Why this Orioles hitter laughed at a Royals pitcher after a strikeout
The first reaction Orioles first baseman Ryan Mountcastle offered was an argument over whether he swung at a pitch. He did, the first base umpire ruled, and so Mountcastle turned his back and took about six steps back toward the dugout.
But then he turned back around.
And smiled. Laughed, actually.
He sought and then made eye contact with Royals pitcher Hunter Harvey, the man who’d just struck him out in a big moment, still a one-run game before a Royals 8-2 win Friday night.
Harvey tried to refrain from reacting, but couldn’t help but smile back.
If only you knew the history.
That dates back to the spring of 2016 — that must’ve been it, Harvey says. They were teammates, minor leaguers in the Orioles organization. Their lockers sat side by side. They’d become roommates in a year and soon just about best friends.
It’s a mismatch friendship, at least on the face of it. Mountcastle calls Harvey “a big country boy,” a description he would never reserve for himself. The easy evidence of the former — the country boy — is visual. Harvey sports of freshly-cut mullet, and after mixing that strikeout into a clean inning Friday, he departed the Royals clubhouse wearing cowboy boots.
To be fair, Mountcastle owns a pair of cowboy boots, too. They were gifted to him by a sponsor. He’s put them on only once — just so he could send Harvey a Snapchat photo.
“He was dying,” Mountcastle said.
They faced each other for the first time on a backfield game in that spring 2016, Harvey already ranking as a top-100 prospect in baseball and Mountcastle on his way to joining him. They both recall that plate appearance, albeit differently.
After maybe a 10-pitch at-bat, Mountcastle smoked a ball to right center, and this is where their recollections of the story separate.
“He calls it a triple,” Harvey says. “I call it a single that went by our outfielder.”
“That’s hilarious,” Mountcastle said Saturday morning from the visiting clubhouse at Kauffman. “It was definitely a triple, not a single.
“Don’t listen to what he says.”
For years, Mountcastle occasionally reminded his good friend of the at-bat.
Until the bragging rights became a little more substantial and much less disputable.
Harvey left the Orioles organization after the 2021 season and opened the following year with the Nationals an hour south in Washington D.C. As fate would have it, the Orioles came to town with just two weeks left in that season.
Harvey invited Mountcastle to stay with him during the three-game series. He obliged. They had dinner together the night before the series opener.
In that game, wouldn’t you know it, Harvey stepped on the mound, and Mountcastle into the box.
Fastball, strike one.
Fastball, smack!
The ball sailed 395 feet to right center, enough to clear the tall fence in Washington. That smile Mountcastle couldn’t help but let free at Kauffman Stadium on Friday? Yeah, the cameras caught it as he rounded first base for a home-run trot on Sept. 13, 2022.
And then they caught Harvey’s, too. Probably the only time he’s laughed after giving up a home run, he reckons.
“I got him, man,” Mountcastle told reporters after the game, “and it’s probably one of my favorite home runs I’ve ever hit.”
It took 20 months and two extra innings for them to meet again, in the top of the 11th of a tie game back in Washington. You wouldn’t believe the outcome.
He did it again.
Harvey tried the splitter the second time, but Mountcastle sent that over the wall too, directing this one out to left. He intentionally avoided even taking a peek at the mound as he rounded the bases.
“The first time was crazy,” Mountcastle said. “The second time, I was like, this is unbelievable. He’s a really good pitcher. To get him twice is unbelievable.”
Two for two.
That’s how they began this weekend’s series at Kauffman Stadium. Before this series, the two got on the phone earlier this week. They rarely sandwich a week between FaceTime calls.
Mountcastle stood in Harvey’s wedding. In fact, that’s about the only reason they stopped being roommates. They each had a girlfriend, and at some point it didn’t make sense to live together anymore.
When they talked this week, Harvey had a message for Mountcastle.
“We’re not in D.C. anymore,” Harvey said. “where it’s hot and the ball flies.
“We’re at The K now on a cold night. I’ll take my odds against you.”
A good bet, as it turned out.
In the top of the seventh inning Friday, Harvey jogged in from the bullpen. The third batter of the inning: No. 6. Ryan Mountcastle.
Act III.
Harvey tried a third different opening pitch.
Slider, strike one.
Splitter, strike two.
Fastball, 95 miles per hour, a brush-back pitch close enough that it drove Mountcastle out of the box. He laughed at it.
“He buzzed me,” Mountcastle insisted.
Two pitches later, Harvey finally won the battle.
He finally won a battle with a good friend.
“He’s had all the trash talking here the last two years,” Harvey said, “so it’s fun to be able to actually say something back now.”
An immediate opportunity presented itself. An hour after the at-bat, give or take, Harvey left the home clubhouse, and Mountcastle left the visiting room.
They had the same destination after the game.
Harvey’s house.
The winner, at long last, of Act III.