The Joy Series: Inside the Park Homers
On chaos, comedy and the closest thing we've seen to a pure inside-the-park home run.
And so it begins — we’re now one week away from the release of BIG FAN, so MIke and I will be spending this week appearing on half a bajillion podcasts, radio shows, and so on to tell people all about it. In fact, we’ll be recording a special BIG FAN PosCast this afternoon, and we’ll be taking your questions — all you have to do is throw your question into the comments, and we’ll try to get to it.
Then next week, we hit the road! Here’s that schedule again in case you’d like to get tickets.
Sunday, May 17: I’ll be at the Arboretum Barnes and Noble here in Charlotte at 2 p.m. This was a last-minute addition to the tour; I wanted to do something for my friends before I left town, and Dutton was kind enough to let me do a special event two days before the pub date. They don’t usually do that. It should be pretty loose and casual; I would love to see you there. Tickets.
Monday, May 18: Mike and I will be at The Strand Bookstore along with Seth Meyers. Alas, this event is sold out, but you can join the waitlist here.
Tuesday, May 19: Mike and I will be in Boston, at the Brattle Theater. We’ll be joined by the great Howard Bryant. Only a few tickets left.
Wednesday, May 20: Mike and I will be in St. Louis, at the St. Louis County Library. This promises to be awesome — the incredible Gerald Early will be moderating. St. Louis has sold the most tickets for any city on the tour so far, but it’s a big space so there are still some available.
Thursday, May 21: Mike and I will be in Kansas City at the beautiful Unity Temple on the Plaza, and I just had to share with you the email that Rainy Day Books sent out about it:
I’m a total afterthought in my own town! As it should be! Our great pal Jason Kander will join, and there might be other guest stars. Tickets here, this will be a great time, and I suspect we’ll spend a good part of the night talking about this — I spend a lot of time later in today’s essay talking about it:
Friday, May 22: Mike and I will be in Los Angeles, at the Hermosa Beach Community Center, for one of the best bookstores on earth, Pages. We’ll be joined by Justin Halpern, writer, Padres fan, co-executive producer of the incredible “Abbott Elementary,” and all-around great guy.
It’s all going to be a blast. BIG FAN is a blast. We go to the World Darts Championship in London! I play pickleball! Mike divulges his full obsession with baseball cards! I learn how to swear properly at a Canadiens game! Mike goes to Wrestlemania! I go to a chess tournament! Mike goes to see if Victor Wembenyama is real. We talk with Jim Nantz about his obsession with the Masters! We talk with Megan Amram about her impossible crossword puzzle talents! We see Shohei smash home runs to the moon, we see Carlos Alcaraz jump through dimensions to get a drop shot, we argue whether Michigan football is a force for good or evil. It’s just a good time.
You can preorder the book here.
And remember, leave your questions for the PosCast in the comments; they’re open to everybody today.
The JoeBlogs Store is Back!
With our younger daughter, Katie, so busy finishing up at Wake Forest — she’s going to be a senior next year, it feels impossible — our older daughter Elizabeth, is taking over the JoeBlogs Store, and she has added some fun stuff for summer, including some cool JoeBlogs T-shirts and, just for Father’s Day, a Grilli Grilling Apron which includes the fact that father and son Steve and Jason Grilli saved 82 games between them.
The Joy Series: Inside the Park Homers
The way ballparks are configured today, there is probably no such thing as a pure inside-the-park home run. Providence has to step in. A lucky bounce. An outfielder misplay (but one not so flagrant that it is ruled an error). A blinding burst of sunshine. Ballparks in 2026 are too confined and too symmetrical — and fielders are too fast and skilled — to give us inside-the-park home runs where the fielder does everything exactly right.
The closest thing to a pure inside-the-parker is what Bobby Witt Jr. did on Saturday. The Tigers’ right fielder, Kerry Carpenter, made just one little mistake — he let the ball get by him in the right field corner. For someone else, that mistake might have cost a triple. For Giancarlo Stanton, it might have cost the Tigers a double, maybe.
For Bobby Witt Jr., it was not only an inside-the-park home run — there wasn’t even a play at the plate. I like to give inside-the-parkers what I call a “chaos rating,” which tells you, on a scale of 1 to 10, just how much chaos was necessary for the batter to make it all the way around the bases. In Bobby Witt’s case, there was VERY little chaos needed. I’d give that a chaos rating of 2.
Here, for your reading pleasure, are the “inside the park home runs” from 2025 — I put these in quotes because some are not actual inside the park home runs but error-plagued comedy skits — and their chaos ratings.
April 5 (inside-the-park homer): Atlanta’s Matt Olson hit a long fly ball to left field — Reds left fielder Tyler Callihan appeared to have it in his sights, and at first, he appeared to catch it. He did not catch it and, in fact, stumbled and smashed into the wall in the left-field corner. He broke his forearm. Olson made it all the way around the bases while Callihan stared at the sky and dealt with the pain. Chaos Rating: 8.
April 27 (ruled a single): San Francisco’s Heliot Ramos dribbled a ball to the left side, Texas pitcher Luke Jackson raced over, picked it up, threw off-balance and the throw went down the right field line. Ramos ran to second and then gingerly began to run to third. Texas’ Jake Burger picked it up and fired to third, but missed his target by about 10 feet. Ramos headed home, and the Rangers couldn’t pick up the ball in time to even throw home. Chaos Rating: 10 — even though it’s not actually an inside-the-park homer.
June 30 (inside-the-park homer): Boston’s Wilyer Abreu launched a long fly ball to right field that hit the railing near the 420-foot sign and took a grasshopper bounce high and to the left. Reds center fielder TJ Friedl was so shocked by the hop that he just fell down. The ball rolled away, and Abreu scored easily. Chaos Rating: 5.
July 2 (inside-the-park homer): Tampa Bay’s Jake Magnum ripped a long fly ball to center field. Sacramento’s Denzel Clarke — the master of the magical play — raced back to the wall and leaped, but he kind of mistimed his jump — he actually seemed to overrun the ball. Clarke hit the wall and fell to the ground. The ball bounced back toward the infield. Sacramento’s left fielder Colby Thomas raced over well and threw the ball back toward the infield, but it was unclear exactly who he was throwing it to, and Magnum scored without a throw. Chaos Rating: 3.
July 8 (inside the park homer): The biggest inside-the-park home run of the season — bottom of the ninth, the Giants trailed by two with two runners on. Patrick Bailey (who was just traded to Cleveland; it seems like a good move for the Guardians) blasted a high fly ball to deep, deep right field. It looked like a sure outside-the-park home run, but instead it smashed off the brick wall out there and took a crazy bounce and just went running and running along the warning track. Bailey is actually one of the slowest players in baseball, but after that bounce, there’s a pretty good chance that most Brilliant Readers would have scored. Chaos Rating: 7.
July 8 (inside-the-park homer): Same day as the Bailey homer! Lawrence Butler, on the first pitch thrown by Atlanta’s 20-year-old starter Didier Fuentes, crushed a long fly ball to right field. Everyone seemed to assume it was gone, because it looked gone — but somehow it hit the very top of the fence and, for reasons that defy physics, ricocheted right, and by the time the Braves got the ball back to the infield, Butler had scored. Chaos Rating: 4.
August 31 (inside-the-park homer): I like this one a lot because it is mostly due to the quirks of Fenway Park — Jarren Duran drilled a line drive to right-center, and when it got by the outfielders, it just rolled into that enormous alley near the 420-foot sign out there, an area Boston fans call “The Triangle.” Fenway Park’s odd shape is one of the true joys of baseball. The Pirates’ outfielders, particularly the always entertaining Oneil Cruz (we’ll hear from him again), kind of botched things up out there, allowing Duran to score easily. Chaos Rating: 5.
September 24 (inside-the-park homer): Cincinnati’s Noelvi Marte crunched a long fly ball to center field — it looked like a home run off the bat. Pittsburgh’s Oneil Cruz (told you we’d hear from him again) was playing super shallow and he raced back on the ball. Then, just as he hit the warning track he — this is hard to explain completely — didn’t turn around but kind of threw his glove in the air, with the pocket of the glove facing the wall, as if he hoped to, well, I don’t know what he was hoping. He then ran face-first into the wall and fell to the ground. There was nobody else out there to get the ball, and Marte scored without a throw. Chaos Rating: 8.
So, with a Chaos Rating of only 2, I’d say Bobby Witt Jr.’s inside the parker was the purest of the last year.
In 1901, Wahoo Sam Crawford hit a league-leading 16 home runs. Twelve of them were inside-the-park home runs. That was the last year that Cincinnati played in what they called League Park II — it was the remnants of a ballpark that had essentially burned to the ground. That park originally had such a short left-field fence that balls hit over it were ruled doubles. But they soon moved everything back so that the left field fence was 387 feet from home plate, and the fence in the right field gap was close to 500 feet from home plate. The ball would roll and roll.
Nobody would ever build a park with dimensions like that now, obviously, because it would move the fans too far from the field. But it’s so intriguing, after you watch Bobby Witt Jr. blur around the bases in 14 seconds, to wonder just how many inside-the-park home runs he would hit there. It would be a lot. I think a lot about how much Buck O’Neil would have loved watching him play.