ST. LOUIS -- A rational man, while flying midair at top speed over a larger man, his head on a collision course with the ground, thinks first of his own peril. Chris Coghlan said he never once considered that what he was doing was dangerous, which one could argue makes him an irrational man.

“It just all happens like that,” Coghlan said. “You’re just trying to touch home and have as successful a landing as you possibly can.”

Coghlan’s irrational, exuberant and unprecedented flight over Yadier Molina stole the buzz of a buzzworthy game: the Toronto Blue Jays’ much-needed 6-5 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in 11 innings Tuesday. That Coghlan had a relatively successful landing -- he said he wasn’t even sore after landing on his shoulder and neck -- meant we could all celebrate the act of bravado rather than cover our eyes or go in the other room when the replay runs, over and over, for at least the next news cycle.

Several Blue Jays, including manager John Gibbons, said they had never seen anything like it. Several Blue Jays said it was just the kind of daring dash this massively underperforming team needed to get its mojo back. Slugger Jose Bautista was the first person Coghlan ran into in the dugout after he completed his flying flip to score the go-ahead run on Kevin Pillar’s triple in the seventh inning.

“I was in shock at first because my adrenaline was going so much,” Coghlan said. “Then I saw [Jose], and I got jacked up, and I told him afterward, ‘You got me fired up, just seeing your reaction,’ and then the boys were pumped. So I’ve been in that situation. Any time you can get the boys fired up, it’s worth it.”

A year ago, reflecting on the hard slide he had made at second base that severed a ligament in Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Jung-Ho Kang’s left knee in 2015, Coghlan told ESPN.com’s Jesse Rogers, "I’m old-school. I love the way the game was played. I grew up that way." Coghlan promised then that he wouldn’t change the hard-charging, some might say reckless, way he plays the game.

At least now we know Coghlan is as careless with his own body as he is with others'.

Baseball has always had a certain segment of players who apparently were born to be free safeties, oblivious to the pain that could follow their decisions. The sane thing to do when a 210-pound catcher clad in armor is in your path would be to try to slide around him. In this case, frankly, Stephen Piscotty’s throw beat Coghlan by enough time that a lot of players would have simply slowed down and accepted the out.

Coghlan somehow convinced himself that going airborne was the smart play. He accelerated. If he had an exit strategy once he was soaring vertically over Molina’s hunched back, it wasn’t any better than this: bend forward to go for the flip. Molina helped by standing, or Coghlan might have come down hard on his head.

Coghlan's was kind of the Forrest Gump of slides that lead to rule changes. When he played for the Marlins in 2011, he happened to be on deck when Scott Cousins broke Buster Posey’s leg in a collision at home plate. It was a play that changed the game. Not long after, MLB banned home-plate collisions, except in instances in which the runner has nowhere to go but through the catcher.

Tuesday night presented Coghlan just such a chance. He chose not to take it.

"It's just tough," he said. "You've got all these rules. It used to just be if he's in the line, you run him over. 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. I mean, I could have run him over because he's right in the middle, and there's no place to go.”

Coghlan paused to mention that he never wants to see a player injured in the manner Posey was that day.

“But at the end of the day, you’ve got to score that run," he also said.

At the end of the day, some people think differently than the rest of us.