Baltimore Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser owned up to a pretty big mistake after catching the final out of his team’s 9-7 win on Saturday.
Cowser unwittingly threw a Craig Kimbrel milestone save baseball into the Kauffman Stadium fountain at the end of Saturday’s game. Kimbrel had just collected his 422nd career save, tying Billy Wagner for seventh on the all-time list.
“Right when I threw it, I said, ‘Craig has a lot of saves, that one might have been important,'” Cowser said, via Jake Rill of MLB.com. “I literally told [center fielder Cedric Mullins] right whenever, ‘I might have messed up.’ And it turns out I did. We got the ball back, though.”
Fortunately for Cowser, the story had a happy ending. After learning that baseballs thrown into the trademark fountains sink after two minutes, a search showed just two balls in the area where Cowser had made his throw. One was far too old to be Kimbrel’s and the other was retrieved and returned to the Orioles clubhouse, albeit in a container of rice to try and dry it out.
“Every time I catch the ball and it’s a last out from him now, it’s staying in the glove,” Cowser said.
Cowser can take solace in the fact that it could have been way worse. As far as milestones go, this was not the most significant one Kimbrel will ever achieve and the ball wound up someplace where it could be easily recovered.
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