On Sunday the Herts Raptors won at the Guildford Mavericks to stay top of the British Single-A League and in the process catcher, Ben Marques, hit two grand slam home runs. For readers who are new to the game, a grand slam is a home run with the bases loaded to score four runs with one swing of the bat.
According to legendary pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine “chicks dig the long ball” (see their Nike video below) and we asked Marques whether he has experienced a surge in interest from females since Sunday. He said “my phone has been ringing off the hook all day and night”.
Marques’ achievement is certainly a first for Herts Baseball Club. The club has had the back-to-back-to-back 3-homerun game by Jim Denison in the Herts Falcons vs Cambridge Monarchs AAA League game in 2005, but there have been no Herts players who have hit two grand slam homeruns in the same game.
We are now going through the records to see if this feat has been done by any player in any of the British leagues. We contacted Joe Gray of Project COBB for assistance, who said “from my records for the top tier I have only one instance where two grand slams were clobbered in the same game, but that was by two different players (Robbie Unsell and William Schmitt on 21 August 2011 in a Bracknell Blazers vs Richmond Flames NBL game). I don’t have anything formal for lower league tiers, but I have done a fair bit of reading of old match reports and never come across this occurrence”.
Gray added: “Many congratulations to Ben for a tremendous achievement. I just hope that he does not do a “Tony Cloninger” who hit two grand slams in his entire MLB career, and they came in the same game while playing for the Atlanta Braves in 1966.”
If you have come across a player hitting two grand slams in the same game in Great Britain, we would be interested to know, so please contact us or send us a message via facebook or twitter.