From the Locker Room: Luis Robert's third-base flop

For a guy who's gone viral for the fantastical, La Pantera is the subject of some humor this time around

It was bound to happen, at some point.

Till Tuesday, the most amazing "embarrassing" moment for Luis Robert might have been the lost glove incident vs. the Brewers, when the center fielder stole a home run from Ben Gamel — then lost his glove over the fence, scoring the homer.

But on Tuesday night against the Minnesota Twins, after singling in two runs to put the White Sox up, 4-1, and stealing second base with ease, La Pantera saw another opportunity. 

With Twins hurler Randy Dobnak not paying any attention to him at second base, Robert got a big enough lead to essentially walk into another theft with his first career steal of third.

It might have been better if Robert had decided to walk.

Robert opted to slide some 15 feet in front of the bag, and face-planted in incredibly awkward fashion — certainly not befitting arguably the most athletic player in baseball. His teammates, to a man having answered questions about Robert's awesome athletic ability, took this brief moment to howl in derision at the ill-executed flub.

A sort of slide show, below:

Our own Janice Scurio did the best job of many viral tweets after the fact:

here it is - the slowmo Robert slide pic.twitter.com/DYy53KZoSb

— miss all sunday 🍉 (@scuriiosa) September 16, 2020

While his teammates chuckled, manager Ricky Renteria was somewhat concerned: "Wow. That was tough. That was difficult to watch in that I was hoping he was OK...I still want him to slide on his butt, if at all possible."

Renteria added that Robert, once in the dugout, played the slide off as a function of the infield, saying "that ground is pretty hard, kind of sticking." 

Uh, Mr. Roger Bossard would like a word, La Pantera.

I immediately called Robert to the carpet for his amazingly bad, leading off his media session postgame. Robert was a good sport about it all, smiling as he heard the words "third base" and knowing what was coming. 

"I think as always, I went headfirst," Robert said. "It was crazy, because I got stuck on the dirt. It was my first time this year to steal third base. I was excited because of that. It was just the way it happened."

---

Luis Robert video courtesy of the Chicago White Sox.