Yes, it’s true. The Pittsburgh Pirates are so unwatchable right now (minus a few, I see you Oneil Cruz), that Rodolfo Castro brought his phone out onto the basepaths.
Castro made the turn for third base — accurately paying attention to the game at hand — and all was well, until it wasn’t. The Bucs second baseman dropped his phone, allowing it to slip out of his pocket and thus making a scene.
Who doesn’t need to check Twitter in the middle of a baseball game?
As hilarious as this may be to make fun of, Castro’s mistake is actually ingenious. For anyone who’s ever been to a ballpark, a cell phone is a necessity. Sitting through a four-hour baseball game without one is…well, kind of boring.
I love America’s Pastime as much as anyone, but Pirates-Diamondbacks on a Tuesday night? You’re asking for a lot, even from diehard fans. A phone is a welcomed distraction.
Pirates: Rodolfo Castro addresses cell phone mistake
Castro’s mistake was bringing it out on the field in the first place, and not ensuring it was buried a little deeper in his pocket before making an aggressive baserunning maneuver.
“I don’t think there’s any professional ballplayer that would ever go out there with any intentions of taking a cellphone,” Castro said. “It’s horrible it happened to me. Obviously, it was very unintentional.”
Castro responded the right way. After the phone fell out of his pocket, he picked it up and handed it to third-base coach Mike Rebelo. Just like that, a simple mistake was corrected. Castro was just 90 feet from home plate, after all.
“You stay around the game and you see things you haven’t seen before,” manager Derek Shelton said. “This was just a kid who made a mistake. It’s just one of those things we move forward from and tell him, ‘You can’t do that.”’
If anything, this will be a learning experience for Castro in what will hopefully be a long major-league career.