With their 10-2 blowout win over the Braves in suburban Atlanta on Sunday night, the San Diego Padres advanced to 6-4 on the season and took three of four from a fellow National League powerhouse. Playing a key role in that outcome was Pads designated hitter Nelson Cruz, who turned 42 years and 282 days old on Sunday.
That very specific age is significant because Cruz found himself in rarified air thanks to his night at the plate:
The big blow was this third-inning home run off Braves rookie left-hander Dylan Dodd that left the bat at 108.8 mph:
That was Cruz's second home run of the young season, and it came in his fifth game of 2023. That early tally plus his age has him walking with the baseball gods. As ESPN Stats & Info notes, the only older player to hit more than one home run within his first five games of a season is Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson with the Dodgers in 2003, when he was 44 years old.
Cruz, though, wasn't done. He plated another with his ground-rule double in the fifth, and his two-run single in the sixth gave him six RBI for the game. That brings us to this:
Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds, Carlton Fisk – enviable baseball company, that.
Cruz is now slashing .350/.381/750 on the season as he splits DH duty with Matt Carpenter in San Diego. "Boomstick" has defied the aging curve for years upon years (he's hit more than 300 of his 461 career home runs since turning 32) until last season, when with the Nationals, he, at last, appeared to submit to his decline phase. That may yet prove to be the case this year, but for now, he's off to another vintage Cruz start in 2023. Few have ever reached such heights at such an age.
