Congratulations, Mark Kotsay!
Regular readers of this here www.baseball.braves.interweb.blog know that we who dwell up in section 435 are big Mark Kotsay fans. I was a little bit crushed to find out that I wasn’t present for his big day, opting instead for a 5-mile run and Bull Durham DVD, obnoxious Cubs fans having made this series unbearable to sit through.
Still, big congratulations are in order for a rare feat. The cycle is kind of interesting in that it is so rare, and yet most regular major leaguers are capable of pulling it off. Doubles are just singles that found a better hole, so you have to have the speed to leg out a triple and enough strength to clear the outfield fence once in a while. If Brian McCann can do the former and Gregor Blanco can do the latter, there are few men who aren’t within reach of the cycle.
Interestingly, as reported by Carroll Rogers at the AJC, this should have been Kotsay’s second career cycle:
He had very nearly become the first San Diego Padre to do it seven years ago on May 19, 2001, when he needed a triple in his final at-bat against Montreal but stopped at second base.
Kotsay went 4-for-7 that game with a single, two doubles and a homer. It was the ninth inning of a game the Padres won 20-7, and he stopped at second out of respect, he said.
“Graeme Lloyd was on the mound,” Kotsay said. “I didn’t want to show anybody up. But everybody was yelling at me from the dugout that I should have gone for third and hit for the cycle. Nobody had done it in Padre history. I legitimately could have walked into third base and stood at the bag.”
Class act.
Also note that Kotsay brought his average back up to .300 with a 5-5 day. It had dropped way off after a slow start returning from the DL in July. Chasing the dream, once again.
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