Former Royals 1B Frank Schwindel was part of a historic home run ... as a pitcher
The Chicago Cubs series at Yankee Stadium got progressively worse as the weekend unfolded.
After losing by a run Friday, the Cubs were shut out 8-0 on Saturday and by the eighth inning of Sunday’s game they trailed by 13 runs. That’s when manager David Ross turned to his first baseman to mop up.
It was former Royals’ Triple-A player of the year Frank Schwindel, and he was part of a historic moment. It wasn’t one he could have imagined.
Schwindel threw a 35.1 mph curveball that New York catcher Kyle Higashioka crushed for a home run. The ball traveled just 376 feet but cleared the fence at Yankee Stadium for the final run of New York’s 18-4 victory.
Codify Baseball said it was the slowest measured pitch hit for a home run during the Statcast era, which started in 2014.
It took Schwindel quite a while to find a place with a major-league team, but he’s become a fan favorite at Wrigley Field. And now he’s a part of MLB history.
Higashioka told MLB.com he had time to realize he could hit the pitch.
“That was pretty funny,” Higashioka said. “Someone once told me, the key to hitting a knuckleball is, ‘Stay back, stay back, stay back.’ So that’s what I was trying to do there. I saw it come in and was like, ‘Yeah, I can hit that.’”
Schwindel (or should it be Higashioka?) shattered the old record.
MLB said the previous slowest pitch hit for a homer was thrown 43.9 mph by the Rays’ Brett Phillips, another former Royals player. The A’s Sheldon Neuse hit a homer off that pitch on April 11.
This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 8:45 AM.
