Holy God Damn, Colton Cowser

They don’t give style points in baseball, but if you were scoring Orioles-Rockies, you’d want to break out a second, third, maybe even a fourth color of pen to decorate the box with Colton Cowser’s ninth-inning catch to save the game for Baltimore. Maybe some tempera as well. You can’t make that “F8” pretty enough.

All home-run robberies are special, but they come in flavors. On most, the fielder is totally vertical—having had time to settle on the track for a towering fly ball, and lofting himself at the right moment to haul it in. On Cowser’s grand larceny of Jake McCarthy, he had no time to plan it, no time to set. He was at a full sprint back, and hurled himself into the wall, and as he reeled in what would have been a game-winning home run, his legs were scissored outward, his momentum back instead of up. Barely controlled ballet. O’s manager Craig Albernaz called it “the best play I’ve ever seen.” Dare you dissent?