The Legend of Bartolo Colon’s Home Run

As April comes to a close and May begins, I decided to take a look back at one of the greatest moments in baseball history and (over) analyze one of the greatest home runs in all of baseball. On May 7th, 2016, a day that is marked in the sacred texts of baseball, Bartolo “Big Sexy” Colon absolutely obliterated a ball off of James Shields.

It was the top of the 2nd inning when Mets folk hero and legend, Bartolo Colon, came up to the plate to face James Shields. With a sore back and not looking to swing, Bartolo jokingly said to Padres catcher Derek Norris something along the lines of “You can give me something right down the middle, I’m not gonna swing.” Norris took this advice seriously and it would cost him on the third pitch of the bat. The first pitch was a ball. Nothing special about it. The second pitch was a called strike against Colon. Now with the count at 1-1 James Shields started his windup with Norris setting up in the middle of the strike zone. Norris adjusts himself slightly upwards on the 90 MPH fastball, preparing for Colon’s missed swing and resulting in a fun blunder we can look back on. But that isn’t what happened. Bartolo absolutely destroyed the ball sending it to left field. A no-doubter greater than all other no-doubters. The ball traveled the 340ft out to left field with ease. Bartolo became the second oldest player to hit a homer and the oldest to hit his first at 42 years and 349 days.