Boston Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts showed some atypical and conflicting emotion Friday night after launching a no-doubt, three-run homer against the Tampa Bay Rays at Fenway Park to give the home team a decisive 8-4 lead in the sixth inning.
Bogaerts is known for his steady leadership and ability to calm the storm when everything appears to be falling apart. He’s the guy that reporters go to for a comment when the Red Sox start to slide and was a consistent voice a season ago for a team that was seemingly always on a winning or losing streak, a team that would eventually fall just two wins shy of World Series berth after barely sneaking into a wild card spot.
However, he appeared to show some emotion on Friday in a big moment, spiking his bat into the ground after mashing a ball that sailed over the Green Monster.
The blast was just Bogey’s 11th homer of the year and was a rare highlight in a tough month for the unofficial captain of the Red Sox. Bogaerts came into the game with a .219 average, a .266 on-base percentage and a .622 OPS in the month of August. He revealed what led up to him airing out his frustrations, not only on the baseball, but on the bat.
“I was down in the count,” Bogaerts told reporters, as transcribed by MLB.com’s Ian Browne on Friday. “I felt like I was swinging at strikes. It just wasn’t hitting my barrel. I felt like I had a hole in my bat for a minute. He missed in and I saw it good and put a good swing on it.
“It felt good. I’m not going to lie. It felt really good off the bat.”
After the game-changing swing, Boagerts was seen emphatically high-fiving manager Alex Cora and his teammates in the dugout.
The Red Sox would eventually beat the Rays, 9-8, largely due to his clutch hit in the sixth.
