What’s more impressive? Adolis Garcia’s longest home run or catch by A’s fan in suite?
Adolis Garcia has been in a hitting slump of late, especially from a power perspective, but he unleashed a month’s worth of frustration on Saturday.
Garcia’s two-run home run in the first inning was the longest of his career, measured at 450 feet by Statcast. It gave the Texas Rangers a brief lead 2-0 lead against the Oakland Athletics at the Coliseum.
A fan in a left-center field suite beyond the bleacher seats at the Coliseum caught the homer in the air without a glove. Almost as impressive as the home run.
“That ball is hammered. Holy moly did he get a hold of that,” Rangers’ television broadcaster Dave Raymond said during the Bally Sports Southwest telecast. Color man C.J. Nitkowski couldn’t believe the catch. “No way that fan just caught that ball sticking his head out the window in a suite.”
He did. And it was awesome.
Garcia’s previous long homer was 431 feet against the Mariners on May 8. It’s his first homer since July 30. He has 24 this season, third-most by a Rangers rookie behind Pete Incaviglia’s 30 in 1986 and Mark Teixeira’s 26 in 2003.
The 450-foot homer is the second-longest ever hit by a Rangers player at Oakland’s Coliseum. Shin-Soo Choo holds the record with a 472-foot homer on Sept. 22, 2019, in the Statcast era (since 2015).
Nathaniel Lowe’s 465-foot homer on April 4 at Kansas City is the longest homer by a Ranger this season. Garcia’s blast Saturday is the fifth-longest this season by a Ranger.
The A’s won 12-3 in the second game of the three-game series. They scored seven in the third in a game that eventually featured Rangers infielder Brock Holt pitching. Holt threw multiple eephus pitches during his scoreless eighth. Matt Chapman singled on one of the super-slow pitches but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a double.
Oakland won on Starling Marte’s three-run, walk-off homer in the 11th Friday night.
This story was originally published August 7, 2021 at 5:20 PM.
