Baseball is a beautiful game. Sometimes, you get to watch your team perform incredible feats of athletic prowess while wearing tight pants, and sometimes you watch them give up back-back-to-back home runs. That’s America’s pastime, baby!
This chaotic state of life extends to managers, too. They’re just like us! Take, for example, this spring training game that the Phillies played against the Tigers on Wednesday. In the bottom of the second, Phillies pitcher Jesús Luzardo loaded the bases with two outs. In the dugout, his manager Rob Thomson was on the air, wearing a pop-star microphone while a camera stared directly at him. As a result, we got to watch him watch Luzardo give up not one, not two, but three home runs on three consecutive pitches.
On the third home run, you can see Thomson grimace. His face is somewhere between agony and a smile. It is funny, after all, to be on a live mic while your new pitcher gives up three rockets to left field. What’s a coach to do?
“I’d have to go back and look, but it looked like the pitches were probably out in the middle of the plate,” he said on the broadcast. “But you know … he’s getting his work in.”
That’s for sure something he’s doing, as is the rest of the team. Spring training is for everyone, and as a coach, it is important for Thomson to work on his poker face, so that maybe on prime time in the late innings in October, if Luzardo allows a home run, he won’t grimace. His face will stay solid as a rock. He will show no feeling. He, too, is getting his work in.
