Manny Margot adds to the list of great MLB playoff catches

A list of the enemies Manny Margot has recently overcome:

1. Gravity
2. The sun
3. Petco Park’s inconsiderate architects
4. The Houston Astros

Obviously, the most dangerous of these enemies — is gravity. Sure, the sun is powerful, but it’s only powerful because of gravity in the first place. Gravity’s grasp stretches across the whole damn universe, forming stars and planets and all sorts of exotic phenomena (look up magnetars sometime. You’re welcome). It also impinges significantly on baseball games.

The sun, meanwhile, is the king of the solar system, but you’d have to subscribe wholeheartedly to the Amarna heresy to deny that it can also pretty significantly mess with baseball games. It’s bright, it’s in the sky, obscuring fly balls with its obnoxious, blinding, life-giving light.

Petco Park’s designers, meanwhile, considered it appropriate to build a fairly low right field wall followed immediately by a six-foot or so drop onto what looks awfully like concrete. Normally this does not matter in baseball games, but it matters for Manny Margot.

The Houston Astros, meanwhile, are Margot’s most tangible enemies. The Astros are opposing Margot’s Tampa Bay Rays in the 2020 ALCS, standing between the Margot and the World Series. The specific enemy, in this case, is fellow outfielder George Springer, who hit a lazy fly ball into right field. And then this happened:

Gravity? Nah. The sun? Dealt with. The concrete-happy architects providing him with the least-comfortable landing possible? The ball stayed in the glove; their fiendish ploy has failed. The Houston Astros? They’re just going to have to be sad. The rest of us, meanwhile, get to watch this absurd catch on loop for days.

(Margot seems to be 100 percent ok, for anyone freaked out by that big drop.)