Something Must Cause Every Trip

Things kept happening.

A lot of things happen after I write a post that I wish had happened before I wrote that post. We can pout about it, or we can agree that an occasional update post, with further/weirder examples of things we’ve previously discussed, is just fine. This is that post.

1. MORE SLAPSTICK IN 2025
I went into 2025 seeing how long it would take me to see a ballplayer trip for no reason. It took my 77 days before Bryan Woo, the Mariners’ very athletic pitcher, stumbled on nothing and nearly fell. This:

I definitely think that met my standard, which was “not slipping—a classic trip, where feet get tangled up and the guy trips for no apparent cause.” But I was on Effectively Wild toward the end of the year and Ben argued that this wasn’t pure enough. Ben: “I quibble with whether that was for NO reason. I think it was not a completely unforced trip. He was performing a baseball activity. He was doing an athletic move. He wasn’t just walking. He was in the midst of making a play. There was time pressure.”

I don’t know how unforced a mistake has to be before I’m allowed to point and laugh and try to draw some inspiration from it. That one wasn’t good enough for Ben. But how about this one, by Bob Seymour, in August?

/points

Hahahahahahahahaha.

I can already anticipate Ben’s objection: Seymour didn’t trip on nothing. He tripped on first base. Maybe, but that’s a bit of a generous interpretation. I don’t think he did, exactly. I’ve slowed this way down, and stopped it at the relevant point, so that you can see that he’s standing straight up at first base, totally balanced, his momentum stopped. The fall comes after that:

Clearly, something caused it. Something must cause every trip. Objects don’t deviate from their path unless acted upon by an outside force. But I don’t blame the base here. I think Seymour simply slid one foot out from under himself. It’s not clear what kind of move he was trying to do.

Hilariously, this error was, correctly, issued to the second baseman, who had already and independently botched his part of the play. If you’re going about your life constantly worried that you’re going to make some silly mistake that ruins everything, let this be heartening: Any mistake you make has probably been preceded by somebody else’s mistake, or billions of peoples’ billions of mistakes. You’re not the reason the world is falling apart. It was falling apart before you ever got here. I find this inspiring.

2. MORE BAT VIOLENCE IN 2025
I wrote about hitters in 2025 letting go of their bats at the very end of their follow-throughs, resulting in full bats flying right at an umpire’s head, terrifyingly.

This update isn’t about that exact thing—the hitter Thomas Saggese is still holding onto his bat, sort of, at the end of this swing—but it is still a bat flying right at an umpire’s head, terrifyingly. Headphones up!