This one might get you misty: Nine-year-old Alayna Adams threw out the first pitch before Thursday's Tampa Bay Rays-Boston Red Sox game. She was told she'd been selected by the U.S.O. for the honor, partially because her father, Lt. Col. Will Adams, had been deployed overseas in Afghanistan for most of the past two years.

Before Alayna threw her pitch, a message from Dad played on the video board, saying he'd see her soon. Indeed he would.

Because it turned out the whole thing was a ruse orchestrated by the U.S.O and the Rays. Lt. Col. Will Adams was, in fact, dressed in catcher's gear, crouching behind home plate, awaiting the throw from his daughter.

(AP)When he caught the ball and flipped up the catcher's mask, Alayna looked at him for a second, realized what's going on, ran full speed toward him and launched herself into his arms.

Dana Adams, Will's wife and Alayna's mom, didn't know about the surprise either. Soon, she joined them in tears.

"I thought it

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Yu Darvish threw 130 pitches. Justin Verlander gave up seven runs in the third inning, his most ever in a single inning. Darvish threw 36 pitches in the third. There were four home runs and two bases-loaded walks (both by Verlander).

In short: Darvish vs. Verlander wasn't the pitcher's duel many people were hoping for. The Rangers won the game 10-4, with 11 of the 14 total runs scored in the first three innings. It was reminiscent of an NFL game between two stellar defenses that ends up 42-21.

Said Tigers manager Jim Leyland, per MLB.com's T.R. Sullivan:

"It was one of those games where everyone in the world was looking for the matchup and it didn't work out so good," Leyland said. "I don't think anyone expected 12 runs to be scored with those two guys out there. These things happen."

Still, Darvish had his moments. Like the video above of him making Miguel Cabrera whiff on a 62 MPH curve ball. Darvish improved to 7-1 on the season, pitching eight innings and striking out six. Verlander, meanwhile, fell to 4-4 after pitching only 2 2/3 innings. It raised ERA to 3.17 on the season. No more "Nasty Nine."

Three questions about the video above:

1. Is Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, haunted?

2. Is Daniel Murphy, the New York Mets hitter whose bat that came off, a wizard with ball-disappearing powers?

3. Does MLB have a new strategic partnership with "Ghost Adventures" to come out and investigate baseballs vanishing?

No to all three? Oh. Well then. I guess we'll have to go with the boring explanation: Murphy's line drive to right field in Thursday's Mets-Cards game flew through a small gap between two pieces of the outfield wall.

(Getty Images)NBC's "The Office" ends its nine-season run on Thursday night and — we'll be completely honest here — it's a couple years overdue.

Nonetheless, around the web right now people are counting off the best episodes and lessons we've learned from this popular comedy about 9-to-5 life. In the sports world, there's one very obvious tie-in: Ryan Howard.

Being a baseball blog, most of our readers associate that name with the Philadelphia Phillies slugger. But Ryan Howard was an "Office" character played by B.J. Novak (also a co-writer for the show) who rose from a temp to a corporate vice president and fell back down the corporate ladder. Howard, the baseball-playing one, actually appeared on "The Office" recently, a bucket-list cameo for a show approaching its end.

It's been said the Ryan Howard character was named after baseball player, since the show takes place in Scranton, Penn. When it was being conceived, Howard was playing for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. So, in honor of "The Office's" series finale, here's a look at Ryan Howard, the baseball player vs. Ryan Howard, the office worker:

Justin Verlander will oppose Yu Darvish on Thursday in a much-anticipated pitching matchup — the perennial Cy Young candidate vs. the second-year strikeout phenom.

But only one of them is on the "Nasty Nine" list put together by Yahoo! Sports. It narrows down the nine pitchers in the MLB this season who have pitched at least 50 innings and have sub-2.00 ERAs. (Click through the slideshow above to see them all).

As nasty as Darvish has been this season — 6-1 with a league-leading 80 strikeouts, but a 2.73 ERA — it's not him on the list. That should tell you something about this "Nasty Nine" designation.

(Getty)

Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno took responsibility Wednesday for his team achieving so little the past three-plus seasons, including its 15-25 record this season. That means the jobs of manager Mike Scioscia and GM Jerry Dipoto are safe.

Moreno told Fox Sports there was "zero" chance of an in-season managerial change with Scioscia, who has managed the Angels for 14 seasons and has a contract through 2018. Dipoto has been GM for a year-and-a-half and, besides, it was Moreno who was the point man on the additions of Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, who cost a combined $375 million over the past two offseasons. And it was Moreno's decision to let Zack Greinke and Torii Hunter walk.

"There are a lot of underlying things we need to fix and adjust in the organization.”

The first order of business might be to let the baseball people build the roster. Still, it's encouraging to hear an owner pull a mea culpa, instead of lashing out with mass firings:

(MILB)When Houston Astros president/CEO George Postolos resigned on Monday, there was some speculation that the team might try to woo Nolan Ryan, who played eight seasons in Houston. Nolan is the CEO and co-owner of the Texas Rangers, though his recent tenure has been a bit rocky. Could it happen? Some Astros fans were hopeful.

Turns out the Astros got a Ryan to be their new president, but it's not Nolan. It's his son, Reid Ryan.

MLB.com's Brian McTaggart is reporting that Reid Ryan will be introduced by the Astros at a Friday press conference. So the intrastate Astros-Rangers rivalry has another new wrinkle (besides both teams now being in the AL West): It's Ryan vs. Ryan, father vs. son.

Reid Ryan, 41, has a baseball-heavy resume: He was president/CEO of Ryan-Sanders Baseball, which owns the Triple-A Round Rock Express (Rangers affiliate) and Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks (Astros). He also served on the board of trustees for Minor League Baseball.

(Millersville Athletics)

It's probably the best save seven players on the Millersville (Pa.) University baseball team could possibly make.

Earlier this month, Millersville's team had arrived late one night for a tournament at Johnstown, Pa., and some of the players got hungry for a snack. On their way to a Sheetz convenience store, they came upon an upsetting scene. But the players — (clockwise from top-left in photo) Tyler Thomas, David Pine, Evan King, Dan Stoltzfus, Tyler Orris, Zach Stone and Tyler McDonald — kept their heads.

A car had hastily turned into a driveway ahead. The players heard screaming. A man held in his arms a young child, who had gone limp. He passed the boy to a woman, who laid him down on the ground. The couple appeared to be in a panic. The man yelled, "My son is choking! He's having a seizure! Somebody help!"

The players quickly approached. From Lancaster Online: