Al Woods is hardly a household name, but know this: Among members of the 1ABHR Club, reserved for those who go yard in their first big league at-bat (see Part I), he is the first to have his debut tater appear on YouTube.

Unwittingly, Woods introduced us to a time when we can relive both the visual drama and the verbal banality produced by the first-AB dinger. Before the cliches take hold, though, there is always the pioneering moment, wholly original and unspoiled by the triteness it fathers. This was — and is — Woods’ dinger on April 7, 1977. Not only was it Woods’ debut. Not only was it Opening Day for his Blue Jays. It was the first game the Jays ever played.

Roll tape: With Toronto leading the White Sox, 5-4, in the sixth, pinch-hitter Woods has worked the count to 1-and-2 against starter Francisco Barrios.

Crack!

Announcer: “Hit hard! Right field!”

Back goes Richie Zisk, to a wall made of blue trash bags.

Announcer: “Home run!”

The 22-second clip immediately jumps to Woods’ crossing home plate. Soon thereafter it ends, unceremoniously, with no hint of the hokum that will characterize the clips of many of his 1ABHR descendants. There is no mention of his getting the ball back, no camera shot of family and friends high-fiving. There is no silent treatment, no curtain call. Read the rest of this entry »

For the man from Castro’s Cuba, it happened at Great American Ball Park.

On August 2, 2012, in Cincinnati, Eddy Rodriguez departed the Padres on-deck circle and made his way to a big league batter’s box for the first time in his seven-year pro career. His larger journey had been less direct. Two decades earlier, seven-year-old Eddy had boarded his father’s rickety fishing boat and with dad Edilio, mom Ylya, and sister Yanisbet embarked on the 100-mile route from the northern shores of the communist country to the southern shores of the United States. En route, the family encountered 20-foot waves and a useless compass. The boat nearly capsized, threatening to send them to the sharks. By day three, they were low on fuel, water and food. Soon they had nothing but coffee beans. They ate them.

Desperate, they tied a white sheet to a pole.

In time, the U.S. Coast Guard arrived.

Now here he was, called up from the Single-A Storm just four months shy of his 27th birthday, getting his shot against Reds ace Johnny Cueto. On a 1-2 count, and with nearly 23,000 fans watching from the seats and many more on TV, Rodriguez drove a Cueto curveball “high and deep to left-centerfield!”

Just as it slammed into a seat 416 feet from home plate, announcer Dick Enberg added, “Rodriguez will touch ‘em all in his first big league at-bat!”

In that instant, Rodriguez had become the 112th player in big league history to join what I deem the 1ABHR Club. It looks like a vanity plate. It should be.

It’s an exclusive group. Through the end of the 2019 season, 10 additional players had homered in their first at-bat to put membership at 122; one more has joined so far in 2020. What binds these players is the singularity of their feat. Babe Ruth? Not a member. Bill Duggleby? A pioneering member.

On April 21, 1898, the man they called Frosty Bill hit a Cy Seymour fastball “right on the pickle,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, and sent it out of Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl for a grand slam. Not for another 107 years would a player belt a granny in his first big league at-bat. What made Frosty Bill’s four-bagger all the more remarkable is that he was a hurler, one of 20 now in the club.

Forty-one seasons hence, Boston left-hander Bill LeFebvre stepped in for his first at-bat and drove Monty Stratton’s first pitch to the Green Monster. As he approached second base, LeFebrve saw the ball carom onto the field. Head down, he rounded second and slid into third for a triple. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 24, in what amounted to my FanGraphs debut, I wrote in so many words that Matt Harrison is – and I quote – “back.” Well, he’s back, all right – back on the disabled list, not only with stiffness in the surgically repaired back that kept him sidelined for the better – or, really, worse – part of two years but also with a diagnosis of hypothyroidism.

As I wrote in so many words: mercy.
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When Rangers lefty Matt Harrison hobbled off the mound in the second inning of a game against the Astros in May of 2014, you, like any rational observer (such as the esteemed yours truly), probably experienced the lumbar equivalent of a sympathetic pregnancy. You probably winced — and just in case the initial wince didn’t register with the awww-jeeeez registry, winced again — and then reached for your lower back, wiggled it around while listening to the unmistakable sounds of Pachinko and fell to the floor in unmitigated agony after reaching for the business card of a chiropractor.

Or something like that.

Mercy.

It was painful to watch, and more painful, surely, for poor Matt Harrison to bear. Having already undergone a pair of 2013 surgeries to repair a herniated disc, Harrison, with his head bowed and back slightly but tellingly bent, walked gingerly to the dugout that day with four earned runs (in 1.2 innings) in his wake and, worse, one lumbar spinal disc fusion surgery in his future.

Couched in the careful language of objective reports were subtle eulogies to his once ascendant career, little nods to the possibility — the probability — that the 6-foot-4 former All-Star had thrown his last big league pitch, or, really, his last pitch, period. After all, nobody else in the history of baseball — a sport, mind you, in which unfettered actions of the spinal column are pretty key to performance — had ever undergone the same surgical procedure, let alone returned from it. In a season that saw so many Rangers sojourn in long disability, Harrison seemed bound for a permanent stay.

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