Thursday, August 24, 2017

Ben Zobrist's Seinfeld Moment

I feel his pain. Didn't think this sort of thing happened to World Series MVPs, but apparently they do. It was Seinfeldian. From the Kansas City Star...

Zobrist was late to the Cubs’ game in Cincinnati on Tuesday night, because he went home during Monday’s off-day, then flew into Nashville, rented a car and drove to the ballpark.

One problem: there was no car when he first got to Nashville.

“Zo made it into a ‘Seinfeld’ episode today where he had a reservation for a vehicle in Nashville,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon explained to the Chicago Tribune. “When he got there, they failed to hold the reservation. Thus he was late getting the vehicle, thus he got caught in traffic.”

In season three of “Seinfeld,” Jerry reserves a car only to find out that the vehicle he wanted (a mid-size car) is not there when he arrives. That led to his quote (“See, you know how to take the reservation. You just don’t know how to hold the reservation, and that’s really the most important part of the reservation — the holding. Anybody can just take ’em.”)

Zobrist’s situation was worse: there were no cars at all. Zobrist blamed Monday’s solar eclipse for his predicament. People in Nashville traveled to be in the path of totality and didn’t return their vehicles before he arrived, Zobrist said in an interview with reporters.

“And every other place we went, there was nothing,” Zobrist told the Tribune’s Mark Gonzales. “It took about 1 1/2 hours to get anything available.”

He got to Cincinnati just in time to pinch hit and delivered a two-run single.