Look: 'Baseball wedgie' turns near-HR into ground-rule double

By Joe Setyon May 24, 2018 at 9:04am

Minnesota Twins second baseman Brian Dozier literally came inches away from hitting a home run.

In the bottom of the first inning on Wednesday, Dozier led off with a long drive to center field off Tigers starting pitcher Michael Fulmer.

Center fielder Leonys Martin kept going back, but had no play on the ball. However, instead of either going over the wall or bouncing off the fence, the ball simply hit the wall and stayed put.

The ball had gotten wedged between two wall pads and become stuck — a “baseball wedgie” of sorts, as Fox Sports put it.

Wait, what?!? A baseball wedgie?

What are you doing, science?! pic.twitter.com/kazZWWmpUH

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) May 23, 2018

Martin threw his hands up in the air in an attempt to bring attention to the fact that though the ball was not gone, it was, well, not coming down.

“I was waiting to play it off the wall,” Martin said after the game, per MLB.com, “but it never came back. Crazy.”

Eventually, he reached up and was able to grab it, while Dozier, who had already rounded third base, was forced to walk back to second and settle for a ground-rule double.

Fulmer, meanwhile, pitched very well after giving up that lead-off double. He went five-and-two-thirds innings, allowing just one run on four hits with five strikeouts and three walks.

Have you ever seen a play like this where the ball was so close to leaving the park but didn't?

Though the Twins lost the game 4-1, Dozier was able to joke about the “baseball wedgie” afterward.

“Well, we were talking about it,” the Twins second baseman said. “Jeff Kellogg, the second-base umpire, he’s been doing this for years. We’ve seen it in the padding like halfway up, but never at the top.”

“I need to get (with) our strength coach a little bit. So you just wonder. Maybe a couple more biscuits in the morning would do the trick,” he added.

Weirdly enough, this is not the first time Dozier has gotten a ball stuck in the wall.

During a 2016 game against the Nationals, Dozier hit a ball that got lodged in the left-field fence of Nationals Park.

Brian Dozier also stuck a ball in the wall at Nationals Park in 2016. pic.twitter.com/C97QPwQXzu

— Drew Silva (@drewsilv) May 23, 2018

Dozier, who hit 42 home runs in 2016 and 34 in 2017, has seven thus far in 2018, and missed out on his eighth by a matter of mere inches.

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Detroit Tigers, MLB

Joe Setyon

Deputy Managing Editor, Editorial

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Joe Setyon was a deputy managing editor for The Western Journal who had spent his entire professional career in editing and reporting. He previously worked in Washington, D.C., as an assistant editor/reporter for Reason magazine.

@JoeSetyon

Joe Setyon was deputy managing editor for The Western Journal with several years of copy editing and reporting experience. He graduated with a degree in communication studies from Grove City College, where he served as managing editor of the student-run newspaper. Joe previously worked as an assistant editor/reporter for Reason magazine, a libertarian publication in Washington, D.C., where he covered politics and wrote about government waste and abuse.

Birthplace

Brooklyn, New York

Topics of Expertise

Sports, Politics