Damn. Damn. Damn. One thing I've been obsessed with for years is the unattainable home run cycle. Never been done in major league ball. baseball. Just once in the minors, 1998 in AA ball. How many hundreds of thousands of games is that over 120+ years?
Well, damn. Shin-Soo Choo. Grand slam. Two run home run. Solo home run. Damn. Just one home run shy of doing the impossible. How rare is it for a player to get three home runs in a night? Ridiculously rare. Then to get three home runs each time with a different number of men on base? Unfathomably rare. He was just one home run with two guys on from being the first baseball player to hit a home run cycle. I'm convinced that's a feat, at least at the major league level, and almost certainly at any level, that no one here will ever be alive to hear about happening again. And when it happened in the minors, well, what year did I say it happened? 1998? Gee, nothing weird about home runs occurred in that decade, did it? I'm not saying whoever did it was juicing, but some guy who hits four home runs in a game in AA, desperate to make it, in 1998? Yeah. Asterisk time!
It's easily the most impossible "significant" record to have yet to be achieved in the majors. And Shin-Soo Choo came as close, just one home run with two men on base, as any human being, out of who knows how many tens of thousands in well over a century, in hundreds of thousands if not more games, has ever come to doing. Damn.
Oh, by the by. The first inning? Choo batting third in the lineup. The leadoff batter is at the plate. Single. The next batter comes up? Single. Two men on, no outs, top of the first. Next batter? Choo. Damn.
He grounded into a double play. That's how close he came to making an astounding, unattainable record that many have dreamed of and none have touched.
Oh, by the by. Top of the ninth inning. Two outs, two men on. Brantley strikes out swinging. Except it was a wild pitch. Man scores, two men on. Cabrera walks up to the plate with two men on. Who is on deck? Shin-Soo Choo. Two men on, two outs. Man on first, man on second. The top of the ninth should be over with a swinging strikeout, yet Brantley gets on base to put Choo on-deck. What are the odds? One single by Cabrera and Choo got his second shot at a three run homer. A second chance at a three run home run after hitting three home runs and a single. Cabrera grounds out to end the top of the ninth, with Choo walking back in the dugout likely oblivious to just what level of rarity he missed out on getting a second chance at. Damn.
If these last few paragraphs don't convince you there is some higher power that doesn't want to ever see a home run cycle in a major league game lest the universe unravel, well... Hitting four home runs in a game is rare. Hitting four home runs with a different number of men on base each time is ridiculous, but odds are it should have happened once. Then to have something like the description above? It's not the first time. Out of the handful of one HR away from the cycle, a lot have had the carrot beat over their head like Choo did tonight. What are the odds? Damn.
