"Come on now, kid! Knock the cover off the ball!" A very common expression in the baseball world; a form of encouragement for the batter as he approaches the plate.
Of course no one really expects the hitter to knock the cover off the ball, more so a hope to just see a frozen rope; a base-knock; a line drive; a humdinger.
In fact, the phrase was glorified in one of the most famous baseball movies of all-time, The Natural.
And wouldn't ya know it, it appears we have a real life Roy Hobbs on our hands. Well, it seems the Milwaukee Brewers do … in Martin Maldonado?
The hit came Friday night in Pittsburgh when Maldonado — the Brewers' backup catcher — literally knocked the cover right off the ball while hitting a routine groundball to Pirates third baseman Pedro Alvarez.
The Brewers won 5-3. Maldonado has 12 career home runs and a .227 career batting average.
Here is the poor ball that @Machete1224 knocked the cover off of earlier: #MILvsPIT pic.twitter.com/YvpUoFavKo
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) April 19, 2014
And just in case the video above gets taken down by the time you read this post, here it is again on MLB.com.
Josh Helmuth is the editor of CraveOnline Sports. @JHelmuth – "Like" on Facebook.
