By Jayson Stark / The Athletic
Everyone knows you cannot be in two places at the same time. Those are the rules, the immutable rules of physics. But who knew you could play for two teams in the same baseball game? Those are also the rules - the wacky suspended-game rules of baseball.
So on Monday (Tuesday AEST), Boston Red Sox catcher Danny Jansen may go where no baseball-playing human has gone before. He could become the first player in MLB history to appear for both teams in the same game.
“Oh, man,” Jansen said recently. “It’s going to be nuts.”
Since June 26, Jansen has been stuck in the batter’s box at Fenway Park in Boston, frozen in baseball time. Life has gone on, but the box score of that game tells us he is still batting.
It was the second inning. He was hitting for the Toronto Blue Jays, with one out and a runner on first. He had just fouled off a first-pitch cutter. And that was when the weather gods decided it was time to mess with the baseball gods.
Those raindrops turned into a rain delay. That rain delay turned into a suspended game. The resumption of that game was scheduled for August 26. And then came the trade deadline. And Jansen was traded, for the first time in his career - to the team the Blue Jays were playing that night, the Red Sox.
Danny Jansen batting for the Red SoxCredit: Getty Images
What Happens Next?
When this game resumes, one thing is guaranteed: Jansen will not get to finish his at-bat. The suspended-game rules may be a little zany, but they are not that zany, not enough to allow a player wearing a Red Sox uniform to bat for the Blue Jays.
But here is where this could get fun: The Red Sox also need to change catchers. Reese McGuire, who was catching for them at the time, is on their Class AAA roster now, not their major league roster. So if Boston manager Alex Cora is as astute as we think he is, we are headed for one of the greatest public address announcements ever:
“Now catching for the Red Sox, Danny Jansen. Now pinch-hitting for Danny Jansen. …”
“Oh, man,” Jansen said, thinking of the possibility. “Such an oddity.”
It is an oddity, all right, but the suspended-game rule makes so much weird and wild nuttiness possible.
It makes time travel possible.
It makes no sense that a player could be taken out of a game, and then, at the same exact moment, be subbed into that game for the other team. But have we mentioned that the suspended-game rule is inventive like that? Here is what it says, right there in Rule 7.02: A player who was not with the club when the game was suspended may be used as a substitute, even if he has taken the place of a player no longer with the club who would not have been eligible.
Yes!
‘Oh, man. It’s going to be nuts.’
Danny Jansen
Not that Jansen was intricately familiar with any of this when he was traded to Boston on July 27. But all it took was one day in his new clubhouse before he realised he was going to have to study up.
“I didn’t know at first,” he said. “I was like, ‘What - am I going to have to go on the other team?’ I didn’t know what was going to happen. It just kind of caught me off guard about the whole situation. Because when I got traded, it was just a whirlwind at first, and I didn’t think about it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.