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Blue Jays use Little League home run to steal game from Twins

With all due respect to the U.S. champions from Maine-Endwell Little League and international champions from Seoul, South Korea, there’s only one baseball term that describes the decisive play in Saturday’s Blue Jays-Twins game: Little League home run.

That means the batter raced all the way around the bases with some major assistance from the defense. In this instance, Twins outfielders Max Kepler and Eddie Rosario literally stumbled and fumbled the game away.

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It happened after Melvin Upton Jr. hit a sinking line drive toward Kepler in right field. In an attempt to make a game-saving catch, Kepler actually made an ill-advised decision by diving and missing the baseball completely. This was not good baseball because it guaranteed Toronto would at least tie the game. Had he kept the ball in front of him, it’s an entirely different situation.

Sadly, despite the disastrous start to the play, it would only go downhill from there.

How you ask?

Please observe.

Here’s a lesson for the actual Little Leaguers viewing this. When you compound a bad decision with miscommunication, the end result will typically be accompanied by circus music.

The official scoring on the play was a triple plus an error on Max Kepler for kicking the ball away. It’s a triple because Kepler’s dive was not a physical error, but rather a bad decision. Upton Jr. was credited with one RBI on the play, but more importantly he scored the decisive run in the Blue Jays 8-7 win.

Twins outfielders Max Kepler (left) and Eddie Rosario (right) fail to make a play on Melvin Upton Jr. (MLB)
Twins outfielders Max Kepler (left) and Eddie Rosario (right) fail to make a play on Melvin Upton Jr. (MLB)

Here’s an interesting point too. Though Upton wasn’t running hard initially, he really turned on the jets once the ball dropped. According to Statcast, he topped out at 20 mph during his trip around the bases, covering the 360 feet in 14.85 seconds.

That’s some crazy speed on top of a crazy way to win a game.

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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at bigleaguestew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!