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A Bunch of Baseball Players Returned From Injury to Hit Dingers on Tuesday

Bryce Harper, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Colton Cowser all went yard in their first game back in the lineup.

Tyler Lauletta

Jazz Chisholm Jr., Bryce Harper and Colton Cowser all hit home runs on Tuesday night.
Jazz Chisholm Jr., Bryce Harper and Colton Cowser all hit home runs on Tuesday night. / @MLB / X

Sometimes all you need is a little rest and relaxation.

Such was apparently the case for several MLB stars on Tuesday evening, when something of a trend emerged—three different sluggers all hit home runs in their first games back in the lineup.

The action started with Bryce Harper, who while never officially going to the Injured List, had missed several games for the Philadelphia Phillies since taking a pitch to the elbow last week.

Stepping up to the plate against the Toronto Blue Jays, Harper sent one of the first pitches he saw out of the park.

Next up was Jazz Chisholm Jr. of the New York Yankees, who went yard in his first game back from the IL against Cleveland. He had been dealing with a strained right oblique.

And rounding out the night was Colton Cowser of the Baltimore Orioles, who, you guessed it, hit a home run in his first game back at the plate.

Now I am willing to concede that there’s a chance this happens more often than we realize and it was just a weird bit of synchronicity that all three of these instances came across my timeline during a shift of night-blogging. Baseball players are going on and coming off of the IL all the time, and when they aren’t on the IL, many are hitting dingers. It’s a big part of the job.

That said, it certainly felt like something was in the water on Tuesday night, as every time we finished a story on one man hitting a home run in his return, it was time to start another.

Somehow, “player back from injury hits dinger” was not the only oddly specific play trending in the baseball world on Tuesday night, as we saw not one, but two game-ending home run robberies—one from the Colorado Rockies, and another from the Cincinnati Reds.

You know how sometimes once you notice a certain kind of car on the road, you can’t stop noticing that kind of car on the road? It’s just one of those ways that our brains work. Tuesday night was like that, except for baseball.

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Tyler Lauletta
TYLER LAULETTA

Tyler Lauletta is a staff writer for the Breaking and Trending News Team/team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI, he covered sports for nearly a decade at Business Insider, and helped design and launch the OffBall newsletter. He is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, and remains an Eagles and Phillies sicko. When not watching or blogging about sports, Tyler can be found scratching his dog behind the ears.

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