New York Mets ace Max Scherzer is already one of the more intense pitchers in baseball. He’s also not someone you’d like to have distracted mid-pitch, which could have ended badly for one Mets bat boy.
During Saturday night’s Game 2 of a doubleheader between the Mets and Braves, a Mets bat boy ran along the backstop as Scherzer was starting his windup to Travis d’Arnaud in the fifth inning. Basically, the bat boy saw that some gear was left behind in the Mets’ on-deck circle, but he chose an extremely inopportune moment to go retrieve it.
Luckily for him, Scherzer noticed the bat boy and was able to stop his motion without actually throwing a pitch.
A slight delay to the start of the 5th inning… pic.twitter.com/xTGLHkVv5x
— SNY (@SNYtv) August 7, 2022
Home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez granted time and stopped play, so there wasn’t any controversy over the strange interruption. Still, it wasn’t something you see very often — particularly from a bat boy.
But the best part of the whole sequence was how MLB Twitter reacted to it. They turned the replay into a meme and had plenty of jokes about Scherzer’s unforgiving intensity.
This was how Twitter reacted
Sound on for these:
Its even better with the home plate audio pic.twitter.com/j9Rzx6Lwro
— You (@BravesGasm) August 7, 2022
LEEROOYYYYYYYYY pic.twitter.com/6B8RahQNGQ
— Trevor Williams (@MeLlamoTrevor) August 7, 2022
Agreed pic.twitter.com/ajdXgnuPfL
— Ned Pyle (@NerdPyle) August 7, 2022
This double header got me like pic.twitter.com/YCLNpOPTqG
— ᗯOOGIᗪYᗷOOGIᗪY (@woogidyboogidy) August 7, 2022
RIP Bat Boy 🪦 https://t.co/2ksvHkf1Iq
— JT Terán (@jt_teran) August 7, 2022
Me when I wasn’t paying attention and the game started and wasn’t in the first base coach box https://t.co/tScaW2QVZP
— Tyler Anderson ⚾️ (@DirtyDers_18) August 7, 2022
In the old days streakers wore less clothing. https://t.co/Zzt75uWqna
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) August 7, 2022
Max and the bat boy almost recreated Randy Johnson’s pigeon moment. https://t.co/IFXvo11f3S
— Stagehand DVP (@Frontlight22) August 7, 2022
Of all the pitchers I’d want to piss off via my own incompetence, Max Scherzer is very not one of them. https://t.co/Xkp7Ci7HqK
— Uncle Fuzzzy (@unclefuzzzy) August 7, 2022
Yo, if I was that bat boy I would not have stopped running. I’d go down to the tunnel, through the locker room, down the hall, out of the stadium, into my car, and peel out never to go back to Citi while Max is there again #LGM https://t.co/sFzGjPqPjC
— K.V. Paxton (@KVPaxton) August 7, 2022
That bat boy going to get two shades of an evil eye later https://t.co/JdxFDR1V5Z
— Razzball (@Razzball) August 7, 2022
That bat boy is 10000% getting killed after the game. https://t.co/InAqyBqBGv
— METS MENACE ⚾🐻❄️🍆⚾ (@MRMENACE231) August 7, 2022
The Mets ended up winning, 6-2, so I’m guessing all was forgiven. Just don’t do that again.