John Kruk asks for, and John Kurk shall receive.
No, the Philadelphia Phillies analyst didn’t get the beer he requested, but he got the wild pitch.
With Philadelphia reeling, 3-7 in its last 10 games, entering Wednesday, Kruk was hoping that the Phillies could rally for extra innings. As a contingent met at the mound with New York Yankees closer Clay Holmes, with the Phillies down 5-4 and to their last out, Kruk and the play-by-play voice agreed that they’d take a single “just to keep it alive.”
“A wild pitch, something,” said Kruk.
Well, lo and behold, Holmes bounced the next pitch to home plate, and Johan Rojas came home to score the game-tying run at five apiece. McCarthy said Rojas took a page from former Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins. If that’s the case, Holmes took a page out of Kruk’s playbook.
The Phillies would go on to lose 7-6 in extra innings, so they didn’t exactly fulfill Kruk’s complete wishes. But he sort of has the knack for these things. Usually, when Kruk asks, the Phillies deliver. In this case, it was Holmes nearly hitting Kyle Schwarber with a pitch, of course, but there are multiple instances of Kruk willing something to happen, and it comes to fruition.
Kruk prophesized some home runs during the 2023 MLB season. He predicted a Trea Turner home run just a week after willing a similarly clutch home run to happen. A week prior, Philadelphia star Bryce Harper went yard, although in that case, Kruk wasn’t looking into the crystal ball so much as verbally bending physics to keep a ball in fair territory.
So, not only should someone get Kruk a nice can of Yuengling, but perhaps they should also install him in the Phillies dugout with a direct line to the baseball gods.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.