Three Swings

There’s a particular way you watch baseball in a rebuilding year. You stop watching for the standings and start watching out of habit. You check the social media highlights at night the way you check the weather, not because it changes anything, just because you want to know. That’s been the Cardinals season. Young arms getting shelled, young bats finding their way, and a whole lot of “check back in 2028.”

So on Saturday afternoon, I wasn’t expecting much. The Cardinals were at Wrigley. They’d called up Joshua Báez from Memphis the night before. He has been hitting well in AAA and this is the year the Cardinals figure out how many major leagues the organization actually have on the squad. He was penciled in fifth, playing left field, facing Matthew Boyd.

First inning. Two outs, a runner on. Boyd threw him a 93 mph fastball up in the zone, the very first pitch Báez had ever seen in the major leagues.

He hit it 449 feet.

Halfway up the bleachers in left-center, a two-run shot, and then a grin toward the St. Louis dugout as he started his trot. Oliver Marmol said afterward there was a calmness to it, a smile that said “I’m here.” Fine. Great story. First-pitch home runs in a debut have happened before. You file it away as a nice moment in a lost season and move on. You feel happy for the young man.

Then he came up again and hit a changeup down the left-field line. Solo shot. Two at-bats, two home runs. Only two other players had ever done that to start a career, Bob Nieman with the Browns in 1951 and Keith McDonald with, of all teams, the Cardinals in 2000. Now the broadcast is buzzing. Bear in mind, I wasn’t watching. I was out running errands between massive thunderstorms.

Sixth inning. Boyd is somehow still out there, and he tries to stay away from the zone. Báez reaches out and drives a slider the other way, to right field.

Three at-bats. Three home runs. Nobody in the history of major league baseball had ever done that.

Think about what that sentence means. Baseball has been played professionally for a century and a half. Tens of thousands of players have made debuts. Ted Williams didn’t do this. Ken Griffey Jr. didn’t do this. Albert Pujols, the greatest Cardinal of my lifetime, debuted without a single home run. And a 23-year-old kid, up from Memphis for less than 24 hours, did something none of them ever touched.

One game, three swings, and suddenly the future has a face.

Time to check the highlights.