Kyle Schwarber Makes History With Four Home Runs, Nearly Stands Alone

0 0 3 minutes read

📝 usncan Note: Kyle Schwarber Makes History With Four Home Runs, Nearly Stands Alone

Disclaimer: This content has been prepared based on currently trending topics to increase your awareness.

PHILADELPHIA — By the time Kyle Schwarber strode to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning, he’d already joined 20 others in Major League Baseball history by hitting four home runs, and he knew he had a chance to stand alone in the annals of power hitting.

“Yeah, I mean, I shouldn’t even have asked the question,” Schwarber told reporters gathered around him in the Philadelphia clubhouse following the Phillies’ 19-4 win over the Atlanta Braves Thursday night. “I was in the cage. And I was like, ‘How many guys have hit five?’ and no one said anything. I was like, oh, okay, well, that answers the question.”

The task before him, theoretically, should have been easier than his first four blasts. Vidal Brujan, an infielder and decidedly not a regular pitcher, was on the mound for Atlanta.

Brujan, who entered Thursday night’s game with a career 43.20 ERA in two previous appearances, even had a history of grooving home runs in historic games. Against Shohei Ohtani back in 2024, Brujan gave up Ohtani’s third home run in a 6-for-6, 10 RBI game. The home run put Ohtani into the 50-50 club.

But Schwarber, for his part, claimed that Brujan’s appearance left him at a disadvantage.

“It’s like I’ve got a mental block somewhere in my head that I’m not very good against position players,” Schwarber said sheepishly. “But, it’s just go up there, and all you’re just trying to do is just get a good pitch. You know that it’s going to be soft, could be hard, whatever it is. And I got the pitch, [he]

threw it down the middle and [I] just popped it up.”

He has some history to support this claim of struggles against the league’s least-qualified pitchers, as his at-bat earlier this season against Luke Williams shows.

For his manager, Rob Thomson, it was a chance to witness a four-homer game for the first time in his long career as a player, coach and manager.

“I don’t think so,” Thomson said when asked if he’d ever been involved in a four-homer game live. “Maybe [Alex Rodriguez]

. I remember one night he had a 10-RBI game against the Angels, but I’m not sure if he had four home runs, I think maybe three.”

Thomson, incidentally, was right.

And that was 20 years ago. It’s not something anyone will forget, even if, for Schwarber and the Phillies, the practical effects of his performance helped them move past a sweep at the hands of the New York Mets and, combined with New York’s loss Thursday night, return Philadelphia to five games up on New York.

So for Thomson and Schwarber alike, that his first home run powered a Phillies’ five-run inning to overcome an early 3-0 deficit mattered more than the history that followed.

“Coming off the series against the Mets and getting down three in the first inning and coming right back and scoring five, I thought it was big character victory for our club,” Thomson said.

That’s not to say Schwarber takes his spot in history lightly. The ball was lost, he told reporters after the game, but the Hall of Fame had already requested his helmet. John Kruk came into the clubhouse to tell him he’s just the fourth Phillie (along with Chuck Klein, Ed Delahanty and Mike Schmidt), and 21st player ever, to hit four home runs.

“It was exciting,” Schwarber said. “It was a great atmosphere. The fans were into it.”

And still: this close to doing something no one ever had in a game that’s been played for well over a century.

“I don’t think I’d really change anything [about] what I did there, that at-bat, except maybe raise my bat up a little bit more, a little bit more square,” Schwarber said.

Only four home runs. Schwarber and the Phillies will take it.