Sports Prescience

Sports predicting is notoriously difficult, and baseball is probably the most difficult sport to predict. That's what makes what Seattle Mariners' announcer Mike Blowers did in the pregame show for a game between the Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays on September 27 of this year so amazing. He predicted that the Mariners' rookie third baseman Matt Tuiasosopo would get his first Major League home run in the game. He didn't stop there, though. He predicted in what at bat he would get it (his second), on what count (3-1, or 1-3 for you Koreans), on what kind of pitch (fastball), and where the home run would go (left field, maybe the second deck).

When Tuiasosopo came up to bat for the second time, in the 5th inning, he took the count to 3-1, and Blowers' co-announcer Dave Niehaus began joking about the prediction. Then Tuiasosopo hit the ball hard to left field, and Niehaus went crazy, yelling "I don't believe it. I see the light!" The ball ended up just short of the second deck.

You can listen to the audio of both the pregame show and the 5th inning at bat here.