LeBron James has inspired many athletes across the sports landscape to do many things. Unfortunately, egregiously awful flops are one of the things he’s inspired.
For the latest example, let’s visit Sunday’s game between the Twins and the A’s. A game that featured a flop for the ages from A’s infielder Elvis Andrus as he fell to the ground after pretending to be interfered with by the Twins catcher.
From another angle:
Nor was Andrus trying to hide his joy at pulling off the epic flop:
It didn’t take Twitter users long to find the NBA/LeBron similarities to Andrus’ performance:
Andrus was directed home after Umpire John Libka called interference and the play resulted in a scored run.
It’s beyond bizarre in this day-and-age of replay that such a flagrant and obvious flop-job would be unreviewable, but that is the case. Nor can MLB explain the call away by saying the ump’s field of view was obscured as he had a clear line of sight on the play.
Still, MLB will have some explaining to do and another potential change to its replay rule to contemplate in the offseason.
Somewhere, LeBron James is smiling.