Have you ever done something that teetered on the brink of disaster, but in the end worked out perfectly? Maybe you started a grease fire in your kitchen, but managed to put it out and the char really made those burgers taste delicious. White Sox outfielder Avisail Garcia did the equivalent of that on Friday, nearly screwing up a great catch multiple times but he still walked away with a double play.
It all started when the Cubs Dexter Fowler hit a sinking line drive to right field. Garcia came up with an excellent sliding catch. He flawlessly completed the most difficult part of the play. That's where things got interesting. Garcia lost the ball on the transfer, which led to confusion among the Cubs' baserunners on whether it was a catch. Kyle Hendricks ran to third thinking it wasn't a catch. Addison Russell hustled back to first base thinking it was a catch.
Garcia came up firing back to the infield trying to double off Russell, but launched a terrible throw that was some 10 feet off target. White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu couldn't corral it and it would have ended up in the dugout if not for some fencing. Instead, catcher Tyler Flowers gathered it and threw it to second base to double off Hendricks who was still at third base.
The Cubs challenged the ruling, but it was upheld as a catch, thus creating your run of the mill 9-2-6 double play.