 There's a play from yesterday's ALDS that I really want to talk about. It involves Kyle Higashioka, and this one's brought to you by DraftKings. Kyle Higashioka is the backup catcher for the New York Yankees, but he has become Garrett Cole's personal catcher, meaning he catches Cole whenever Cole pitches, even if it's a playoff game, even if he can hit, even if he can't hit, he's catching Garrett Cole. And this is the play I want to talk about. I'm going to show it to you first, and then we'll get to it. It's a curve ball. Higgy thinks it's a fast ball, so he gets crossed up, but he comes down and makes the catch anyway. It's really impressive. He thinks he's getting a 99 mile per hour fast ball, and then the ball goes down on him. He has to react just like hitters, and we see them swing and miss all the time. But let's get to the start of this. This is where this came into play. It's four to three Yankees. They're up one run, but the Rays have the tying run on third base. Second base is open, runner on first base. And you have G-Man Choi up, and I'm going to do a whole video later all about this matchup, these two dudes, because G-Man Choi absolutely crushes Garrett Cole. It's one of the cooler things about baseball. It's one of the more frustrating things about baseball. So, because Cole gets dominated by Choi, he doesn't want to give him anything in the zone to hit here at all. He's going to go away from the zone, but there's a runner on third. So, if he bounces a ball in the dirt, you have to worry about that runner coming home and scoring if it's a wild pitch or a pass ball. But Higgy gives him the confidence to just bounce this in the dirt to Choi, and Choi lays off, and Higgy makes a nice block. You got to trust your catcher to throw that pitch to try and get him to swing and miss. Higgy does a really good job getting over and blocking the pitch. Good job, Higgy. Decent pitch, Cole. They still want to stay away from him. He didn't bite at the curveball. Okay, maybe he'll chase a high fastball out of the zone. We're not giving him anything in the zone because he crushes Cole. They go way up top. Higgy jumps up and catches it, and now you can see Cole kind of look to the dugout and say, why don't we just walk this, dude? It's 2-0. There's an open base, and he crushes me. So, they have a little mound meaning. They decide to walk Cole. What I think happens here is when Higgy and Cole talk, Cole tells them like, I'm going to open them up with a curveball. I'm going to throw first pitch curveball. I think they decide that there. You'll see why. But first, GMN Choi gets to smirk a little bit and like, pretty cool. Best pitcher in the world. Scared to face me. Now, you see Cole looking his hat. In his hat has all the sequences of signs. It's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then what that means. And you can see him say, 5. Okay, we're doing 5. But the sequence doesn't come into play here because like I said, Higgy doesn't give a single sign. All he does is nod at Cole. Yep, throw that first pitch curve you told me you were going to throw. I don't need to give you a sign. So, here's the first pitch curve. Really nice pitch in there for a strike. And now Cole's looking in and Higgy's giving the signs. And I, you can see his fingers here. You know, he's going through a sequence of signs. So, when they say 5, that means there's something. It's either outs plus 1, outs minus 1. There's something for Cole to know which finger actually he should be paying attention to. But because they didn't use the sequence on the first pitch, because Cole just said, I'm going to throw the curve right away, and they didn't have to put down any signs. It seems like Cole forgot that they're using sequence number 5, which, you know, we saw him put into his memory bank a little earlier, 5. But then he throws the first pitch. It's a nice curve ball. And now he's going to the second pitch and he's looking into the signs. And I think Cole forgets that they switched it to 5 and he reverts back to what it was before. So, he throws the curve ball. Higgy, I mean, if that gets by Higgy, man. I mean, the runner on third scores, the other two runners move up. You lose the force out. The game is now tied. It's a run saving, lead saving, really athletic play by Higgy. And you don't expect catchers to do that. You don't expect them to be able to do that. That's funny. Now Higgy's like, wait, what the fuck? How did we get crossed up? Wait, hold on. No, I was right. 5, dude. We're on 5. Yeah, okay, 5. I mean, just another look at it. His glove was fully open. He swan dives down. Then they go 99 mile per hour fastball up top, 100 mile per hour fastball, and he gets out of the bases loaded jam. And oh yeah, earlier in this game, if we're talking about Higgy, he steps into the box against Blake Snell as the nine hitter, as the personal catcher. He sees two curveballs right away, and like that guy says, no swing. If he rings them up there, I think it's a different at bat. They have the reliever up in the pen because this is Snell's last hitter. Probably, that's what I thought at the time, because he's facing the nine hole catcher. One one pitch, two curveballs in a row. Snell tries to dot a fastball and Higgy goes, boom, to tie the game. This was prior to the other thing. Fucking miss that down. I think that's what Snell said. Like you miss that down because he wants to go high fastball. Snell likes high fastballs. Glaber's all excited. Higgy had himself a game, and so did this cameraman. I think this is more impressive than anything else we've seen. Look at that tracking shot. Let's do it again. Look at this tracking shot. Super wide, gets the pitcher and the batter in shot, then finds the ball in the air, gets a little closer to it, zooms back out to see where it land. Cameraman, kudos. Just really well done, and then I love this. Gary Sanchez, he's sitting because Higgy is the personal catcher for Cole. He daps up his boy. He loves it. This one's brought to you by DraftKings. Go to DraftKings, download the app, use promo code Johnboy, have some fun, make some picks, you know, have some fun. Choose the Yankees offense if it's still going, or just wait around until next year. They got basketball, they got football, they got a sports book, they got everything. Go get DraftKings, use promo code Johnboy. Good shit from Higgy there.