Animated Gif: Brett Lawrie Crashes Into Jason Varitek

Click image for Animated GIF

There’s no question Brett Lawrie is a show-shopper; but for a brief moment, Jason Varitek put the brakes on the Blue Jays most promising young player.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see this happen live, but as you can tell by the multiple angles of the impact, Brett Lawrie ran full tilt into Jason Variek in attempt to lodge the ball free and score a run.

This is the second Brett Lawrie animated gif this week alone, and it’s gotten to the point where creating a Tumblr solely devoted to Brett Lawrie animated gifs has crossed my mind.

It was a somewhat questionable play to send Lawrie home as he was out by a mile, but in a close one-run game, I can see why the Blue Jays would want to be aggressive and force the action at home plate.

I don’t think Lawrie was anticipating the throw to come to the plate that quickly, but he was barreling down the third base line faster than a locomotive, and hit with the force of one, too.

Is there any chance Brett played hockey as a kid in Langley, BC? Because he treated Jason Varitek’s body as if it were the boards at his hometown hockey rink. With Varitek’s helmet flying off, it looked a lot worse than it actually was.

Some wondered had Lawrie slid into home rather than running full boar to the plate, would he have had a shot at getting the tag down? In my humble opinion, no. Lawrie doesn’t strike me as the kind of player who would be graceful enough to pull off the swipe tag.

From the time the ball hit the bat, Brett committed to putting the pedal to the floor and he was going to come at Varitek like a Mack truck. But instead of lying there writing in pain on the ground, Varitek held onto the ball.

Varitek appeared to just brush off the incident as though a wayward mosquito had just flown into him by mistake. You wouldn’t know it by the animated gif, but Brett Lawrie was the one who received the brunt of the collision as he suffered a bruised knee and had to exit the game early.

Thankfully, it did not affect his ability to don a tutu after the game. Maybe this means the next time it looks like there will be a collision at home, Lawrie will just grand jete over the catcher and land on home plate safely