You might think that the coolest place to hit a baseball is over the fence. But Red Sox outfielder Wilyer Abreu is here to prove you wrong. In a Boston win where he also smashed a grand slam the traditional way, Abreu earned an inside-the-park dong with a trick shot off Fenway Park's center-field wall.
The Sox attacked Reds rookie Chase Burns early, scoring seven in the first inning. By the time the bottom of the fifth came around, Cincinnati had plated four of their own to make the game a little more interesting. Abreu was the lead-off hitter, and he had a chance to tie his ex-teammate Rafael Devers for most dingers by a Red Sock this season. On 0-2, he got a juicy fastball up in the zone and turned on it, knocking the ball to that little angled nook in the deepest part of his 113-year-old ballfield. The Sock's sock was a few feet from a slow trot around the bases. Instead, he had to race the whole way, benefiting from a dramatic ricochet that sent the ball rolling along the warning track. Its path was so mischievous that the Reds couldn't even throw the ball back to the infield before Abreu slid head-first across the plate.
This bounce is really so much fun. Here it is in slow motion, with apologies to TJ Friedl, whose body was not meant to reverse so suddenly.
Abreu's eighth-inning salami to help cap the 13-6 victory made him the first player since Roger Maris in 1958 to notch both an inside-the-parker and a grand slam in separate at-bats during the same game. I'd tell him to save something for his teammates, but I don't trust them to offer much on their own. In the aftermath of the Devers trade, which came with the team on a seven-of-eight hot streak, the Red Sox have plummeted out of the playoff picture to below .500. They've won just two of their last nine, including a sweep inflicted on them by the Angels, and at least anecdotally, Boston's mood is rotten. On both TV and radio broadcasts that I've tuned into this year, I've been genuinely taken aback by how willing the announcers are to take shots at the roster's poor play. I'm normally used to bad-team booths trying to spin any minor positive into a sign of overall improvement, but I hear an active embrace of pessimism whenever I engage with the Red Sox. Those who watch the team all the time are grouchy for good reason. But I had fun watching the way that ball bounced.
