college try (Chapter Two) — Ever heard of a team scoring 20 runs in the first inning … on three hits?
Again let’s all sing along: No, you have not (in the big leagues). But this, too, actually happened, in a historic college baseball game — when Lehigh put up 20 runs in the top of the first of an April 14 game at Coppin State.
Want to relive the ridiculous top of the first inning? Of course you do.
Lehigh set an NCAA record for most runs in the top of the 1st inning…
Here’s how it happened 🤯
HBP
BB
HBP
2 RBI 2B
BB
RBI 1B
HBP
HBP
(Pitching change)
K
BB
RBI BB
RBI BB
RBI HBP
RBI HBP
(Pitching change)
RBI BB
BB
RBI BB
RBI BB
RBI BB
(Pitching change)
Grand Slam
F9
6-3… pic.twitter.com/sZQz968Y1A
— DraftKings Sportsbook (@DKSportsbook) April 15, 2026
We’ll recap it so you don’t have to. That’s three pitching changes — and 20 runs — before the first out on a ball in play by either team … not to mention 20 runs on only three balls in play. The combined line for Coppin State’s first three pitchers of the day – Mekenna Wakakuwa, Jack Joyce and Aaden Lopez:
1/3 IP, 2 H, 19 R, 19 ER, 11 BB, 1 K, 6 HBP, 3 WP
Honestly, I can’t believe I just typed that! But omg. (Hat tip @ScoringChanges)
Not shirtless in Seattle — And finally, there was always-innovative Mariners ace Logan Gilbert, who performed this Strange But True magic trick on Wednesday night.
What happens if a baseball gets caught in a jersey?
Mariners pitcher Logan Gilbert found out firsthand that it counts as a base hit 😳
🎥 @DKramer_ pic.twitter.com/WPzW83kmF1
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) April 22, 2026
What just happened? You could say he caught that ball with his shirt. Or you could say that ball caught him in his shirt. But the best way to frame it all is to quote the late, great White Sox broadcast witticist, Ed Farmer, after something similar happened one night in a Sox game:
“Here’s my question,” Farmer told me. “Should he send that shirt to the cleaners — or the Hall of Fame?”
Ha. Perfect. But now here’s my question: How great is …
Baseball!
Trivia answer!
Yadier Molina — 2,226 games (Cardinals)
Joey Votto — 2,056 games (Reds)
Great guesses but sorry: Joe Mauer (1,858 for the Twins) and Todd Helton (1,901 for the Rockies).