Rays and Royals exchange inside-the-park home runs in Royals’ win
Lost in the aftermath of an ugly, and unfortunate injury to Royals outfielder Alex Gordon on Wednesday night was another baseball statistical oddity.
Tampa’s Logan Forsythe and Kansas City’s Jarrod Dyson each hit inside-the-park home runs – the first time since May 26, 1997 there were two in the same game. On that day in 1997 Sammy Sosa of the Cubs and Tomy Womack of the Pirates accomplished the feat.
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Forsythe’s homer came on Gordon’s injury. Gordon chased down Forsythe’s fly ball but fell awkwardly at the warning, and fell into the wall. With Gordon down in left field Forsythe was able to score with relative ease.
You can feel less guilty about Dyson’s inside-the-park homer. Two innings after Forsythe, Dyson hit a sharp fly ball down the left field line. Rays left fielder David DeJesus dove for it and missed.
With Dyson’s speed he was thinking home run all the way. He crossed the plate without a throw up after the relay was dropped. It went into the books as a two-run inside the park homer for Dyson and turned out to be the game-winning play. It gave the Royals a 9-3 lead and they held on for a 9-7 win.
One other fun fact from the inside-the-park homer exchange – Dyson only entered the game as a substitute after Gordon got hurt on Forsythe’s homer.
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Ian Denomme is an editor and writer for Yahoo Sports. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.
