Craig: 'I'm going to end up on a blooper reel the rest of my life'

Will Craig was in better spirits Friday, about 24 hours removed from a mental mistake that went viral.

"I'm going to end up on a blooper reel for the rest of my life, probably," he said in a Zoom call with reporters Friday afternoon at PNC Park.

The day before, he made what would end up being a two run error that decided the Pirates' 5-3 loss to the Cubs. With two outs in the third, he received a wide throw from Erik González that pulled him off the bag. He could have recorded the out by either tagging the runner, Javier Báez, or simply touched the first base bag. 

But when Báez started to retreat back to home to avoid the tag, Craig's brain went "numb" and he chased after him. As they approached home, Willson Contreras, the runner who was on second for the Cubs, broke for the plate as well.

Craig threw the ball to Pérez, and immediately regretted his decision.

"As soon as I released the ball, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I know better than that,’ " Craig said. "It's simple Baseball 101. But I guess in my mind, when I saw him running back, I just kind of lost my mind for a second."

Contreras beat Pérez's tag, and Báez beat Adam Frazier on an improvised race to first base. 

The play immediately went viral, with "THERE WERE TWO OUTS" trending on Twitter.

When asked if he had seen it on social media or television, Craig responded, "I tried not to."

"I knew it was going to be all over so I tried to refrain from it as long as I could," he said. "Friends and stuff were texting me, checking to see how I was doing and stuff, because they know that I feel responsible for it. I wanted to try and take as much time to kind of reflect on the play and just try and move on from it as fast as I could. The best way for me to do that was trying to refrain from seeing it as much as possible, give it some time to kind of settle down a little bit."

One of those calls was from Derek Shelton. The two had talked about it at the ballpark, but the Pirates' manager wanted to make sure that he was all right after he got home.

"I felt really encouraged by that, for him to reach out to me," Craig said. "He knows how much pride I take in my defense, how much I really care about it. Obviously, that play was a freak play, but he just wanted to make sure that moving forward."

Shelton didn't back away from any questions on the play Thursday, but made it clear Friday that he didn't want to focus on the past.

"Dwelling on that play today really does us no good," Shelton said Friday. "Move forward. It happened yesterday. It’s over."

His teammates offered their support as well to try to keep his spirits up.

"It was kind of like a freak thing and after that people are kind of just like, 'Ok, we know that you're better, we know you're smarter than that,' " Craig said. " 'Like, you're not a dumb player, you got a high baseball IQ. Like, it happens.' "

Craig said he played the play over in his head "100-plus times," but was able to get sleep last night. Four hours of sleep, wake up and think some more, four more hours.

He's going to try to not dwell on it any more.

"Right now, I feel fine," Craig said. "That's baseball. We play like 100-plus more of these. You know, I can't let this one day reflect the rest of my season."