J.D. Martinez finished his stellar Friday night with two homers, but he thought he had a third.
During the sixth inning of the Boston Red Sox’s eventual 16-4 win, Martinez clubbed a ball to deep right, which Kole Calhoun gave chase to. Calhoun wasn’t able to reel it in though, and the ball bounced off the base of the wall. Martinez, after seeing the ball bounce, thought it had cleared the fence, so he went into his home run trot, but in reality, the ball bounced off the wall and right to Calhoun, who fired the ball to the cutoff man. As Martinez rounded second, third base coach Carlos Febles urgently told him to go back to second, and though the throw beat Martinez by a mile, he made a nice swim move to avoid the tag, earning a double.
You can watch the wild sequence below.
So, what happened? Martinez gave his take to NESN’s Tom Caron after the game.
“Honestly, I saw Kole jump for it, so right away if he’s jumping I’m thinking it’s up against the wall,” Martinez said. “Then it hits the ground and on the way down I don’t see it because of that white billboard. And then I saw it bounce up, usually it doesn’t bounce that high if it’s going to hit the wall, but I guess it just hit the wall at that perfect angle. It got me, it was kind of embarrassing, honestly.
“I got to second and Carlos is at third and he’s like, ‘No! No!” and I was like ‘Oh crap,'” Martinez later noted. “I dove back, (second baseman Wilfredo Tovar) had the ball and I hit him with the swim move real quick and got my left hand in there, thank God.”
Crazy as it was, it worked out well enough for Martinez, who has been on a tear lately.
