Elly De La Cruz speeds past St. Louis Cardinals in 4-3 Reds victory

If you’ve ever watched Smokey and the Bandit within the same week as watching Elly De La Cruz run circles around big league defenses, well, you may well begin to understand both a) the intrinsic comedic value of both and b) the complete and utter frustration perpetually suffered by sherriff Buford T. Justice and, now that I think about it, poor ol’ Wile E. Coyote.

They’re doomed from the start. You know it. You can see it coming. You cannot begin to understand why they can’t see it coming, but you can see them fail to see it coming. And then it hits, they react, and the rest of the field seems to fuzz out and pause as you watch Elly operate on a clock that seemingly runs 10x faster than those tasked with retiring him.

Anyway, that happened repeatedly on Sunday as Elly, today’s Joe Nuxhall Memorial Honorary Star of the Game and resident Bandit/Roadrunner in this parable, ran roughshod over sheriff Buford T. Cardinals. He legged out an infield single on a grounder damn near directly at 1B, stole a bag, smashed an RBI single into CF, walked twice, and scored the game’s go-ahead run in the Top of the 8th from 3B on a grounder to SS that, in the mortal world, had no business resulting in a Cincinnati Reds run.

It’s tremendous content when set with any sort of villain. When said villain just so happens to be cast as the St. Louis Cardinals for the day (with a series win in Busch Stadium on the line), however, the hilarity of it all becomes almost too joyful to put into words.

Reds 4, Cardinals 3, Jonathan India homered early, and Hunter Greene settled in late. A truly enjoyable Sunday victory that will serve as one of the highlights of Chapter 1 of the long, long, very long Book of Elly.