Felix Hernandez, colloquially known as “The King,” was dueling against fellow countryman Johan Santana on Monday evening in the house that beer shits built.
With the bases loaded, The King flushed a Santana fastball deep into the bowels of the opposite field. Felix trotted around the bases all wide eyed and giddy. He looked totally unaware of the historical significance behind what he had just done. There must have been a small town of stat heads punching buttons on laptops, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing every iota of data that encompassed the blast. The AP was all over it.
Hernandez hit the first home run by a pitcher in Mariners history, and the first slam by an AL hurler since Cleveland’s Steve Dunning connected off Oakland’s Diego Segui on May 11, 1971, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Looking at Hernandez — !who had just embarrassed the best pitcher in the history of Venezuela! — come toward home plate made me wish the ump was an Italian street painter. It was a scene that belonged on a poster and hung on a 10-year-old’s wall in Tacoma.
But then the uplifting moment — following the theme of the Mariners’ season — was waterlogged and sunk into the oldest pirate’s grave.
To see what happened, just watch the video below . . .
The free fall of emotion that encompassed both incidents was almost too much to take. Everything about the moment(s) lent itself to art and creation. So, it begs the question, who else will take the opportunity and create a masterpiece?
