When is a home run not a home run? When the hitter of said home run doesn’t step on home plate, naturally.
Elier Leyva of the Delmarva Shorebirds, the Baltimore Orioles’ Single-A affiliate, learned that the hard way Sunday, when he hit what he and his teammates believed was the go-ahead home run.
Leyva went yard in the top of the ninth inning with a man on and his team down one run, giving the Shorebirds the lead. All they’d have to do was hold on to the lead in the bottom of the ninth, and Leyva would be the hero.
Instead, he turned out to be the goat because he missed that white thing shaped like a house at the end of his 360-foot jog.
The good news, though, was that Leyva was credited with a triple, which tied the game. The bad news, in addition to losing a home run, was the Shorebirds lost the game when the Augusta GreenJackets walked off with the win in the 10th inning.
It’s also not like Leyva’s a slugger, either. It would’ve been just his third homer of the season.
H/t to Deadspin
