Enjoy this excerpt from Why We Love Baseball, the new book from distinguished baseball author Joe Posnanski.

• Why We Love Baseball: The Embrace

One day, I was watching the video of David Hulse's hilarious foul-ball exhibition, and I thought: "Man, I HAVE to get that into the book." That sort of weird, random, kind of meaningless but altogether wonderful moment is at the heart of why I wanted to write WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL. But how do I get a moment like that into a countdown of the 50 most magical moments in baseball history; it clearly doesn't belong there. So I came up with this idea of putting these little lists of five moments into the book: Five Barehanded Plays; Five Duels; Five Loud Home Runs, etc. Five Funny Moments was one of my favorites.

FIVE FUNNY MOMENTS

Whenever I told people I was writing this book, they would inevitably recommend a favorite moment. The one they recommended most happened March 24, 2001. On that day, in Tucson, Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson was facing San Francisco Giants center fielder Calvin Murray. He fired a fastball.

Three‑quarters of the way to home plate, the ball hit a dove that had flown in its path.

“I’m expecting to catch this ball,” Arizona catcher Rod Barajas said, “and all I see is an explosion.”

For months, I went back and forth about the moment. “You have to,” one friend told me. “It’s the funniest moment in baseball history.”

Is it, though? I mean, I guess you could make the argument if you don’t think too hard about the bird. In the end I decided to not include it -- or at least not to give it more space than this.

Here are five funny moments:

DAVID HULSE’S FOUL BALLS (OCTOBER 3, 1992)

The Rangers and Angels, two going‑nowhere teams, were playing out the season. Ninth inning. Texas trailed 4–2 with one out. Rangers’ rookie David Hulse stepped to the plate against Angels’ closer Joe Grahe.

Hulse, a left‑handed batter, was late on the first pitch and he fouled it hard into the Angels’ dugout on the third‑base side. The Angels’ players scattered a bit and then, as players often do when foul balls come flying in, made various hand gestures toward Hulse as if to say, “Hey,
what did we do?”

On the next pitch, Hulse slapped the ball hard into the Angels’ dugout again. More silliness. A security guard waved a white towel in surrender and an Angels’ player got up to get his glove for protection.

This sort of thing happens now and again.

But on the next pitch, Hulse smashed ANOTHER ball into the Angels’ dugout. And that doesn’t happen. Three in a row? Now all the Angels’ players and personnel, every last one of them, moved into the other corner of the dugout. The announcers were laughing so hard they couldn’t even broadcast the game.

“Look at them all bunched up over there,” one said.

Hulse smiled and shook his head. He was still a rookie trying to prove he belonged in the major leagues. He needed to concentrate. Grahe’s next pitch was up. Hulse swung . . . and he fouled the ball hard into the Angels’ dugout for the fourth time.

“Obviously, I didn’t do it on purpose,” he would say. “Hell, if I could do it on purpose, I’d be in the Hall of Fame.”

It was wonderful. Hulse received a standing ovation from the crowd when he grounded out on the next pitch. He would say it was the only standing ovation he ever received.

Not long after, Saturday Night Live did a baseball skit where mayor Rudy Giuliani’s son, Andrew, kept getting hit in the head with foul balls.

The batter in the skit? Right. It was David Hulse.

CANDLESTICKS MAKE A NICE GIFT (1988, MOVIE BULL DURHAM)

I believe the mound visit scene in Bull Durham is the funniest scene in any baseball movie. And it almost didn’t make it into the movie. Why not? Producers didn’t think it “forwarded the plot.” They seemed unmoved by director Ron Shelton’s explanation that Bull Durham didn’t
exactly have a plot.

Setting up the scene: Nuke LaLoosh was struggling. The infielders all gathered on the mound, and they ended up talking about a cursed glove and a teammate’s wedding and Nuke’s father in the crowd. Hey, we’ve all wondered what these mound visits are like.

Finally, Durham Bulls coach Larry Hockett -- played by Robert Wuhl -- was sent out to the mound to break things up. “Excuse me, what the hell’s going on out here?” he asks.

“Well,” says Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, “Nuke’s scared cause his eyelids are jammed and his old man’s here. We need a live rooster -- is it a live rooster? -- we need a live rooster to take the curse off Jose’s glove, and nobody seems to know what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present. That about right? We’re dealing with a lot . . .”

“Well, uh,” Hockett says, “candlesticks always make a nice gift. And maybe we can find out where she’s registered, maybe a place setting or, I guess, silverware pattern. OK? Let’s get two!”

Perfect. And Robert Wuhl came up with it on the spot.

Here’s what happened: The scene was shot at four a.m., it was freezing, and everybody was ready to call it a night. Shelton said, “OK, last one, Robert, this one’s yours,” meaning Wuhl was free to say whatever he wanted.

His line was supposed to be: “Oh, I thought there was a problem.” But this time, Wuhl was thinking about how a few weeks earlier he’d asked his wife what they should get a friend for their wedding. “Candlesticks make a nice gift,” she said. He used it, ad‑libbed the rest, and ended it with the classic baseball phrase “Let’s get two!”

Wuhl never thought they would use it in the movie. But the next day, when everybody was watching the dailies, the scene played and the whole room broke up. And later, focus groups called it one of their favorite scenes in the movie.

ADRIÁN BELTRÉ PULLS OVER THE ON‑DECK CIRCLE ( JULY 26, 2017)

Adrián Beltré was very funny. For years and years, he didn’t let that part of his personality show -- baseball does ask its players to be stoic.

But as he grew older and more comfortable in the big leagues, he let his personality out. He would get in rundowns and then just run off the field, heading for nowhere. He would tease infielders by taking his hand off the base, daring them to tag him. He would lose his mind whenever anyone touched his head.

