(Getty)Marlon Byrd of the New York Mets saw his own future Wednesday night, predicting he would hit two home runs against the Washington Nationals.

Byrd went deep in the second and third innings, respectively, and for his sixth career game with multiple home runs. Byrd said he told teammate Anthony Recker about his vision during batting practice and Recker confirmed it after the Mets 10-1 thumping of Washington.

Byrd really had called his shots. Since "Medium" is taken, let's call Byrd the "Long Island Large." The New York Post has the details:

“I was feeling good in B.P. and I was joking around with [Recker],” Byrd said. “I said, ‘Hey, if I get some pitches tonight, get some strikes, I’m going to hit two home runs tonight.’ I didn’t think it was going to happen.”

But Recker said Byrd’s prediction wasn’t a joke.

"He was dead serious,” Recker said. “And he did it. That’s amazing to me. He called it. You don’t see that very often.”

Very often? Does he means it's happened before? Jeez, what else might be in those nutritional supplements Byrd used to get from BALCO founder Victor Conte? A little something to intensify your psychic antenna? Does the Basic Agreement with Major League Baseball test for a sixth sense like it does for centaurism? Is this how "X-Men" started?

Well, considering the troubles of Nats right-hander Dan Haren, maybe Byrd wasn't being a soothsayer so much as a sage.

Lost amongst the historical highlights of Wednesday's monumental extra-inning clash between the Chicago White Sox and Seattle Mariners was a very fine exhibition of persistence and concentration by Seattle first baseman Kendrys Morales.

It happened in the eighth inning with the game obviously still scoreless and Chicago's Jeff Keppinger at the plate. On a 1-2 pitch from Mariners' starter Hisashi Iwakuma, Keppinger floated a popup down the right field line and into Safeco Field's foul territory that Morales, second baseman Nick Franklin and right fielder Endy Chavez all pursued.

As it turns out, Morales, the least athletic defender of the bunch, was the guy with the best angle, and he ended up running the baseball down as he neared the sidewall at a pretty good clip. However, as the ball landed in his glove, he was unable to put the squeeze on it due to his momentum and he sort of juggled it in the direction of the stands.

For the full second or so that the baseball hung in the air, it felt like a lost cause for Morales. But he never gave up on it, and at the very last second was able to snatch it out of the air before a fan could grab it or it could hit a seat. He then tumbled head first over the wall near a railing, but held on tightly this time to record the final out of the inning in pretty spectacular fashion.

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For the Colorado Rockies, it's always an uphill battle to prove they can not only hit on the road, but win games consistently away from Coors Field. It becomes much easier, however, when Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki are both healthy enough to put the entire offense on their backs. We saw a good example of that Wednesday night as Colorado's dreaded 3-4 combo teamed up to hit five home runs in a 12-4 beatdown of the Cincinnati Reds.

It was Gonzalez who did the majority of home run damage, connecting for a solo shot in the first, a 458-foot three-run blast in the fourth and a two-run roundtripper in the eighth. Tulowitzki, on the other hand, had a more complete offensive game with two home runs and three singles as he tied a career-high with five hits. For good measure, Todd Helton added his sixth home run to help round out Colorado's merciless 20-hit attack.

Here's a little more on the Rockies performance courtesy of Joe Kay from the Associated Press:

The Rockies hadn't hit six homers in a game since they had that many against the Marlins on July 4, 2008, according to STATS LLC.

''When we get some guys hitting in our lineup at the same time, it's a dangerous lineup,'' manager Walt Weiss said. ''Two really good players in the middle of our lineup were swinging the bat well tonight.''

Unfortunately for Cincinnati, the result here was just the tip of the iceberg on an all-arould rough day. Their scheduled starter, Johnny Cueto, had to be scratched early in the afternoon with a right lat injury. He was later placed on the 15-day DL. 25-year-old Pedro Villarreal was called up for the spot start and ended up taking the ugly loss.

As we noted on Wednesday night, the Chicago White Sox topped the Seattle Mariners in a wild 16-inning game despite Kyle Seager's dramatic, game-tying and history-making grand slam in the 14th inning.

Just to bring you up to speed quickly on the historical significance of Seager's blast, it was only the third extra-inning grand slam since 1945 that did not give a team the lead, and the first ever to tie a game. That's remarkable enough to think about, but then consider this game had been scoreless for the first 13 innings, and was suddenly 5-5 heading to the 15th. That's something else that has never happened in MLB history. Not once.

