Seeing the White Sox’s incredible triple play from both sides

3:30 PM ET

CHICAGO — Friday night at the Cell gave all baseball fans, keyboard-clacking wretches in the press box, the players on the field and the people in the dugout something they’d never seen before: A 9-3-2-6-2-5 triple play with the bases loaded. Between the Texas Rangers who hit into it and the Chicago White Sox who completed it, you can thank all sorts of people for this unique bit of baseball mayhem.

Thank Rangers first baseman Mitch Moreland for making great contact and hitting a screaming liner to right field, where Adam Eaton made a great play running it down before firing it to first base. Thank the Rangers baserunners, Ian Desmond at first base, Adrian Beltre at second, Prince Fielder at third, for playing an aggressive brand of baseball that has been paying off for the Rangers more often than not. Thank Jose Abreu for taking the ball from Eaton to get Desmond and alertly throw home, because not every first baseman is that kind of athlete. And then thank the White Sox for delivering on a thousand spring training rundown drills once they’d caught both Beltre and Fielder leaning to give us something not you or I or anybody on the field had ever seen.

Perhaps predictably, Eaton was pretty stoked after the game, while Rangers manager Jeff Banister was a bit clinical about it the morning after.

Banister couldn’t avoid seeing the play again and again, and not just in his nightmares overnight, noting, “I couldn’t help it. It was on the ‘Today’ show, on ESPN, it was on ‘Good Morning America’ …

“There’s no feel-good about that. We’re an aggressive baserunning ballclub. When you look at our club, we’re among the top three in baseball in bases taken by being aggressive. Sometimes with being aggressive there are, there’s a little pain that comes along with it, because there are situations where you get caught.”

Eaton was predictably exultant, exclaiming, “Besides marrying my wife and the birth of my kid, to be honest with you that’s high up there. It’s unbelievable, I’ve never had that much fun on a ball field. … I’m very confident of that — I’ve never had that much fun on a ballfield.”

Banister was less appreciative of the moment. “I’m not a fan, I’m the manager,” Banister said. “I don’t distance myself from being the manager. …

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