For those who don’t believe in announcer jinxes, nothing unusual happened Wednesday in the ninth inning of the Baltimore Orioles-Boston Red Sox game.
Yet if you do believe in the announcer jinx phenomenon, Orioles announcers Kevin Brown and Jim Palmer unleashed some very powerful juju in the top of the ninth.
Orioles reliever Cionel Pérez came on and gave up a pair of walks separated by a fly out.
That brought up Red Sox outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela.
“This is a guy you can’t walk,” Brown said. “Rafaela has 160 plate appearances without one now.”
“Well, he doesn’t walk, you walk him,” Palmer astutely noted. “There are just hitters who are like that.”
Pérez fell behind 3-0.
“Well, he may get walked,” Brown said. “August 9th was his last walk.”
Seconds later, Rafaela drew the walk.
“There it is, 160 plate appearances, the longest streak in baseball for non-pitchers,” Brown said.
One can almost imagine Palmer, a three-time Cy Young Award winner back in the day, sitting in the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network booth, gnashing his teeth as Pérez walked the player who had not walked in 160 consecutive plate appearances.
And it’s not like Rafaela was the walking type even before that. He somehow has only 20 walks in 679 career plate appearances.
There are plenty of announcer jinx skeptics out there. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. But as soon as Brown said “This is a guy you can’t walk,” during a 0-0 count no less, many fans knew the outcome was already predetermined.
