Forget the 'best' medicine, sometimes laughter is the only medicine
I will always remember the night I set off the smoke alarm by ... cooking microwave popcorn.
In hindsight, I should have known better. Popcorn is notoriously picky when it comes to how much time it needs in the microwave. But minutes later, as the emergency alarms sounded and sleepy summer camp kids came out of their dorms wondering what was going on, only to be met with a gross burnt popcorn smell, there was no going back. I'd messed up.
The biggest mistake, though, was how I didn't laugh at myself for this. No, I felt pretty embarrassed about it. Still do.
Astros pitcher Justin Verlander, though, knows how to sell a ridiculous bit of nonsense when it happens to him. In Wednesday's Game 2 of the World Series, he tumbled all over himself in a baseball pratfall that could have been scored with the "Benny Hill" theme music. That's how ridiculous it was.
Watching at home like the rest of us, Cubs pitcher Yu Darvish took the opportunity to fire off a playful jab of a tweet at Verlander for this one:
Justin.... 🤦♂️. Not doing a lot here to help us dispel the pitchers aren’t athletes thing.https://t.co/Ne5E1FXEe2 https://t.co/5UyZlpLyg9
— ダルビッシュ有(Yu Darvish) (@faridyu) October 24, 2019
A pretty sweet way to enact revenge for Verlander doing the same to him in 2018.
Yu.... 🤦♂️. Not doing a lot here to help us dispel the pitchers aren’t athletes thing. https://t.co/685zoAJzXf
— Justin Verlander (@JustinVerlander) April 27, 2018
Ouch to all of this -- getting owned on Twitter and throwing a baseball DIRECTLY into your shin must hurt, if not physically, then definitely emotionally.
The still images for this sequence are incredible, too:
Verlander obviously didn't make this play, as the ball ricocheted off his shin and rolled a few feet away. But he didn't let this get him down, like I did with my burnt popcorn disaster.
No, Verlander leaned into it:
That, everybody, is how you bounce back from what otherwise was a pretty embarrassing moment. I'd have run to the clubhouse and started crying, probably.
Kudos to Verlander for making the best of it -- and then sailing through the rest of the inning, unscathed by his little adventure around the pitcher's mound.
Adrian Garro joined MLB.com in 2016. Throughout his travels, both Bartolo Colon and Vin Scully have placed their hands on his shoulders. Not at the same time, though. That'd be amazing.
