MLB: Out of the park! Rookie Oneil Cruz connects HR and the ball leaves the Pirates stadium

There is a time when the Dominican rookie Oneil Cruz of the Pittsburgh Pirates, makes perfect contact with a baseball that unleashes a spectator’s inner child. As the ball goes up, you don’t think about wRC+ or wOBA, or DRS or OAA, or xBA or xSLG.

When the 2.01-meter-tall Cruz makes perfect contact with a ball and sends a ripple through the confines of a cathedral, there’s really only one thought that comes to mind, one that brings back to the audience one of the reasons why they fell in love with the game:

Where is that ball going to land? On a chilly Tuesday afternoon at PNC Park, on a night the Pirates beat the New York Mets, 8-2, the answer was the Allegheny River. In just the 30th game of his career at North Shore, Cruz became the last left-handed slugger to send a ball into the deep end, a feat that many believed would eventually happen, including Cruz himself.

cross, who recorded the first three-hit game of his career, he had no doubt that the ball had gone off the bat. He was some way off Tommy Hunter’s curveball, but Cruz has a history of turning awkward swings back and forth. What Cruz wondered as the ball rolled through the Pittsburgh night was if he had enough height to clear the right-field seats.

He certainly hit the ball hard enough — 113 mph, to be exact — and it traveled 422 feet. But unlike Rodolfo Castro’s terrifying two-run homer in the third inning, which hung in the air for 6.6 seconds before hitting the right-field foul pole, Cruz’s line didn’t go too far.

You can also read: MLB To infinity and beyond Oneil Cruz hits a huge HR coming out of the Pirates’ PNC Park stadium

But he had enough, barely clearing the stands before bouncing into the river. A Mets fan, who had just watched his team lose by six runs, couldn’t help but raise both arms and let his jaw drop to the ground.

Raphael Martinez

I am a fan of the King of Sports, especially the Boston Red Sox in MLB and all Mexican baseball in general. This profession has given me the opportunity to cover major events such as the Caribbean Series, the LMB All Star, the LMP (uninterrupted since 2009), signing important players. I had the chance to attend the 2013 World Classic in Arizona, USA, although as a fan. Apart from this beautiful sport, I love basketball, where I have also narrated games and even an NBA friendly 10 years ago, but I have baseball in my veins. Degree in Communication Sciences from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS) , from which I graduated in 2011. I was born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa and started in the world of sports journalism in 2004 in the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlán, where I was a baseball columnist and a reporter at the same time. In January 2009 I arrived at El Debate as a journalist reporter and it took almost six years (in the first stage), until in November 2014 I emigrated to the radio providing my services at Línea Directa-Grupo RSN. My cycle there ended in July 2019 and a few days later, El Debate gave me another opportunity to work and opened the doors for me again. That is how I came to Al Bat, where I have been since 2019 as a web journalist.

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