Thursday evening provided us with a moment that baseball does better than any other sport: taking two things that used to be special but now almost seem mundane, and then slamming them together in an alchemist’s fever dream.
This particular moment came when Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies, owner of baseball’s 21st four-homer game in history and the third this year, faced Atlanta infielder Vidal Bruján, the 61st non-pitching pitcher of 2025, in a showdown to see if there was any actual history to be made. There hadn’t been a four-homer game since Nick Kurtz of the West Sac Nine did it … well, five weeks ago, but a five-homer game has never been done. Add in Eugenio Suarez’s four-jack night back in April, and suddenly the four-homer game seemed nearly as common as the complete game shutout. This one could have been different.
Schwarber’s four homers came off actual Atlanta pitchers—Cal Quantrill, Austin Cox twice, and Wander Suero—and quickly enough that there was an outside chance that he might get a fifth at-bat, whereas most four-homer performers have sealed the achievement with their last turn at the plate. Enter Bruján, a phrase you don’t hear nearly often enough.
This should have been a moment for ESPN and Fox to simultaneously drop what they were showing and go to Citizens Bank Park. The likelihood of a historic fifth home run loomed larger than it ever has before, because Atlanta manager Brian Snitker decided that losing 22-4 was only infinitesimally worse than losing 19-4 and so permitted Bruján, who had actually come in in the seventh, to face Schwarber rather than load the bases for Weston Wilson, who had already replaced Bryce Harper. Maybe if it had been Harper, Snitker might have indeed walked Schwarber, on the theory that losing 23-4 was only infinitesimally worse than losing 19-4.
Bruján’s history as a pitcher suggested that history was right there to be made. His only previous appearances, both last year, were in similar situations, and he gave up homers in each, to the Cubs’ Patrick Wisdom in a 14-2 loss and the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani in a 20-4 loss. Brujan’s career ERA was 43.20, which is hard to parse in its own right but also just what your ERA is when you’ve allowed eight earned runs in an inning and two-thirds. All of which is to say that Bruján knew from big moments, and seemed prepared to genuflect to another. He even thoughtfully built the tension by walking Max Kepler, deflecting a ground ball to let Harrison Bader reach base, forcing Bryson Stott to line out to center and advance Kepler to third, and then allowing a base hit to Edmundo Sosa, a chain of events which led Schwarber to the plate for (cue flugelhorn fanfare here) HISTORY!
Only Bruján did not give in to the moment. He decided to offer no impetus to Schwarber’s traditional keg softball/straight-from-the-ass swing and instead served him two eephii—one high and outside at 61 mph, the second at the letters and slightly away at 57. That was the pitch to hit, but Schwarber got underneath it and popped it up to left fielder Eli White. It was so not a home run that it was actually deemed an infield fly by the umpires, which is among the most ignominious of ends for such a dramatic moment and kind of a weird thing to do on a play scored 7 unassisted. If Phillies broadcaster John Kruk didn’t bark, “Son of a bitch!” into a hot mic at the outcome, it certainly isn’t because he wasn’t thinking it.
And so the moment ended, like a dropped wet woolen sock. A potentially special achievement rendered ordinary, by a fairly ordinary player—the Braves are Bruján’s third team this year—doing something he is not even paid to do. Our own Comrade McKinney, who scores Phillies games, marks Phillies homers with a makeshift Liberty Bell, for her own amusement and maybe also to show off her artistic training. She stood ready to deliver baseball’s first five-bell game, if only Schwarber could have managed to leave the mundane world of regular old ball. That bell, sadly, remained unrung.
Instead, Schwarber leaves with only a slowly burgeoning case for MVP votes and this postgame epitaph:
“I stink against position players.”
That cackle you hear is Vidal Bruján; picture a guttural heh-heh-heh-ing like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon dog. You come at the king, you best not miss.