How Ronald Acuña Jr.’s Slide Helped Answer Life’s Biggest Question

The star Braves outfielder cemented Atlanta’s win on Tuesday with an astonishing slide into home. Acuña‘s dash thrilled, and in so doing raised bigger questions: like, why go in the first place?

Let’s talk about the slide. Because a game of thousand-mile-an-hour heaters and gargantuan dingers can become on occasion dodge ball. Tag. A game whose brightest stars can launch with their bodies baseballs into ethers unknown ever so often remind you that one must also launch one’s own body headlong into the dirt.

So the game itself was happening. Braves-Red Sox, Fenway Park. Manfred’s extra-inning second base sippy cup runner had expedited the proceedings. Ronald Acuña Jr. led off the top of the 11th inning with a smoked single on the first pitch, pivoting the placed runner or ghost runner — the two nomenclatures themselves rising up in opposition to one another in their descriptions of what it means to be present, anchored, real — to third. Acuña summarily swiped second base, upon which he was perched when Braves’ third baseman Austin Riley swatted a liner into the dewy left field grass.