If you watch enough baseball. . .

Aubrey Huff of the San Francisco Giants has played Major League Baseball for thirteen seasons, mostly at first base.  A few feet to his immediate right a number of second basemen have plied their trade, but apparently, Aubrey has never noticed them.

Yesterday, he was called upon to fill in at second base late in the game, because the logical substitute was ill and hadn't even made the trip from SF to the venue yet.  Aubrey (probably the only man so named to ever play MLB) had never played second before, but even I, who was too "uncoordinated" to play organized sports, but having watched lots of baseball (mostly on TV), have a rudimentary knowledge of how it's done.

Yesterday, with a man on first and one out, the batter hit a perfect double play ball to the shortstop.  A quick toss to second and the relay the first and the inning is over.  It's Baseball 101.  The shortstop scooped up the ball, and looking up at second base, he saw that Aubrey wasn't there.  When he recovered from the shock, it was even too late to throw out the runner at first.

The Giants eventually lost the game because Aubrey wasn't there.  In sixty years of watching baseball, I have seen tens of thousands of double plays, some successfully executed and some not, but I have never before seen an occasion when there was no one at second base to receive the throw.  That's the fascination of the game; you never know what's going to happen.