Earmuffs, kids?
Did this announcer really say 'are you sh-----g' me?' over this horrific error by White Sox outfielder Gavin Sheets?
On Monday night, the Chicago White Sox made an astounding four errors against the Cleveland Guardians, the type of performance that would make your local Little League team embarrassed, let alone an MLB team. The first of the night, while the least costly, ended up being an ugly omen.
In the top of the first, with a runner on second and two outs, Guardians second baseman Owen Miller hit a routine, inning-ending fly ball to right field off of White Sox ace Michael Kopech. But there was apparently nothing routine about it for right fielder Gavin Sheets, who just plain booted it, allowing a run to score and the inning to continue.
The error was so bad and so shocking that it may have caused one of the announcers to ask "are you sh-----g me?" on live television. Listen carefully and judge for yourself:
Upon the first viewing, it's an open-and-shut case. He really just straight up blurted out "are you sh----g me?" on live TV, and honestly, it's hard to blame him. That was the most are-you-sh-----g-me error in are-you-sh----g-me error history. You simply have to catch that fly ball if you're Gavin Sheets.
Now, if you listen to it a few more times, you'll notice that the play-by-play man is talking over the color guy and happens to be saying "Shhhhheets" just as the color guy is saying "are you..." As some sleuths have pointed out, it may have been the sound of "shhh" over the color guy actually saying "are you kidding me?" over the error. But it's too hard to tell, and it's way funnier to imagine that it's "are you sh-----g me?" A real is the dress gold or blue situation.
The game, as a whole, was a real "are you sh-----g me?" game from the White Sox, too. After the Sheets error, Sheets himself erased it with a three-run homer in the bottom of the first. Then, after eight innings, Chicago led 8-2. After a solo shot from Andres Gimenez that made it 8-3, Ahmed Rosario got all the way to third base on a single to left field thanks to some serious Bad News Bears-defense from the White Sox:
You don't want to boil a game down to one error, but this sparked an epic rally from Cleveland, with the help of another error on the very next pitch, which scored Rosario. Before Chicago knew it, the bases were loaded and Josh Naylor stepped to the plate:
That tied the game at 8-8, and the Guardians eventually completed the comeback in 11 innings, and it was Naylor once again who went deep:
Are you sh----g me, indeed.