Jo Adell couldn't believe what was happening.
The Angels outfielder, having already robbed Seattle's Cal Raleigh of a home run in right field, found himself tracking a ball off the bat of the Mariners' Josh Naylor to almost the exact spot where he robbed Raleigh. Adell leaped again, and again he caught the ball before it left the yard.
"Like some weird déjà vu, like I'm reliving the same play twice," Adell says on the latest edition of the 6-1-1 podcast, hosted by former Phillies greats Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard. "So I'm like, 'What is going on?'"
Oh, if only he knew.
Adell wowed the baseball world Saturday night with not one, not two, but THREE home run robberies against the Mariners. All of them were pivotal, as the Angels won the game 1-0. It was such an amazing display of clutch athleticism that his glove is headed to the Hall of Fame. Everyone was in awe, even teammate Mike Trout, who's been known to make some amazing catches himself.
After the second catch, "Mike is just looking at me with his arms crossed and he's like, 'Bro ... what is happening now?'" Adell said.
But the capper came in the ninth inning, when Seattle's J.P. Crawford lined a ball deep down the right-field line near the foul pole. Adell gave chase, and as he approached the short wall near the pole, leaped to make the catch as he tumbled into the stands.
"All I could think about was getting back up because I wanted to show that I had the ball," he said.
Adell rose and posed with his glove in the air, an epic moment captured by a fan in a now-classic photo. With fans surrounding him and giving him approving slaps on the shoulders, "It was crazy, man," Adell said. "It was an unreal experience."
All three catches were unbelievable, especially in a one-run game, Howard said, but the robbery of Crawford took the prize.
"You did him the dirtiest of all three," Howard said. "His face was priceless."
Adell gives some credit for the catches to the heavy nighttime spring air in Anaheim. Sometimes hard-hit balls that look like sure homers off the bat just seem to die near the wall. So, Adell makes sure to get back to the wall on such blasts, just in case a robbery opportunity presents itself.
"I don't care how hard it's hit," he said. "I gotta get back there because I just never know if I'm gonna have a chance."
Still, Rollins said of Adell's triple robbery, "We may not ever see that again."
The 6-1-1 Podcast is available on MLB.com, MLB.TV, all podcast platforms and YouTube.