They’re great, aren’t they?
Monday was a fun game. The San Francisco Giants beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-3 as they continue to end the season red hot: in their three-city road trip against three teams in playoff position, the Giants are now 6-1 and have outscored their opponents 37-12.
And on Monday, they did it in part due to one of the greatest plays in all of baseball: an inside-the-park home run. That came courtesy of Matt Chapman, who hit his third dinger since becoming a father last week, and is now three shy of breaking the team’s 30-homer curse.
DAD SPEED pic.twitter.com/j1bNtMEMP1
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) September 24, 2024
That’s a thing of beauty. An absolute thing of beauty.
So let’s appreciate the rare and gorgeous inside-the-park home run. Let’s start by watching Chapman’s again. Go ahead, do it. Do it right now.
Did you do it? Okay, great.
Now we move on. The broadcast informed us that, despite the Giants playing half of their games at Oracle Park where Triples Alley would seem to produce inside-the-parkers, this was their first one since Denard Span back in 2017. Let’s check that one out.
That’s the rare inside-the-park home run where Span might have had a chance to make it to a fifth base if there was one.
In a sign of how bizarre time is and how old I’m getting, when I heard that the Giants last inside-the-parker was Span seven years ago, my first thought was, “Nope, that’s wrong! Kelby Tomlinson had one!”
And while I was half right (Tomlinson did have one, which is all the more wild since he only had three homers in his career), that one came back in …. gulp … 2015.
And of course, if we’re talking about inside-the-parkers, who can forget the greatest one of them all?
Side note: this long has been, and likely always will be, my favorite Duane Kuiper call. The crescendo is absolutely magical, and a complete masterclass in how to convey the emotion of a play and a park. Just phenomenal.
What time do the Giants play today?
The Giants and D-Backs play again tonight at 6:40 p.m. PT. Will there be another inside-the-parker? Only one way to find out…