With four mighty swings, Scooter Gennett made some unlikely history
You always hear about how rare perfect games are -- there have only been 23 of them in MLB history -- but did you know the four-homer game is even more elusive?
It's happened only 18 times. Of those, 12 have come from hitters in the National League -- and arguably none was as improbable as Reds infielder
Facing St. Louis in a night game at Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park on June 6, 2017, Gennett squared up four offerings and deposited them over the fence -- one to left field, two to right field and one to right-center -- and did so with authority. Just look at these picture-perfect swings, back-to-back-to-back-to-back:
He hit the showers after the game, so to speak.
How do you celebrate a player hitting four dingers in a game? Well, the Reds opted for perhaps the most perfect method possible: awarding Gennett his own scooter (get it?) a few weeks later when the Reds returned from a road trip.
As great a game as Gennett had that night -- he was the first player in the Reds' storied history to pull off a four-homer game -- it happened again shortly thereafter. Almost three months to the day later,
It's an especially strong example of "baseball is wildly unpredictable" that two different players would swat four homers in games in the same season. Take, for example, this: from 2003 to 2017, there was only one four-homer game (Josh Hamilton in 2012 against the Orioles).
Then, suddenly, two in a span of three months.
The lesson here, clearly, is that we should all be on the lookout for more four-homer games ... as it's anybody's guess who might do it next. Could be tomorrow, could be 12 years from now.
Who knows?
