08/16/2026
This is awesome!! 3 Himeruns in his MLB debut
Joshua Báez homered on the first pitch he ever saw in the Major Leagues. Then he homered in his second at bat.Then he homered in his third.
23,752 people have played in a Major League Baseball game. He is the first one to ever do that.
Wrigley Field. Saturday afternoon. Cardinals and Cubs.
Báez is 23 years old and he found out he was going to the big leagues on FRIDAY. He was in Durham, North Carolina with Triple-A Memphis, had just changed into his workout clothes, when his manager pulled him aside.
His teammates piled on him.
His words: "It was kind of like a shocking moment, just because you don't know when it's gonna happen."
He barely slept that night. By Saturday morning he was in the visitors clubhouse at Wrigley with 30 members of his family somewhere in the building.
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol's advice before the game was basically to breathe. Face Matthew Boyd, put the ball in play, and take a second to enjoy it.
First inning. Batting fifth. First pitch of his Major League career, a 93.4 mile per hour fastball up in the zone.
He hit it 449 feet to dead center, halfway up the bleachers.
That is the longest home run any player has ever hit in his first career plate appearance in the Statcast era.
And Marmol saw something on his face rounding first: "There was a calmness and a smile, like, I'm here."
Fourth inning. Second at bat. Same pitcher. Boyd throws a changeup over the middle and Báez puts it 382 feet down the left field line for a solo shot to take the lead back.
Sixth inning. Third at bat. Craig Counsell leaves Boyd in to face him a THIRD time, in a one run game, with Boyd approaching 90 pitches.
Báez hits it 368 feet the other way to right.
Left field. Center field. Right field.
Three home runs, three at bats, three different pitches, all off the same pitcher, all to different parts of the ballpark.
Five RBIs. Cardinals win 8-4.
His fourth at bat produced a line out to left, which is now officially the first out of his Major League career.
Here's the historical context, because it's staggering.
Only eight players in the history of baseball have ever hit two home runs in their debut. Bob Nieman, with the St. Louis Browns in 1951, was the only man to ever homer in his first two at bats in the same game.
Nobody had ever hit three in a debut. Not one player in 150 years.
He's also the first Cardinal to homer in his first Major League at bat since Adam Wainwright in 2006.
And one more thing, because someone did the math. If you had put ten dollars on Joshua Báez hitting three home runs in his first three career at bats, the payout would have been around $7.58 trillion.
You'd have been richer than most countries on earth.
But here's the part I keep coming back to.
Joshua Báez was a second round pick out of Boston in 2021. He was 18 years old and figured he'd be in the big leagues in about two years.
It took five.
Five years of the minors, adjustments, and rough stretches. This season he finally broke out and led all of Triple-A with 34 home runs, seven more than anyone else in the sport.
And what he said about the whole thing, hours before he made history, is the best part of the day:
"It's a roller coaster. You have to go through so many things on and off the field. I was just an 18-year-old, and I had no idea. But I'm 23 now, and I'm glad to be here."
Even Craig Counsell had to give it to him: "He hit three different pitches for home runs. He beat us for sure."
Was it the best debut in Major League history?
There isn't a debate. It's the only one of its kind ever played.
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