Brandon Crawford is a highlight machine

The status of the 2018 San Francisco Giants has been downgraded from “questionable” to “60-Day DL”. We’re officially at the point where the season, to use the type of language that my liberal arts education taught me, sucks.

The commitment to mediocrity was tolerable, albeit grating. But then came the news that Buster Posey will likely have surgery, for an injury the team has known about for a long time. This follows the same thing happening to Johnny Cueto, which follows the team repeatedly pushing Jeff Samardzija back when he’s not healthy.

San Francisco is out of the playoff race, incapable of scoring runs, and treating their players like a bag of hand-me-downs that you’re not sure if you really want. It’s not exactly the time of year that makes you put your car payment on hold so you can buy one of those hats with the orange bills.

So to remind you that not all Giants news is bad news, I present you with something truly joyous: Brandon Crawford.

Crawford is the gift that keeps on giving, because no matter how miserly the season gets, there’s always a chance that the ball will be hit his way, and we’ll get to see the kind of thing that drove us to watch the silly baseball game in the first place: the beauty of the sport.

There’s the amazing athleticism, paired with a dynamic first step:

There’s the improvisation that reminds you that Crawford is not only gifted physically, but possesses some baseball savant qualities:

There are the plays where you momentarily forget that Crawford exists and is on your favorite team, so you assume a play will have a negative outcome, and then Crawford reminds you that he exists and instead the play has a positive outcome:

There are the plays that you want a shortstop to occasionally make, but Crawford makes with alarming frequency:

There are the interpretive dance performances:

And there’s whatever the hell this is:

The season is upsetting, but Brandon Crawford is not. When you watch a game, you know that you might see something special. Sometimes that’s enough.