BALTIMORE – Kyle Stowers’ first career home run ball was retrieved from the Camden Yards center field stands by Baltimore Orioles teammate Keegan Akin, who by late Thursday didn’t yet have time to present the rookie outfielder with the artifact.
Should it go up on a pedestal in his San Diego home, Stowers may want to include Adam Engel in the exhibit.
The fate of two burgeoning young players and a pair of playoff teams grasping desperately for contention intersected on Thursday night, in horrid fashion for the Chicago White Sox and in an exhilarating, exhausting, can-you-believe-this manner for the Orioles.
And that’s kind of become the norm in this stunning season.
Down to his team’s final strike, Stowers ripped a two-out, two-strike hanging curveball from All-Star closer Liam Hendriks for a game-tying homer, setting the stage for an 11-inning, 4-3 victory over the White Sox.
Stowers’ homer was merely the capper to a sequence that began moments earlier, when the rookie who was recalled Aug. 19 but was 0 for his last 13 fouled a Hendriks pitch down the left field line, where Engel – in the game specifically for defensive reasons – made a long sprint for the ball and tracked it down with a half-second to spare.
Which was one too many.
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Engel told reporters the ball “came back on me a little bit,” and bloop, it popped right out of his glove. The 13,905 fans murmured in approval, perhaps hoping fate intervened for a club held to just two hits and zero runs the previous seven innings.
Hendriks aided the cause. Instead of pumping another fastball at the rookie, he tried to bury a curveball and left it up. And Stowers, stunningly, left the yard.
His 404-foot drive tied the game 3-3 and made history: Stowers became the first Oriole whose first major league home run tied the game in the ninth inning or later since Rich Coggins in 1973.
And it incited delirium from the basepaths to the dugout.
“I kind of blacked out a little bit,” Stowers said, trying futilely to remember.
“I think he was floating around the bases,” says Orioles manager Brandon Hyde.
Says outfielder Anthony Santander: “The place was about to fall over. It was super exciting, a crazy moment. And the entire time I…