Blue Jays: Baseball fans can’t get enough of the Coghlan leap

After Chris Coghlan’s acrobatics on Tuesday night, the relatively new Blue Jay has become a bit of an internet sensation following his leap over Cardinals catcher, Yadier Molina.

In a game chalk full of signature moments, the Blue Jays managed to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the opener of their 3 game set at Busch Stadium. The Jays prevailed 6-5 in the 11th inning when Marcus Stroman unexpectedly scored the winning run, after providing a pinch-hit double.

Stroman’s moment was huge, and an unexpected shot in the arm for a team that badly needed a break to go their way for once in this young 2017 season. They got that break with Stroman, but they had another earlier in the game as well.

By now you’ve likely seen it somewhere (or everywhere), but the Blue Jays had another highlight reel moment earlier in the game as well. After walking in the 7th inning, Chris Coghlan was attempting to score from first base on a Kevin Pillar triple to right field. The throw from Stephen Piscotty was a little up the line, bringing catcher Yadier Molina a few feet from the plate, and directly in Coghlan’s way on route on scoring.

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In baseball yesteryear, Coghlan would have likely lowered his shoulder and a violent collision would have ensued. Now that the rules have changed, you can’t intentionally hit a catcher, nor can a catcher block the plate in the same way that they used to.

The rule is designed to protect everyone involved in these plays, and there’s no doubt the whole thing flashed through Coghlan’s mind as he attempted to score. As we all know by now, he solved the situation by… leaping over Molina.

If you haven’t seen it, watch it, and then hit replay at least a dozen times.

I don’t even want to know how many times I’ve watched that replay since Tuesday night.

And if I didn’t see it enough on the highlight reels through Wednesday, it was all over Twitter as well, and predictably, things got pretty awesome and hilarious in a hurry.

Why not capture the moment in a baseball card? Would have been stupid not to.

Unicorns again? Curse you, Starbucks.

Cue a spike in people google searching, “Kerri Strug”, but I definitely laughed.

There are dozens and dozens more, but this one is my favourite, courtesy of @croswords.

So what have we learned from all of this? First, the Blue Jays finally caught some badly needed breaks, which is wonderful. Hopefully they can parlay that into some momentum and make up some ground on the rest of the AL East in the near future.

Secondly, it looks like Coghlan wants to stake a claim to Pillar’s “Superman” nickname.

Next: Steve Grilli still hoping to receive a MLB pension someday