#A DRIVE INTO DEEP LEFT FIELD BY CASTELLANOS

[donnieisaprettyboy]

idk if y’all know this but I’m actually a pretty big baseball fan, if you saw my ass in person there’s no shot you would assume that but I fucking LOVE baseball!!!

[lightningstump]

reminded me of this golden moment

[leinton]

I know that I have probably 0 mutuals who are baseball fans. But I have 100% mutuals who are interested in memes, so I'm going to explain a baseball focused meme. The meme centers around a player named Nick Castellanos.

On August 19, 2020, Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman in the pregame said a homophobic slur. He thought he was not yet on air. He was wrong. The entirety of the people watching the game from home heard him say it. Later in the game, he gave this apology:

"Um, I made a comment earlier tonight, that I uh guess went over the air, that I am deeply ashamed of. If I have hurt anyone out there, I cannot tell you enough how from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith, as here's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run, and that will make it a 4 - nothing ballgame."

Thus started the legend, the legend of the man who interrupted something somber with a home run.

July 5, 2021, in the same ballpark:

"Well, we're going to tell you about a great man. And it's a loss for the Royals family. This is George Gorman, who passed away at the age of 96. He served our country in World War II, he went to the University of Kansas, and so did his son Pat Gormon who's working for the Royals in the clubhouse for 26 years, and that was Pat's father"

"Well that's a great life, 96 years, and Pat just like his dad went to KU, he also went to Bishop Ward High School, and there's a drive into deep left center field, and there's never a good time to eulogize someone during the broadcast so, we apologize for the timing but, our hearts go out to Pat who's just been a tremendous employee to the Royals for 26 years."

Imagine having to say "There never was going to be a good time to eulogize someone" while eulogizing someone.

Since these two events, Castellanos has hit home runs during Memorial Day, with the broadcaster saying "...honoring those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Castellanos rips one to deep left field. It is gone!"

Then while the broadcasters were talking about how the Phillies manager had suffered a stroke (who recovered btw!) and he hit yet another home run.

Castellanos would then hit a walk off single to win a game while the baseball world was mourning Willie Mays.

He also hit a home run 2 hours before Trump was shot, and then hit a home about 2 hours after Biden said he's step down from the presidential race.

So yeah, there's the fun baseball meme that is Castellanos and his awful, awful timing.

[zoeology31]

Decided to mess around on Baseball Reference the other day to practice my... data sifting skills, I guess? Anyway, this is an exercise to find every time Nick Castellanos of the Tigers/Cubs/Reds/Phillies has hit a drive into deep left field to make it a 4-0 ballgame.

As great as the extended "Castellanos has an Absol-like ability to homer when something unfortunate happens" meme is, I'm not compiling a list of all his home runs, there's 220 of those counting the postseason. Instead I'd like to find every career home run of his that fits the criteria of the original meme (deep left field, 4-0 ballgame). There's a couple video compilations out there that do this, but they're all a few years out of date and I'd like to look through the data myself to see if anything interesting was missed.

Unfortunately there's not a good way to search a baseball database via the score before or after a particular play, so I have to manually go through all 12 years of Castellanos's B-Ref game logs. Here's my heuristics for this process:

For a given season, sort the game logs by HR to reduce scrolling, since we only care about games he homered in.

Check the final score. If Castellanos's team scored less than 4 runs, no need to even check the box score.

Otherwise, click through and look at the linescore to see if Castellanos's team scored at least 4 runs before the other team scored any, thus enabling a midgame 4-0 score.

If so, scroll down to the play-by-play to find Castellanos's home run(s) and confirm the score and direction.

Here is an initial list of every home run hit by Castellanos to drive in the 4-0 run, even if the total runs scored on the play made the score greater than 4-0, in chronological order:

6/7/2014: 3rd inning solo homer, LF, 4-0.

7/30/2014: 1st inning 3-run homer, RF, 6-0.

4/10/2015: 5th inning 2-run homer, RF, 5-0.

7/22/2015: 3rd inning grand slam, LF-CF, 5-0.

8/19/2015: 3rd inning grand slam, LF, 7-0.

8/24/2015: 1st inning solo homer, LF, 4-0.

7/17/2017: 2nd inning 2-run homer, CF, 4-0.

9/8/2017: 3rd inning grand slam, CF-RF, 4-0.

6/16/2018: 5th inning 2-run homer, LF, 5-0.

8/30/2019: 2nd inning 2-run homer, LF, 5-0.

9/3/2019: 5th inning 3-run homer, RF, 5-0.

8/19/2020: 5th inning solo homer, LF, 4-0.

8/13/2021: 6th inning solo homer, LF, 4-0.

9/11/2021: 3rd inning 2-run homer, LF, 4-0.

6/28/2023: 2nd inning 3-run homer, LF, 5-0.

9/15/2023: 1st inning 3-run homer, LF, 4-0.

9/20/2023: 4th inning 2-run homer, RF, 4-0.

9/24/2023: 4th inning 2-run homer, LF, 4-0.

And narrowing down specifically to drives to deep left field to make it a 4-0 ballgame, we are left with:

6/7/2014: 3rd inning solo homer, LF, 4-0.

8/24/2015: 1st inning solo homer, LF, 4-0.

8/19/2020: 5th inning solo homer, LF, 4-0. (Bonus: the extremely normal call from the opposing broadcast)

8/13/2021: 6th inning solo homer, LF, 4-0.

9/11/2021: 3rd inning 2-run homer, LF, 4-0.

9/15/2023: 1st inning 3-run homer, LF, 4-0.

9/24/2023: 4th inning 2-run homer, LF, 4-0.

That's two with the Tigers, a nearly five-year gap between occurrences, three with the Reds, and two with the Phillies, for a total of seven times. Yes, he's done it four times in three full seasons since the initial meme incident, after only doing it twice in six full seasons before that.

