PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Nick Castellanos\u2019 answers aren\u2019t all that dissimilar to his hits that come once every three or four plate appearances (he\u2019s having a good season so far).<\/p>\n
Apparently straightforward, though often on a one-line path, and more than occasionally difficult to grasp.<\/p>\n
But in the afterglow of essentially icing an 11-4 Phillies win over the Blue Jays with his sixth-inning grand slam home run Sunday, Castellanos\u2019 response to a wholly anticipated media pitch traveled further afield than anyone could have expected.<\/p>\n
So Nick, how\u2019d it feel hitting that four-ply home run?<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I felt pretty bad,\u201d Castellanos said with a serious look, \u201cbecause I know Swanson\u2019s kid had an accident in spring training last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Google was immediately employed by the visiting clubhouse crowd.<\/p>\n
The pitching victim for a line drive that Castellanos drove through a fairly significant incoming breeze \u2014 a drive that managed to clear the fence by, oh, maybe a couple of inches or so \u2014 was Toronto pitcher Eric Swanson. The 31-year-old veteran is having a rough time of it in this, his seventh season.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s nothing like what he and his wife Madison had to go through in late February of 2024, when son Toby was hit by a car in Dunedin, Fla., the Blue Jays\u2019 spring training home.<\/p>\n
Toby was airlifted to a hospital and was initially in critical condition, but within a week was back with his family ready to finish his spring.<\/p>\n
Press accounts noted Swanson saying \u201cGod is good,\u201d about his son\u2019s recovery.<\/p>\n
So maybe it was on this Father\u2019s Day that fellow major leaguer and fellow father Nick Castellanos identified with the guy in the other uniform, remembering how moved he\u2019d been by the accident that sent young Toby to the hospital.<\/p>\n
He might have been even thinking about it as he rounded the bases after giving the Phillies a 10-2 lead in the sixth inning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018(Crap), I wish I would have hit it off anybody else,\u2019 \u201d Castellanos said.<\/p>\n
But once that he had quieted everyone with that thought, father-of-three Castellanos would openly tell of how it felt to hit a Father\u2019s Day grand slam with his family in the Citizens Bank Park stands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s awesome, right?\u201d Castellanos said. \u201cTo be able to say I hit a grand slam on Father\u2019s Day, that\u2019s something I\u2019ll be able to remember for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lifetime memory indeed, so long as he doesn\u2019t think too deeply about the guy who threw the pitch.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
Speaking of the big guy upstairs, Otto Kemp was feeling the spirit a bit on this day, too.<\/p>\n
The nice-guy rookie who went from being an undrafted baseball grad of the Point Loma Nazarene University Sea Lions to the backup first baseman for the Phillies in only five years\u2019 time, had himself a Sunday, too.<\/p>\n
Kemp went 4-for-5 and knocked in two runs, raising his batting average from .250 to .345. Through his eight-game career after being called up from Triple-A Lehigh Valley, Kemp has twice had three or more hits in a game. When he was first called up, he was well known for being that nice guy from \u2026 that little college near San Diego. Now?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a lot of fire,\u201d Castellanos said of Kemp. \u201cHe\u2019s living his dream right now, right? Fresh in the big leagues, lot of energy, excited to be here. Gets to the ballpark eight hours before the game starts, so it\u2019s just fun to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it really is just an extension of where we were at,\u201d said Kemp, who signed as an undrafted free agent in 2022 and made every minor league leap from low-A ball to the IronPigs and now the Phillies since then.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust building on this whole season, trying not to change anything, the same game that we\u2019ve been playing all year,\u201d he says. \u201cThe goal is to feel better from beginning to end but obviously \u2026 there\u2019s some ups and downs in there. I\u2019m just trying to stay consistent and keep repeating the same thing every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s refreshing, obviously, but for me I believe in my swing, I believe in what we created and this is the result of that. That was good to know that I can trust myself and my swing will be what it needs to be at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n
As you might see, Kemp occasionally talks in pluralities. At 26, he\u2019s married but has no children. He is one of four kids in his family, so many having a support group isn\u2019t so different for him. But then there\u2019s that other guy upstairs \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThe season is crazy, but we get time to relax in the offseason,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cThis is what you dream of, this is what you play for. We\u2019re enjoying it; we\u2019re enjoying the ride. We\u2019ll get a chance to celebrate at some point, but yeah, it\u2019s been a good week, it\u2019s been a crazy week.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut God is good.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
NOTES >> In addition to Castellanos\u2019 solid line-drive grand slam, Alec Bohm buried one deep into the left field seats in the fifth inning. It was said to have traveled 433 feet according to whatever app MLB is using to do that these days. If so, that would be the sixth-farthest of Bohm\u2019s career according to the Phillies. \u2026 Zack Wheeler cruised to his seventh win of the season, using only 94 pitches, allowing one earned run on four hits with nine strikeouts. \u2026 J.T. Realmuto had his 400th career hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Nick Castellanos\u2019 answers aren\u2019t all that dissimilar to his hits that come once every three or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,4,144,25,4216,40,185,4802],"class_list":{"0":"post-106950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-phillies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","12":"tag-philadelphiaphillies","13":"tag-phillies","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114690491030570482","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}