His funniest moment was probably in the late innings of a lopsided Rangers–Marlins game. Florida was leading the game by a dozen runs in the eighth inning, when Beltré began taking a few warm‑up swings near the Texas on‑deck circle. Unfortunately, in the eye of umpire Gerry
Davis, he was not near enough. Davis demanded Beltré move closer.

Beltré seemed sure that Davis was putting him on. But Davis was serious. He kept barking at Beltré to move closer to the on‑deck circle.

So Beltré did. He dragged the on‑deck circle closer to where he was standing.

“I just did what he told me to do,” Beltré said.

Davis then threw him out of the game, which only made the whole thing funnier.

KEN GRIFFEY MAKES THE PLAY IN FRONT OF KEN GRIFFEY (SEPTEMBER 21, 1990)

It was the ninth inning of a close game between the Chicago White Sox and the Seattle Mariners. A young White Sox player named Sammy Sosa lifted a fly ball to left field. The ball was headed directly at the Mariners’ left fielder, a 40‑year‑old Ken Griffey. This was Griffey’s 18th season in the big leagues. He’d been a star on the famous Big Red Machine Reds of the mid‑1970s. He’d played in three All‑Star Games. He’d caught thousands of fly balls.

This was no different. He held out his arms, the universal sign for “I got it.”

And just as he was about to catch it . . . his 20‑year‑old son Ken Griffey Jr., with the biggest Bart Simpson smile on his face, jumped in front of him and caught the ball first.

It was so funny and, more, so lovely. The Griffeys were the only father‑and‑son combination to ever play in the same game. They had several wonderful moments together; they once hit back‑to‑back home runs. But this was my favorite, especially for the look on Ken Griffey’s face afterward, the look fathers know, the look that says: “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

GIBSON PLUNKS LACOCK (SOMETIME IN 1986)

On September 3, 1975, a Wednesday evening in St. Louis, the Cardinals and Cubs played a game that didn’t matter much. The Cardinals were only just in the pennant race. The Cubs were long gone. Only 15,000 or so diehard fans came out.

The game took on new meaning in the seventh inning.

That’s when the Cardinals sent Bob Gibson to the mound for the final time.

They didn’t know for sure that it was the last time, but they had a pretty good guess. Gibson was 40 and had already announced he was retiring at the end of the year. Two days earlier, the team held Bob Gibson Day, complete with tributes and gifts and a message from President Gerald Ford.

“Most of all,” Gibson said to the crowd, “I’m proud of that fact that whatever I did, I did it my way.”

He might have retired right then, but he decided to stick it out a little longer. He wanted to believe that he still had a little something left, even at age 40. There was never anyone who competed harder than Gibson. He pitched with radiance and verve and a salty disposition. He’d glare hitters into dust.*

“Don’t dig in against Gibson, he’ll knock you down,” Henry Aaron told Dusty Baker. “He’d knock down his own grandmother. Don’t stare at him. Don’t smile at him. Don’t talk to him. He doesn’t like it. If you happen to hit a home run, don’t run too slow and don’t run too fast. And if he hits you, don’t charge the mound. He’s a Golden Glove boxer.”

No, Bob Gibson didn’t leave much room to operate.

That day, Gibson came in to pitch relief, and he just didn’t have it. He walked a batter, gave up a hit, walked another batter, threw a wild pitch, and intentionally walked a batter to load the bases.

Up stepped left‑handed pinch hitter Pete LaCock. If anyone else had been on the mound, Cardinals’ manager Red Schoendienst would have brought in a lefty reliever. But he had too much respect for his old friend and teammate to pull him.

“This is Gibby’s out to get,” Red told everyone on the bench.

LaCock was feeling a bit salty himself. He was 23 then, and cocky and sure that the Cubs were not treating him with the respect he deserved. Before the game, he yelled at Cubs’ manager Jim Marshall for 45 minutes.

“Pete is a very ambitious young man,” Marshall told reporters. “He needs a lot of time for someone to explain to him what it’s all about.”

LaCock stepped in and worked his way to a full count. Gibson threw a fastball, down and in. In his younger days, he had thrown that fastball by Mays and Aaron and Clemente. Now, though, it just sat there. LaCock turned on it for a grand slam, the first and last of his career.

Gibson retired that day.

Wait, you say: There’s nothing funny about this.

Well, for the next decade, Gibson stewed about that pitch he threw to Pete LaCock. He could barely stand the fact that LaCock got the better of him and there was no second act. He fought back by taking shots at LaCock. “When a hitter like Pete LaCock hits a grand slam off you,” he
told one reporter, “it’s time to hang them up.”

In 1986, there was a series of old‑timers’ games played in ballparks across the country. It was fun. Gibson played in a couple of them. And, as it turned out, so did LaCock. In fact, there was a game in Kansas City, and Bob Feller was pitching when LaCock came up.

Suddenly, and without warning, Feller stepped off the mound, and Bob Gibson raced in. He had not been scheduled to pitch. He took only a few warm‑up pitches.

And on the first pitch, he drilled LaCock in the back.

Now, that’s funny. Many years later, announcer Bob Costas asked Gibson if the story was true, if he had really come in just to hit Pete LaCock with a pitch in an old‑timers’ game. Gibson gave him the famous stare.

“Robert,” he said, “the scales must be balanced no matter how long it
takes.”

* Gibson always said that he wasn’t glaring at hitters at all, it’s just that he didn’t wear his glasses on the mound and so needed to squint to see the catcher’s signs. Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- bought this.

From WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL by Joe Posnanski, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2023 by Joe Posnanski.