Mr. Mays, Mr. Edmonds

By Nicholas Stix

With a man on first and two out in the fourth against the Cubs in Houston's Minute Maid Park, the Astros’ Hunter Pence hits a drive over 400 feet to dead center. The Astros are losing 3-1, but this should make it 3-2. Gimpy Jimmy Edmonds takes off on a bum ankle, and on a dead run hits the moronic center field hill that almost ended the Mets’ Carlos Beltran’s career, a season or two back. The ball starts tailing off to Edmonds’ right, and with his back to the diamond, he looks over his right shoulder, reaches out and over, and … catches the ball!

As ESPN announcer Gary Thorne reports in his classic baritone, the Cubs “Signed [Edmonds] on Wednesday, and he played on Thursday.” The legendary center fielder has eight Gold Gloves, but as Thorne’s colleague Steve Phillips asks, “Are they getting the old Jim Edmonds, or is he just old?”

ESPN shows a 1997 highlight film of Edmonds making an even more spectacular catch for the Angels against the Royals, in which he laid out his entire body, and couldn't look over his shoulder, yet somehow came down with the ball, and held on to it.

In Houston, as Edmonds runs back to the dugout, his opponent Carlos Lee gives him the warmest congratulations of all.

In the bottom of the fifth, the Astros cut the Cubs’ lead to one run. Through six, it's still 3-2, Cubs.