There's no real rhyme or reason to this distribution; Castellanos has hit more home runs on a rate basis since 2020, but had a long enough career before that to accumulate more total home runs. Intuitively, factors like team quality and ballpark affect the frequency of opportunities to hit a 4-0 home run, but as we can see from the larger list above, Castellanos's overall homers to drive in the 4-0 run (18 total over 10 seasons) are distributed roughly equally throughout his career. Those homers have just happened to match the exact meme factors more frequently since 2020. Baseball magic?

Also of note, that first qualifying home run after the meme one happened the at-bat after Castellanos got plunked in the shoulder, and the second one was, as you can see, on the anniversary of 9/11. Featured on both those videos is the Reds play-by-play announcer who replaced Brennaman, John Sadak, aka the guy losing his mind on every Elly De La Cruz highlight video (here's some good examples). Blessing in disguise, honestly, he makes Reds games fun to tune into.

This is an Elly De La Cruz post now, actually. Watch those highlights. He's so cool. Baseball is the best.

Bonus: In his young career, De La Cruz has hit one (1) deep drive to make it a 4-0 ballgame, on 7/30/23, though it was to right field. As a switch-hitter who therefore bats lefty the majority of the time, he will homer to left field much less frequently than the righty Castellanos, but of course he'll do lots of other stuff too.

[contagiouswatermelon]

nobody on here cares but sometimes I think about that clip of the announcer apologizing for previously saying the f slur on air, and interrupting his apology to announce that nick castellanos had hit a drive into deep left field. and then continuing his apology

and by sometimes I mean quite often

[left-hand-of-dorkness]

i’ve been saying for years the ultimate hotness formula is

big eye black + unbuttoned jersey no undershirt + chain(s)

NICK CASTELLANOS [20230614] PHI @ AZ

[sashabarkov]

[John Tavares voice] As a professional athlete, I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith. So it’s easy to understand why I’ve been relying on a drive into deep left field by Castellanos for about 4 years now as the home run that makes it a 4-0 ballgame is good for my mood and promotes healing. Now that I’ve joined the IRS’s hitlist, I don’t know if I’m gonna be putting on this amulet again

[normalgoalie]

The way Youk said “I pride myself” and I immediately filled in the rest of the Castellanos meme but about Wong and then Wong proceeds to actually hit a drive to deep left field to make it a 4-0 ballgame

[jackhues]

my fav comms moments from this game in no particular order (phillies vs. mets - london series):

as someone who is not biased towards either team

they wished the net was positioned differently so maybe they could catch a foul ball (their box in london is much lower than the other ballparks)

having a whole conversation with the mets cf and him being mic'd up while screaming for the ball

and that one announcer who was just praising the cfer while they were interviewing him mic'd up

bryce harper's soccer celly after hitting a hr and the comms bringing it up multiple times

plotting how to get bryce harper to hit the cycle and calling it a 'london cycle' (it didn't happen)

going off topic and talking about whoever the camera would show in the crowd

saying 'across the pond' as they referred to playing in london. at least once/twice an inning

going off topic and talking about the dirt. saying it came from america

laughing at the mascot/costumes with a giant head (???) race - the last few seconds were televised before the bottom of the seventh

feeling bad for the mets pitcher when he was taken out of the fourth

when the top of the fourth finally finished and a player who's name i can't remember was the third out: "he was two of the three outs. they went through the order, and he accounted for two of the three outs"

pronouncing chelsea as kelsey, and the other guy correcting him immediately

getting a fish and chips delivery in the bottom of the 7th by the phillies mascot and absolutely losing their minds (probably one of my favourite parts)

one of the guys saying his fav part was being visited by the fanatic (phillies mascot)

THE GUY SAYING "CASTELLANOS DEEP DRIVE TO LEFT CENTER FIELD... IN LONDON" and then the mics going silent for like ten seconds lmaooo - (idk if this was on purpose or if i'm just reaching)

montreal expos mention

[meezer]

some absolutely ascetic monk, SAINTLIKE levels of emotional maturity and control on display from me tonight. and that's castellanos with drive into deep left field making it a 4-0 ballgame

[muntzerism-diggerism]

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, "And there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run".

[abislwise]

This is a really good tumblr post, and it’s really making me think hard as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. And so that will make it a 4–0 ballgame.

baseball commentary is awesome its like

"i don't understand what people mean when they talk about a constant state of the self. come on, we're always shifting like water."

"that's true, but our experiences stay with us for our entire lives as there's a fly ball to left field and it's caught by Pollock at the warning track, the person we are is built upon what we learnt as the person we used to be, you know?"

"of course, we are always shaping what we will become in the future. Castillo dots the corner for a called strike."

"man that hot dog guy's really killing it."

"i can hear him from all the over here. he's making me hungry. do you like relish on your hot dog?"

[enbysean]

fuck cheaters

[catgirltitties]

Need someone on here to share with me the joy of the “Nick Castellanos with a deep drive into the left field and that will make it a 4-0 ballgame” baseball meme

[anacondasvice]

One year ago began the best year of my professional career. Too many great moments, not enough space to post all the great pics. Rekindled passion, made new friends, reunited with old ones. Can't stop smiling, won't stop until the wheels fall off. Thank you most of all to all the fans who made it possible. I'm having the time of my life, as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that'll be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame.

[ollieols]

And Castellanos hits deep drive to left field, and that will be a home run.

There's never a good time to start an apology

falls in love with your baseball and gets mad when you hit it hey thats my girlfriend + runs over [eoples heads over the seats into the field and at the home teams batter & running 92mph but its right down the middle and he hits me clean out of the park just like he hit my wife and i meet her in the clouds and we escape orbit and we discover new worlds