5 Unusual Occurrences To Begin The 2023 Season
In today's issue, we look back at five oddities that were sprinkled throughout the first month of the MLB season.
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Pregame Pepper: Relive April’s Longest Homers
Leading Off
5 Wacky Moments Over The First Month Of The 2023 Season
By Elizabeth Muratore
One of the great joys of being a baseball fan is that if you watch enough baseball, you see something new every day. The game has been around for close to two centuries, and still it reinvents itself with every passing season. This year so far has been no stranger to strange occurrences, whether it’s the Pittsburgh Pirates shocking the baseball world and finishing the month on top in the National League Central or two of the top four ERAs in the Majors belonging to Justin Steele and Bryce Elder.
As we move forward and (hopefully) trade in April showers for some May flowers, let’s look back at five of the wackiest, wildest occurrences throughout the month that made even the most diehard baseball fans go, “I’ve never seen THAT before!”
1. Renfroe’s unbelievable no-look catch
It might seem like an exaggeration to anoint something as “the catch of the year” when it occurs on Opening Day, but that’s exactly what this catch warranted. As Oakland A’s infielder Jace Peterson laced a ball off Shohei Ohtani to the gap in right-center field, it appeared as if the ball might be headed for the wall. That is, until Los Angeles Angels right fielder Hunter Renfroe went back on the ball, got turned around, and threw his glove out to his left with his back to the ball. Incredibly, without looking at the ball, Renfroe made the miraculous catch.
Everyone else might simply be vying for seconds on this year’s “play of the year” countdown.
2. The Mets dribble two balls that stop directly along the third-base line … in the span of three batters
In their first rematch with the San Diego Padres since they were knocked out by them at home in last year’s NL Wild Card Series, the New York Mets were perhaps due for a stroke of luck against the NL West foes. They got all that and more in a bizarre seventh-inning sequence against Yu Darvish. First, with a runner on second and no one out, infielder Luis Guillorme bunted a ball along the third-base line that might be the most beautiful bunt I’ve ever seen. It rolled and rolled and, somehow, never rolled foul.
Two batters later, catcher Tomás Nido produced a swinging bunt that rolled to nearly the exact same spot, stopping this time exactly on the foul line as the Padres could only watch in disbelief. That’s a play that you might see once per season from your favorite team. Twice in one inning? Simply amazin’.
3. Player who spent 13 (!) years in the Minors makes Moonlight Graham proud
It’s not often that a 33-year-old infielder with 1,154 career Minor League games to his credit gets a chance to play in a big league game, but that’s exactly what happened to Drew Maggi. On April 26, 2023, 13 years after the Pittsburgh Pirates drafted him out of Arizona State University, they gave him his first MLB chance. In front of friends and family at PNC Park, with the stadium chanting his name as he stepped up to the plate, Maggi rocketed a ball foul before striking out in his first career plate appearance.
His storybook week didn’t end there. The next day, he played the full game for the Bucs, and two days later, he appeared in the second game of a doubleheader against the Nationals and notched his first career hit and RBI. Maggi was optioned to the Altoona Curve, the Pirates’ Double-A affiliate, on April 30, but even if he never makes it back to the Majors, he’s got a place in the scorebooks forever.
4. Newest member of Red Sox honors Tatis’ unforgettable record
On the exact 24-year anniversary of Fernando Tatis hitting two grand slams (off the same pitcher!) in one inning, Masataka Yoshida nearly replicated that feat for the Boston Red Sox against the Milwaukee Brewers. Yoshida had to settle for merely his first Major League grand slam and a solo homer in the same frame, but still, it was the first time anyone has hit two home runs, including one grand slam, since Edwin Encarnacion did 10 years ago.
This might be something you HAVE, in fact, seen before, but the sheer rarity of anyone hitting two homers in the same inning -- only 58 individual players in MLB history have accomplished the feat -- was enough to include it on this list.
5. Possum breaks loose in Oakland press area, forces Mets’ booth to relocate
An opossum making an appearance in an MLB stadium is nothing new, but it’s not often that it directly interferes with broadcast logistics. Mets and A’s fans knew they were in for a weird night on Friday, April 14, when Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen explained in great detail why he and Ron Darling were relegated to an alternative visiting booth that night. Quite simply, a possum that had already supposedly been living in the stadium had taken up residence in the normal visiting booth area, evaded all traps, and completely smelled up the booth.
The possum situation was somehow the least messy part of this game, in which the Mets walked 17 times in nine innings to set a new franchise record for a nine-inning game and also became the first team to score six or more runs on one or no hits in two different innings in the same game (with both hits coming from the same batter) since at least 1957.
Elizabeth Muratore is one of the editors of the Here’s the Pitch newsletter. She also works as a homepage editor for MLB and co-hosts a Mets podcast called Cohen’s Corner. Elizabeth is a lifelong Mets fan who thinks that Keith Hernandez should be in the Hall of Fame. You can follow her on Twitter @nymfan97.