Hurry! Oops Bracket voting ends at 5 p.m. ET
You’ve laughed at baseball bloopers for years. But this week, eight of the most hilarious bloopers in history could help you win some serious prizes.
In the MLB Oops Bracket presented by Mattress Firm, you can help decide the biggest baseball blooper of all-time for a chance to win a prize pack that includes MLB tickets, jerseys and a $1,000 travel gift card. Through today at 5 p.m. ET, fans can go to mlb.com/brackets/bloopers and vote for their favorite blooper in four head-to-head matchups.
Here are the eight bloopers that will battle it out.
Home run ball plunks off Jose Canseco’s head
Canseco clubbed some tape-measure home runs at the plate, but he’s arguably equally remembered now for a homer he helped an opposing team hit. Cleveland’s Carlos Martinez drove a ball to right field and Canseco looked to have a bead on it … until the ball bounced off the top of his head and over the fence for a hilarious homer.
Paul O’Neill kicks ball to first base
Yes, this falls under the “blooper” category, but it’s also probably one of the most impressive improvisational defensive plays you’ll ever see. In the bottom of the 10th inning, Phillies star Lenny Dykstra shot a ball through the infield to O’Neill in right field, but O’Neill bobbled the ball. That seemed to give Philadelphia an opening to send the winning runner home from third, but O’Neill somehow stayed with the play and kicked the ball off the turf with enough accuracy to the first baseman to hold the runner.
Tommy vs. The Phanatic
Dodgers Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda and the Phillie Phanatic had a love-hate relationship that stretched on for years, but one day in 1988, Lasorda reached his limit. When the Phanatic brought a life-sized Lasorda doll out onto the field at Veterans Stadium, the bombastic skipper darted out of the dugout, rolled the Phanatic’s four-wheeler off the field, then grabbed the doll and beat the Phanatic with it.
Burnett’s warmup pitch shatters truck window
Whoever was driving Billy the Marlin’s truck likely thought that, with a big league pitcher on the mound, he could sneak behind home plate and trust that that pitcher’s warmup tosses would go harmlessly into his catcher’s glove. But A.J. Burnett happened to release “the one that got away,” and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect (or destructive, depending on who you ask), shattering the pickup truck’s back passenger window with, ahem, perfect precision.
The rally squirrel strikes in St. Louis
There were so many times when the 2011 Cardinals looked finished, but both they and their unlikely new mascot simply refused to be denied. After a gray squirrel initially appeared in the Busch Stadium outfield during Game 3 of the National League Division Series against the Phillies, halting play, it came back for an encore in the fifth inning of a must-win Game 4 for St. Louis. The squirrel’s second appearance did not stop play, causing Phillies pitcher Roy Oswalt and manager Charlie Manuel to argue that the furry animal had broken Oswalt’s concentration and forced him to miss the strike zone.
Whether Oswalt was right or not, Cardinals fans quickly adopted the squirrel as their own, and St. Louis came back to win the series and began its march to the World Series title.
The Kingdome kitten
Yankees fans just saw a kitten steal the show during a game this month, but that was far from the first feline to completely halt a ballgame. A groundskeeper at Seattle’s Kingdome learned a hard lesson back in 1984: If you’re going to pick up a frightened little kitty, make sure you have some gloves on.
Fences can’t contain McCray
Rodney McCray now introduces himself as “Crash,” but not in reference to the “Bull Durham” character. McCray goes by “Crash” because he’s responsible for one of the most shocking and, at least to all of us watching, painful catches in baseball history.
Playing for the Minor League Vancouver Canadians, McCray tracked down a long fly ball hit by future big league manager Chip Hale (like, really tracked it), but forgot to check where the wall was. McCray busted through the flimsy plywood fence at full speed, demolishing it as he disappeared out of view in a blooper that now plays on a loop at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
50 Cent throws one juuust a bit outside
Listen, there have been a lot of bad ceremonial first pitches throughout the years. But it’s hard to see any errant deliveries taking the cake from 50 Cent any time soon. The rapper threw southpaw and his ball went wide left -- like, really wide left -- putting the nearby cameramen on notice. Everything about 50’s windup looked fine … right up until the ball left his hand.