Philadelphia Phillies star Nick Castellanos is responsible for one of the best memes in all of sports in recent years due to his penchant for hitting home runs after tragic moments around the world. But the meme, which has lived largely exclusively on social media, has almost reached a much broader national audience.
The meme, of course, gained life during the on-air apology of former Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Tom Brennaman after a homophobic slur, an apology that was interrupted by a “drive to deep left field” from Castellanos that ended up living in infamy.
Since then, whether it was blowing up on the day Joe Biden’s re-election campaign ended or ruining a somber moment on Memorial Day, his uncanny ability to black out big news stories has been a constant talking point in MLB.
Castellanos has not spoken publicly about the meme much. But on Friday, he did just that in a chat with Alex Tantum, founder of the “MLB Fits” page on X. In the chat, Castellanos revealed that ESPN actually contacted him to run an exclusive story about the meme. But he rejected it because the network did not grant him the rights to edit the story.
“Sometimes things are viewed as tragedy. Sometimes things are viewed as beautiful,” Castellanos said. “You know, when I hit a homer, that’s what you look at. It’s funny, ESPN actually called me because they wanted to do an exclusive story about the guy who hits a home run at all these inopportune times. But it didn’t work because they didn’t give me the rights to edit the story to make sure I liked it before publishing it. “They won’t do it, so the opportunity is lost.”
Nick Castellanos offers his thoughts on those who say there’s a tragedy happening when he bumps into an HR person and says ESPN contacted him for a story about it 👀 pic.twitter.com/HVEiz5iJQ0
– MLBFITS (@_mlbfits) October 4, 2024
It would have been really cool to see what Castellanos had to say in an exclusive story about all the times he happened to hit a home run. Because the already extensive list continues to grow.
Who knows, maybe another network will take advantage of ESPN’s failure and get the full story from Castellanos’ perspective. But for now, the meme will live on among MLB fans on social media.
[MLB Fits on X]