It should go without saying from this point forward, the grand slam was monumental. However, there is one cringeworthy image attached to it that remains fresh in the mind of many, mine included, and that's of an adult fan barreling over a very young child in clear view of the camera on his way to grabbing the souvenir.

Barreling may actually be too gentle of a term. The poor kid actually got steamrolled, and it's entirely possible it was his own father who did the steamrolling.

(AP)The beautiful thing about baseball is you never know which game will provide a rare milestone or a moment that has never been seen before.

For example, I don't think anyone who attended the White Sox-Mariners game at Safeco Field last April 21 could have imagined witnessing Phil Humber throw only the 21st perfect game in Major League Baseball history.

By the same token, I doubt the 20,139 who showed up to watch those same two teams play Wednesday afternoon in Seattle could have imagined the unique type of history they were about to witness on this day, either. Actually, I should say the history those who actually stuck around for the entire 16 innings witnessed. Those who left after, say, 13 innings, pretty much missed everything there was to see.

Allow me to explain further: For 13 innings, the Chicago White Sox and Seattle Mariners played completely scoreless baseball, which in and of itself is pretty unique. The White Sox then exploded for five runs in the 14th inning, and seemingly had the game iced away when the baseball was turned over to closer Addison Reed.

A funny thing happened, though. Reed had one of those off innings that closers tend to have in non-save situations, which means before you knew it Seattle had the bases loaded with the tying run coming to the plate. The first hitter to take a crack at tying the game was Jason Bay. Reed eventually put him away with a filthy slider after a lengthy battle for the second out. That brought up third baseman Kyle Seager, and with one swing, a tremendous amount of history was made.

So close, yet so far away.

That has been the on-going theme as we await this season's elusive first no-hitter. It seems like weekly there are two or three pitchers who come within single-digit outs of accomplishing the feat, but one pesky hitter always stands in their way, determined to keep himself and his teammates off the wrong side of the record books.

To be honest, it almost feels like we're in some sort of long-standing no-hitter drought, but I think that's influenced by a couple of different factors.

The first, of course, is due to the high number of close calls we've experienced. Those began almost right away when Texas Rangers right-hander Yu Darvish fell one out short of a perfect game against the Houston Astros on April 2. Marwin Gonzalez broke that one up with a clean single to center field.

On Wednesday afternoon, Atlanta Braves rookie right-hander Julio Teheran became the latest to put us on "no-hitter alert" as he held the Pittsburgh Pirates out of the hit column until the eighth inning at Turner Field. Pinch-hitter Brandon Inge played spoiler with a clean single down the left field line, but it was a career best outing for the 22-year-old Teheran. He struck out 11 over what ended up being eight scoreless innings while walking two and hitting two batters.

Of all the umpire-related stories we've seen this year, here's one that's just really odd: Jordan Baker is a rookie umpire who's getting noticed for tossing his gum into the outfield after every half inning. If he's umping — like he was Tuesday night in the St. Louis Cardinals-Arizona Diamondbacks game — you'll see wads of gum behind him.

The announcers of Tuesday's game noticed as much and talked about it on the air. That wasn't the only reason Baker was noticed. He also threw Diamondbacks bench coach Alan Trammell out of the game after an argument about a stolen base call. (For what it's worth, it looks like Baker blew the call). But back to the gum-throwing: You'll hear it described by TV announcers as Baker's "tradition" and a "salute" to baseball.

If you ask a group of fans in San Diego, however, they'll tell you something different. A blogger from San Diego-centered sports site Lobshots took notice of Baker and his gum-throwing last weekend. What followed is well documented on Lobshots, including the blogger giving Baker an ear-full because the ump was "a disgrace to the game and disrespecting the players, the field, and umpires everywhere."

Keith Olbermann. (Getty Images)One of sports broadcasting's most notable voices is returning to the airwaves, as Keith Olbermann will be hosting TBS's baseball postseason studio show this October.

In recent years, Olbermann has largely stayed away from sports broadcasting, focusing more on definitively political broadcasts. But Olbermann — who, along with Dan Patrick, formed the late, lamented "The Big Show" at ESPN (TV sports' equivalent of Led Zeppelin) — has always kept an eye on the sports pages.

"I do this anyway," Olbermann said on a conference call, speaking of his sportscasting. "Last postseason I did this in my home to the TV by myself."

Olbermann will work with Dennis Eckersley on TBS' studio show. He had previously worked in a similar capacity for both NBC and Fox in the late 1990s, and his pre-ESPN sports career began at CNN. However, this current arrangement will not include any appearances on that network.

While one of the most provocative figures in television news, Olbermann is also one of the most