I love it when baseball gets weird. Shifts were fun when they were weird. Now they are normal.
This is not be a complete list. Please add your own in the comments. I do not own any Jomboy stock but I think he does an amazing job so that’s most of the links.
5 infielders. 4 outfielders. Pitchers moving to RF for a batter, then pitching again. Running out of players in extra inning games. Long long extra inning games in general.
Bunting with 2 strikes. Bases-loaded hit-and-runs. Trick plays. Hidden ball plays.
Decoys.
Walking Bonds with nobody on. Walking Bonds with bases loaded. Bonds throwing to the plate.
Fights. Izzy Alcantara . Robin Ventura. Don Zimmer. Ozzie Smith and Jose Oquendo vs Will Clark. Tarps vs Vince Coleman. Bautista vs Rougned. Beltre vs Andrus. Garrett and puig
Strickland and Harper. Papelbon and Harper.
Disco Demolition Night. Fans on the field (probably good thing that got stopped. Thanks 1980’s Mets fans!)
Dugout shenanigans. Hot foots. Gum on hats. Rally caps. Players ignoring 1st HR hitters. Players going into the clubhouse for Bartolo.
Anything Bartolo. Cecil and Prince. Rob Deer. Dave Kingman. Adam Dunn. Richie Sexson. Javy Baez. Ichiro and Vlad (throwing only) Actually, anything Ichiro or Vlad. Puig. Soto.
Joey Gathright. Billy Hamilton. Billy Crystal. Chris Gaines.
Juanpierrewood. Nick Castellanos’ timely HRs.
Candlestick Park (at least on TV). Coors Field pre humidor. Pools in the bleachers. Marlin’s Fish HR thing. The hill in Houston. Ivy. Green Monster (although the 3 foot RF fence is more fun to me). Wind blowing out at Wrigley. Polo Grounds. Not Yankee Stadium.
Chuck Knoblauch. Rick Ankiel. Rick Ankiel becoming an outfielder and making throws.
Cardinal section: Infield fly rule. Pop-ups dropping fair and nobody except Paul Goldschmidt knowing the rules. Don Denkinger. Hunter Pence. A double double steal. Anything Willie McGee.
Bill Lee. Dontrelle Willis. Hideo Nomo. Luis Tiant. Fernandomania. Chad Bradford. Antonio Alfonseca. Mitch Williams. Tug McGraw. Al Hrabosky. Dan Quizzenberry.
Greg Maddux games.
Hitters pitching. Pitchers hitting when hitters pitch.
John Kruk hitting right-handed vs Randy Johnson. Randy Johnson hitting the bird. Johnson staredown over the glove. Bob Gibson. Goose Gossage.
Two sport players. Bo. Deion Sanders. Brian Jordan. Michael Jordan. Two way players. Ohtani. Switch pitchers.
Anything Jim Abbott. What an amazing pitcher and story.
Well, sometimes sim baseball gets weird. Some people may call these ‘bugs’, but I think they add character. I’m proud to have managed a team that won a World Series 5-2.
I’ve recently had a couple happen. One is old. A walk-off triple with two or three runners on base when only 1 run is required. Where do the extra runner(s) go?
One was new. A groundout where the batter was out at home. If this was a fun addition, I’m all for it. I’m not advocating time building these things, but 1B to pitcher putouts are common, pitcher unassisted is less, 2B to pitcher even less. But it’s neat when it happens in real life and it would be fun to ‘catch’ a rare one in the game too. Explaining how that particular play happened is part of the fun.
Oddities and Weirdness can be fun. Except for runners not scoring from 3rd on double plays. That’s just silly.