Just about 150 years into American professional baseball, there isn’t much this sport hasn’t seen. Then again, they also say that every day you come to the ballpark, you see something new, and this weekend in Maryland, that sentiment rang truer.
The Spire City Ghost Hounds -- a real team, despite their official nickname being too good to be true -- of Fredericksburg, Md., play in the independent Atlantic League (an MLB Partner League). This past Sunday, they played their final home games of the 2023 season as part of a doubleheader against the Lexington Counter Clocks, and events proceeded as expected for roughly six innings.
The Ghost Hounds won the first game on a walk-off home run by outfielder Craig Dedelow in the bottom of the seventh -- the Atlantic League plays seven-inning games in cases of doubleheaders -- which is, admittedly, perfectly normal.
Come the second game, Spire City’s one through five hitters -- in order, Eddy Diaz, Dedelow, José Marmolejos, Kole Cottam and Luke Becker -- led off the bottom of the first with five consecutive home runs.
That was significant, to put it mildly. To this point, no AL/NL team has ever hit a fifth consecutive home run. In total, just 11 AL/NL teams have hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs, and the first team to do so, the then-Milwaukee Braves, only got around to it on June 8, 1961. The most recent team to do so, the Cardinals on July 2, 2022, was the first to do it in the first inning of a game, although those came with two outs.
Those five home runs, in the end, mattered a whole lot -- the Ghost Hounds took home a win in their home finale by a score of 7-5.