The Baltimore Orioles needed a spark. They got one from a 20-year-old rookie who still celebrates home runs like it’s Little League.
Samuel Basallo crushed a two-run homer in the eighth inning Friday night, lifting the Orioles to a 5-3 win over the Kansas City Royals at Camden Yards. It was the kind of moment that turns a quiet game into something memorable.
Infielder Blaze Alexander was in the tunnel under the first-base dugout when he heard the crowd lose it. He didn’t need to see the ball land. The noise told him everything.
“Obviously, the crowd erupted,” Alexander said via MLB.com. “I was like, ‘All right, something sick happened.’”
Basallo’s reaction after the swing was pure joy. He didn’t try to downplay it or act like he’d been there before. He just let himself feel it. The kind of thing that makes you remember why you fell in love with baseball in the first place.
“I enjoy every home run that I hit to the maximum,” Basallo said through team interpreter Brandon Quinones. “I don’t do those reactions to inconvenience anyone or anything like that. I’m just really enjoying the game. I enjoy every homer that I hit. I’ve always been that way since I was a kid. I’m really just out there enjoying the moment with these guys, enjoying that we can go out there and have fun and get the win.”
It’s an easy thing to forget when you watch grown men grind through 162 games. Baseball chews people up. But here’s Basallo reminding everyone that it’s still just a game.
“It’s important to remember that it’s a kids’ game. It’s important to go out there and have fun,” he said. “It’s a game of failure. It’s a difficult game. But it is important to remember that you can go out there and you can have fun and enjoy yourself.”
The Orioles needed this win. They’re sitting at 44-51, still clawing their way back toward .500. Basallo’s blast didn’t just win a Friday night game. It gave a young team a reason to loosen up and breathe.
So far this season, the rookie is hitting .248 with 15 homers and 44 RBI. He’s not just a feel-good story. He’s producing.
And if the Orioles are going to make any kind of run, they’ll need more nights like this one. Where the rookie in the middle of the order lets it fly and the dugout goes a little crazy.
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