The Toronto Blue Jays utility player was racing around third base and heading toward home plate to try and score on Tuesday night, but the throw by St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Stephen Piscotty beat him there by a mile.
But that’s when the magic happened: Instead of just resigning himself to a likely tag-out from Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, Coghlan instead went airborne, basically doing a “Superman” pose in mid-air over Molina before landing and scoring a run:
With new MLB rules in place, players can’t just bullrush catchers as in previous years. Following a serious injury to Buster Posey in 2011—during which Coghlan, then a member of the Miami Marlins, was waiting on-deck to hit—baseball officials changed the rules, and that’s what inspired Coghlan to try out his new aerial acrobatics.
“It’s just tough. You’ve got all these rules. It used to just be, ‘If he’s in the line, you run him over,'” Coghlan told ESPN. “All that stuff happens, believe it or not, as you’re running. Even though it’s happening really fast, the last three steps are really slow in your mind. Those are all the thoughts that I had. It’s like, ‘OK, run him over. Oh wait, I don’t know, he’s in front of the plate. He’s down, maybe I can jump, so let’s jump.’ Kind of like that.”
Coghlan’s play displays what an athlete can do when he focuses on specific things in the gym. Box jumps are a great way to work on your explosiveness and help build muscle. J.J. Watt and Mike Trout both love box jumps—Watt once pulled off a 61” box jump, which isn’t bad for a 6’5″, 289-lb dude—and things have been working out pretty well for those two.
Coghlan got some pretty solid airtime on his jump. If you want to get a boost on yours, you can try a range of total-body workouts, plyometric workouts, and other plyo moves from Muscle & Fitness to get more explosive:
