How Diamondbacks’ ball boy gifted White Sox’s Sam Antonacci an inside-the-park HR originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
It was already a bad night for the Arizona Diamondbacks when Sam Antonacci lined a ball the other way down the third-base line.
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The Chicago White Sox youngster hit it well, but things got weird when it rolled toward the corner and the Diamondbacks’ ball boy down the left-field line.
It was a fair ball, but the staffer down the line attempted to field it with a glove. The play wasn’t made, but the ball was deflected, and it sort of settled weakly next to the foul line.
Arizona left-fielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. essentially turned off his playing switch at this point. He saw what happened, and assumed the baseball was either foul or that it would be ruled a dead ball and Antonacci would be granted two bases.
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How Sam Antonacci got a rule-bending inside-the-park HR
Somehow, though, the umpires didn’t see what happened. And since the ball had been originally fair, it was still a live play.
Antonacci kept running hard, and by the time Gurriel realized he should probably hustle to get the ball and throw it in, Antonacci was making it home for an inside-the-park home run.
The contact with the employee down the line is not reviewable, so once the umps miss it live, it’s as if the ball never made contact with anyone.
There’s a case to be made that Gurriel could’ve hustled after the baseball anyway, but it’s also hard to blame him when he clearly saw what happened and knew the play shouldn’t have been live anymore.
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Antonacci will take the fascinating moment for his stats, and the White Sox will appreciate the quirky ending to a positive night.
But yeah, this is a weird one, for sure.
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