OAKLAND -- Just how impressive was Austin Hays' home run with one out in the fourth inning of Saturday's 7-2 extra-innings win over the A’s at the Coliseum?
Well, it didn't come down.
Not in the sense that it was a sky-scraping moonshot, but because it firmly lodged into the left-field foul pole and stuck there until one enterprising A's fan retrieved it, taking home a unique souvenir.
"It wasn't 'til the game ended that I saw it got stuck in that foul pole," starter Cole Irvin said. "That was absolutely wild. I had no idea that that happened, so pretty crazy. Never seen it before."
Hays' solo homer, his 12th of 2023, was also the Orioles' first hit of the night off A's left-hander Ken Waldichuk. It came off the bat at 97.1 mph and hooked down the left-field line, just managing to stay fair and evening the game at a run apiece.
"Well, I was hoping it would stay fair," manager Brandon Hyde said. "I was asking it to stretch a little bit -- I wasn't sure if he hit it far enough -- but [he] tucked it right in there."
No stranger to crushing baseballs at the Coliseum, Hays entered the day with a .333/.355/.667 slash line -- with two homers -- in seven games in Oakland. Now he can add one of the most unusual homers the stadium has seen in 55 years of A's baseball to his highlight reel.