It was Mickey Mantle’s habit to keep his head down after hitting a home run, he said, because “the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.” But there are rare occasions when it is appropriate to violate the unwritten Baseball Code and show emotion after cracking a long ball. Upon hitting a game-winner, for instance, the batter often bounds down the third-base line into the outstretched arms of excited teammates gathered around home plate. A milestone shot is a moment to savor: No pitcher with a sense of decency is going to retaliate against a guy in his next at-bat if he just knocked his first career round-tripper and pumped his fists on the way to first, or if he raised his arms in joy and savored the big fly a little longer because it was his 300th homer. Even in the heat of the moment, a consequential dinger and an enthusiastic reaction is just fun: Take Jose Bautista’s famous bat flip after putting his team ahead in the late innings of a decisive playoff game last year.
But the last few days have produced a couple of memorable home runs that warranted whatever reaction came to mind. They were more than game-winners, milestone hits, or thrilling ones. They were cathartic and timely. They were, in the sport of ultimate randomness, perfect for the moment.
The first happened on Sunday. It was the legendary broadcaster Vin Scully’s final call at the home ballpark of the Los Angeles Dodgers—which were still the Brooklyn Dodgers when he first began announcing. Scully has seen more special homers than just about anyone in his lifetime, and with a better seat, no doubt. He witnessed the “impossible”, as he put it, when a hobbled Kirk Gibson hit a walk-off shot to send the Dodgers past the Oakland A’s in game one of the 1988 World Series. It’s just about as impossible to find something as good in the 28 years after he commentated that event, and in the 38 years before. But there he was in the booth at Dodger Stadium one last time, on a night dedicated to him, and on a night L.A. could clinch its division. It didn’t look promising entering the ninth inning, until Dodgers wunderkind and MVP-caliber shortstop Corey Seager rescued the evening with a solo shot to tie the game at 3-3, prolonging the contest and Scully’s career just a little longer. The 10th inning arrived with the same score. There were two outs. The man at the plate was Charlie Culberson—who, in his career, had hit only five long balls in more than 400 plate appearances. Yet someone had to provide Vin one last home run call in the City of Angels. It was him.
“Swung on, a high fly ball to deep left field, the Dodger bench empties—would you believe a home run?” Scully asked as the dinger descended past the foul pole. In true Scully fashion, he then let the ambient noise of the frenzied crowd do the talking.
Culberson crouched as he shuffled toward first base and reached toward the ground to give his coach a low-five. His teammates were bouncing ’round home plate by the time he reached second. He stretched his arms wide as he rounded third, and hurled his helmet skyward as he hopped toward home. Drops of water dotted the TV camera lens.
Minutes later, Scully would stand in the broadcast booth, the window open, and be recognized by the team’s manager, Dave Roberts: “Vin, we love you, and this one’s for you!”
Across the country in south Florida, Miami was the center of the league’s mourning after the death of star pitcher Jose Fernandez last weekend. (Read Lee Smith on Fernandez here.) His passing was terribly painful even before considering the context of it: Fernandez’s youth, his popularity among fans and rivals, and his significance to the Cuban community.
One of the players struck deepest was Miami Marlins teammate Dee Gordon, who donned an “R.I.P.” Fernandez t-shirt before a game Monday, the club’s first after Fernandez’s death. The “I” was an image of the six-foot, two-inch pitcher.
Gordon, a speedster with an improving batting average throughout his prime years, hit first Monday night for the Marlins as their lead-off man. He’s a lefty. But in tribute to Fernandez, he began the game by taking his first pitch standing in the right-handed batter’s box. The opening toss, from New York Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon, was a ball. Gordon stepped into the opposite batter’s box, hitting left-handed now, and took another ball. Then came the 2-0 pitch.
Gordon is even less of a power hitter than the Dodger hero Culberson. In nearly 2,300 career plate appearances, Gordon had struck a round-tripper eight times—once in every 288 occasions at the dish. His ninth came on a fastball down the pipe from Colon, which towered into the upper deck in right field the way it would off the bat of a paid masher.
He started tearing up on his way to first, but trotted around the bags at a steady pace to a steady cheer in the park. He touched home, touched his fist to his chest, looked up, and embraced teammate Marcell Ozuna—who, according to the Miami Herald, had declined Fernandez’s invitation to the boat outing that took the pitcher’s life. Gordon, head hanging and eyes weeping, then hugged teammate Martin Prado, then hitting coach Barry Bonds as he entered the dugout, then teammates Christian Yelich and Giancarlo Stanton—the crowd was cheering loudly now, whistling, and the broadcasters were silent—and Gordon kept his head down yet, recognized by all, on the way to his seat on the bench.
In a month, a Chicago Cub could hit a game-winning bomb in game seven of the World Series. In such a case, Gordon’s shot will still hold up as the best homer—the best moment—of the long year.
“There’s something magical about a home run,” the documentarian Alex Gibney said. “It almost violates the space of the stadium.”
So much that it can transcend the sport.
