As seen on the Rochester Press Box
It’s the most exciting play in baseball. And also its most freakish. It requires a bad bounce or a defensive misplay that doesn’t qualify as an error. The inside the park home run.
Josh Smith of the Texas Rangers hit one last week. What distinguished it was that it was Smith’s first Major League home run. He became just the third Ranger to accomplish that feat. You wouldn’t know the other two.
Smith was one of four prospects the New York Yankees sent to Texas for Joey Gallo last year. Gallo was himself involved in a freakish play last week; lifting a fly ball to right field that Boston’s Christian Arroyo, in a moment of pure panic, lost in the twilight sky. Gallo’s own attempt at an inside the park home run fell short when he was thrown out at the plate.
Baseball’s most memorable moments tend to happen totally at random. You can’t plan on them. On June 12, 2010, I found myself in he left field grandstand at Fenway Park for a Red Sox game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Daniel Nava made his Major League debut. I had never heard of the guy. But that day Nava produced one of those moments.
In the bottom of the second inning, Daniel came to bat with the bases loaded. And following the advice of broadcaster Joe Castiglione, who told him to swing hard at the first pitch because it’s the only first pitch he’ll ever see, hit a grand slam off Joe Blanton. Nava was only the fourth player in baseball history to hit a bases loaded home run in his first career game. And just the second to do it on the first pitch he saw.
Nava wound up with a pedestrian eight-year career. He hit 29 career home runs and played five games in the 2013 World Series for Boston. But he is immortalized for one of those moments you couldn’t possibly plan for. And I was there.
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