Jean Segura Doesn't Care About Direction

There are a few certainties in life, guarantees if you will. The sun will rise in the east and, subsequently, set in the west. Your taxes will be due on April 14th every year. Ed McMahon will not be coming by my house anytime soon to deliver a giant check. When running the bases, you will not go back a base after advancing to the next one. These are guarantees in life that we can all rest our laurels upon. At least, they all were until today, when Jean Segura - the rookie shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers - went and disrupted the space-time continuum by, essentially, stealing first base against the Chicago Cubs.

Now, I can probably guess what it is that you are thinking. You're most likely wondering how in the world is that even possible? Is Segura a warlock? Is he a wizard? Is he a Jedi Master of the highest order? All of these options are completely ridiculous entirely possible. However, in this case, I think we can eliminate all of those possibilities and agree that Segura is, simply put, a slight of hand magician.

Too easy, right? There has to be more to it, right? I mean, he stole first base. You can't steal first base. You just can't. Well, luckily we have technology and the interwebz, and CBS Sports posting articles with GIF's embedded into them. Below, is said GIF.

Before this play, Segura had stolen second base. Standard enough. Then Ryan Braun worked a walk off of Kevin Gregg. Then Segura decided he was going to steal third. Gregg did a spin move and tossed the ball to Luis Valbuena. Having watched the play go on from first base, Braun decided to try and move up to second during the ensuing rundown, except Segura was in no mood to make an out. This is where the magic comes in. Watch closely.

The second base umpire, Phil Cuzzi (he of the terrible ALDS "foul" call in the 2009 ALDS), only watches Segura until he has touches second base. Then focuses all of his attention (or maybe he is "forced" to focus all of his attention) on Ryan Braun, who is tagged out for occupying the same base as Segura. Segura then sneaks off, cleverly acting as though he is jogging back to the dugout before pulling a quick one on everybody, and effectively stealing first base.

All of Segura's baserunning fun from that inning can be viewed here.

Whether this is an elaborate scheme, or just Jean Segura trying to pad his stats by stealing second base twice in the same inning is anyone's guess. But, he has squashed a once iron clad certainty. And now, when someone says "that you can't steal first base," you can point here and say, "Yes, yes you can."