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When Washington Nationals right-fielder James Wood came to the plate in the bottom of the second inning Tuesday against the Mets with three runners on, he did something extremely rare in the baseball world — hit an inside-the-park grand slam.
Here's how it happened.
First, Wood slammed the hit into the outfield off Mets starter Nolan McLean.
The ball appeared to hit the wall at Nationals Park, then deflected off the glove of left-fielder Nick Morabito — the Mets rookie who was playing his first-ever game at the major-league level.
Nick Morabito, left, and Tyrone Taylor of the New York Mets are unable to make the catch on the fly ball hit by Wood. (Jess Rapfogel/Getty Images)Not that a charging Tyrone Taylor, the Mets' centre-fielder, could get to the ball either.
Morabito, who flashed some serious defensive prowess earlier in the game, made a valiant effort to snag the ball Wood hit, but crashed into the outfield wall — hard enough to knock off his cap and sunglasses.
The ball then got away from the two Mets outfielders, as the Nationals' base-runners started to clear the basepaths and cross home plate.
WATCH | Watch the action on the field:
Morabito, finally recovering from his crash into the wall, sprinted over to the ball in the outfield and hurled it to a teammate, who then fired a throw to the catcher, too far off the plate and also too late to catch Wood, who had sped around the bases and slid home.
Prior to the grand slam, the Mets had been leading the game 5-0. Wood's improbable four-RBI haul cut the Mets' lead to a single run, through two innings.
New York went on to lose the game 9-6 to Washington.
According to Major League Baseball (MLB), there have been more than 200 inside-the-park grand slams in major league history.
The Associated Press reported that Wood's inside-the-park grand slam was the ninth of its kind since 1994 — and the second for the Nationals since the franchise was relocated to Washington for the 2005 season.
The Mets' Brett Baty watches as Wood rounds third base to finish the final stretch of his inside-the-park grand slam. (John McDonnell/The Associated Press)True inside-the-park grand slams are rare, and though other players have recently scored four-run hits, those plays involved errors by players on the opposing teams.
The last official inside-the-park grand slam, according to MLB, was hit by a Blue Jay on July 22, 2022 at Fenway Park in Boston. The Jays were leading 6-0 in the third inning of that game, Toronto's Raimel Tapia hit a high fly to centre that Boston's Jarren Duran lost in ballpark's lights.
The ball dropped behind him and by the time the Red Sox outfield managed to make a throw, Tapia was already sliding head first into home plate.
Those four runs contributed to a lopsided win for the Jays, who went on to defeat the Red Sox 28-5, a club record for runs in a single game that still stands today.
WATCH | This inside-the-park grand slam helped the Jays demolish the Red Sox: