Corbin Carroll just hit one of the strangest home runs you will ever see. He did it by getting hit in the head.
In the first inning of Tuesday’s eventual 5-3 Diamondbacks win over the Giants, Carroll smashed a 1-0 sinker from Landen Roupp to deep left-center field. The ball banged off the wall, his helmet flew off as he rounded second, and the Giants tried to gun him down at third with a relay. Luis Arraez fired the throw from the cutoff position. It sailed high and to the right. And it hit Carroll square in the head as he was sliding into the bag.
Helmet off. No protection. Direct contact. He grabbed his head, popped up, saw the ball rolling behind him, and took off for home.
By the time Arraez and the rest of the Giants figured out where the ball was, Carroll was crossing the plate. Officially, it went into the books as a triple plus an error. Unofficially, it was a Little League home run started by the wildest bean ball you will see all year.
The most insane part. Carroll stayed in the game. He went back to the dugout, got checked by the team trainer, and trotted out to right field the next inning like nothing happened. The Diamondbacks did pull him from the lineup for Wednesday’s game as a precaution, but the initial reports out of Phoenix are encouraging. No concussion symptoms. No vision issues. Just a guy with a sore head and a story he will tell forever.
The play is going to live on every highlight reel for the rest of the season. It hits every box. The hardest hit ball of the inning. A relay throw that any decent middle infielder should make in his sleep. A defensive star looking like he forgot which base he was throwing to. And a runner doing the smartest possible thing while clearly disoriented.
For Arraez, this is a tough look. He is one of the most talented contact hitters in the league. He is a Gold Glove caliber second baseman on his good days. Tuesday was not one of those days. The throw he had to make was a standard relay, and he missed by enough that the ball ricocheted off a player’s skull and into the outfield. There is no spinning that.
For Carroll, this should have been the kind of play that ends his night and sends Arizona into a panic. He has been the Diamondbacks’ most important position player since he debuted. Losing him for a long stretch would tank the lineup. Instead, he turned a near-disaster into one of the more memorable plays of his career.
This is also a reminder that baseball is still capable of producing chaos nobody else can. The NBA has buzzer-beaters. The NFL has Hail Marys. Baseball has a guy getting beaned in the temple on a relay throw and scoring anyway. There is nothing else like it.
Get well, Corbin. And put that helmet back on.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
