One Impossible Card Trick

And the improbable return of our ground rule double debate.

It’s magic retreat week! For the last few years, Margo and I have gone on magic retreats with our good friends Joshua Jay and Andi Gladwin, and a bunch of magicians and great fans of magic. It’s great fun. Last year we were in Mexico City. This week, we will be in Hawaii. I’m on the plane right now, wearing a wild vintage Mambo shirt I got in Australia during the 2000 Olympics.

Everybody who knows me knows I’m not great at slowing down and taking vacations.

So I’m dressing the part this time and hoping the vacation vibe takes hold.

I’m sure I’ll still pop out now and again to catch up here.

For now, I’ll tell you one thing that’s been on my mind: I’m going on this trip with a purpose. Yes, I know that kind of cuts against the whole vacation vibe thing I was just talking about, but I’m hoping this will be fun. I usually go on these retreats with no mission except to enjoy the magic.

This year, though, I do have a mission.

I want to learn one impossible card trick.

I know a few card tricks. I can perform them at a rudimentary level — meaning I could probably fool an 8-year-old with them about half the time. And that’s fine, I was never planning to take my act on the road.

But this week, I want to learn an impossible card trick. I am going to be with some of the greatest magicians in the world. I’m going to ask them to teach me one trick. Just one. The perfect trick. I don’t know what it will be yet.

And then I want to work on that trick, work on it, and work on it until I can do it well. And when the week is done, I want to keep working on it until I can come close to perfecting it.

I realize this sounds silly … but it’s part of this plan I’ve been developing. I might have mentioned here that I am only a few months away from turning 60. Age is just a number and all that, I know, but 60 feels different, not in a sad way but in an energizing way. I have goals.

I want to learn one perfect card trick.

I want to learn to play one great song on the piano.

I want to learn to throw one knuckleball that really moves.

I want to write one good song.

I want to learn how to make one fantastic chocolate cake.

I want to paint one decent Bob Ross-like watercolor (my expectations are low here).

I want to put together a five-minute comedy act.

I want to write a poem in a language other than English.

Stuff like that. I have a long list. I don’t know how many of them I will get to

And lots more. I don’t know how many of these things I can learn to do. Maybe none. Life gets in the way. Well, no, not none — at least one. This week, I’m going to learn one impossible card trick.

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As long as we’re here in the air, we might as well drop a couple of baseball thoughts before vacation begins.

I’m pretty sure Pete Crow-Armstrong wrapped up the MVP on Saturday with his three home runs. What a season that guy’s having — he’s leading the league in slugging and OPS, he’s hit 36 homers and stolen 32 bases, he’s a phenomenon defensively in center field, I mean, this is Willie Mays stuff.

Maybe the most impressive thing about PCA is the way he has stopped chasing. OK, he hasn’t STOPPED chasing — he’s still a free swinger who is going to strike out 180 or so times this year. But he’s chasing much less. He’s on pace to TRIPLE his walk total from a year ago.

In 2025, he got a three-ball count just 84 times all season.

This year, already, he’s worked a three-ball count 135 times.

Baseball, as Bill James famously wrote about Pedro Martinez, is an exponential game. By developing even slightly better plate discipline, PCA has become a MUCH better player. And he was pretty darn good before.

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Oh no, it happened again. I guess Mike Schur and I are going to have to go another round.

Saturday, Detroit’s Kevin McGonigle came up in the bottom of the ninth. Bases loaded. One out. Tigers 1, Dodgers 1. You know what happened next — he launched a long fly ball over the drawn-in outfield. The Dodgers outfielders gave up on it because even if they had caught the ball, the winning run was going to tag up and score.

The ball landed on the warning track and bounced over the fence.

And for the second time this year, a ground-rule double was reduced to a single and what would have been two RBI was reduced to one.

Once again, rule 9.06(f) was invoked:

When a batter ends a game with a safe hit that drives in as many runs as are necessary to put his team in the lead, the Official Scorer shall credit such batter with only as many bases on his hit as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run, and then only if the batter runs out his hit for as many bases as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run.

And then, to be even clearer, there’s the 9.06(f) comment.

The Official Scorer shall apply this rule even when the batter is theoretically entitled to more bases because of being awarded an “automatic” extra-base hit under various provisions of Rules 5.05 and 5.06(4).

And THEN, there’s a separate rule, 9.06(g) to deal with home runs.

When the batter ends a game with a home run hit out of the playing field, the batter and any runners on base are entitled to score.

These rules drive Mike — and admittedly, quite a few others — absolutely bonkers. They simply cannot see why a home run and an automatic ground rule double would be treated different.

This time, though, instead of duking it out with Mike, I decided to do him a favor: I wrote to MLB asking about the possibility of getting the rule changed. There is a precedent to change it. As I wrote, in 1951 Joe DiMaggio came up in a similar situation — bottom of the ninth, runners on second and third, Yankees and Washington Senators tied up. DiMaggio hit a long fly ball that bounced over the fence.

And in that case, the Official Scorer — after much argument in the press box — gave the Great DiMag a double AND two RBI, even though the winning run had already scored. American League President Will Harridge confirmed the ruling the next day.

Here’s that inning play-by-play courtesy of Baseball Reference.

It appears that Rule 9.06(f) was written in the year or two after the DiMaggio double, which is definitely weird. Why would they give DiMaggio the double, but then come up with a rule that says it was not a double? No idea.

In any case, MLB responded by pointing out that the rules are black and white and that McGonigle’s hit is indisputably a single. As for changing the rule? They say “any potential rule changes/modifications would have to be looked at by our rules committee.”

I could be wrong but I’m dubious that the rule committee will take this one on.