Los Angeles Angels outfielder Jo Adell on Tuesday night dared to go only where Jose Canseco has ventured before, at least according to the confines of living memory.
Adell, who earlier this season hoarded headlines by robbing three would-be home runs in a single game, balanced the ledger just a bit during his team's Tuesday 8-2 loss to the Colorado Rockies. In the fourth inning, with the Rockies up 7-0, rookie Colorado first baseman TJ Rumfield launched a drive to deep right center, where Adell was patrolling the grass. Here's the part where we Just Roll Tape:
Yea and also verily: Rumfield's homer, in order to sneak over the Angel Stadium wall, required the relevant properties of Mr. Adell's skull. According to Statcast, Rumfield's batted ball would've been a home run in exactly one of the 30 ballparks of Major League Baseball. That park was -- urgent bulletin forthcoming -- Angel Stadium. And it was only a home run in Angel Stadium because of Mr. Adell's head.
As noted up top, all of this brings to mind the Platonic ideal of such moments, which was authored by Canseco's head, which at that point was under the employ of the Texas Rangers, and Carlos Martinez's bat-upon-ball way back yonder in May of 1993. Journey back through time with us, won't you?
Straightaway, some differences between Canseco's and Adell's moments -- swollen by both pride and impact -- stand out. Both came in a loss, but in Canseco's case, it turned out to be a one-run loss to Cleveland. Unlike with Adell's dome-aided homer -- "domer," obviously -- Canseco's, it can be argued, played a pivotal role in the outcome. It was also one of just five home runs that Martinez would hit that season and one of just 25 in his entire MLB career. Aesthetically, the edge must go to Canseco. With Adell, there was momentary confusion about whether the domer was indeed that or whether the ball was still in play, given that it bounded back onto the playing surface. With Canseco's domer, the ball tidily went from his head to disappearing from view behind the outfield fence. The pleasing absence of any ambiguity and thus any need to reference ground rules is a more fitting capstone -- or stone upon the cap -- to the moment.
When it comes to object lessons in physics/classical mechanics, however, Adell's domer soars to greater heights. You'll note that the ball of Rumfield's bat first made contact with the top of Adell's glove. The baseball glove is of course a largely soft and pliable surface and, in keeping with such properties, it did not alter the path of the batted ball all that much. Adell's head, however, includes a skull, which in turn includes the frontal and parietal regions of the neurocranium. In all, the 22 bones of the skull and the fibrous tethers connecting those bones make for an imposing piece of living equipment -- imposing enough for the august pages of the Washington Post in 2014 to inform readers in large and bolded headline font that:
"No, you can't crush a man's skull with your bare hands"
Such hard surfaces, we know only because of high school survey courses taught by Isaac Newton, confer more energy than softer surfaces like, say, a glove. That's why Adell's brainbox forced the ball to bounce, both upward and forward, enough to get it over the yellow line. Because Canseco, in the course of his pratfall, was not deft enough to get his glove on the ball, no such lessons were learned.
And now let us speak of legacy. Three days after his domer, Canseco injured his elbow while pitching in an eventual blowout loss to the Boston Red Sox, and that injury eventually required Tommy John surgery. From that point forward, Canseco would be a primary DH and play the outfield only sparingly. The decision was almost certainly a response to Canseco's arm injury, but there's no one who can stop you from believing it was a rejoinder -- punishment and mercy in equal measure -- to his domer.
Adell, one presumes, will not be relieved of his fielding duties because he's a better fly-catcher than Canseco was. Also, Adell, unlike Canseco, actually got the glove on his domer.
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