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Before we begin, a reminder to please

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rate and review our show. It helps new

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listeners discover us and grow the program.

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What are the odds of catching a foul ball

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at a game, or being dealt a royal flush

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and poker, or even being struck by lightning?

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Some things are rarer than others, But

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today we're looking at some occurrences that are truly

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unlikely, and they're all tied

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to one guy, Philadelphia. Philly's

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outfielder Nick Castillanos isn't exactly

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having his best season, but while

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his numbers are down, he still leads the

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league in a pretty remarkable category that

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you won't find in any traditional stats.

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On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly,

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s I, senior writer John Wortheim tells the

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tale of how Costaianos became a meme

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by hitting home runs that have been, let's

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say, oddly and hilariously timed,

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again and again and

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again. And we should note this

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piece also includes the voice of the late,

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great, legendary Dodgers announcer

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of In Scully, perhaps the only person

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who was castaganos Pero. May

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he rest in Baseball broadcast habit,

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I'm your host John Gonzalez from

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Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio.

1:12

This is Sports Illustrated Weekly.

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Here's John Wortheim to calculate the long odds

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on the timing of Costallanos's

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long bombs. Never mind

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the honey delivery, the wit, or the accumulated

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baseball wisdom. For all his

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various and sundry broadcasting gifts,

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Vince Scully was blessed above all with

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exquisite timings for all

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the high five of the goes

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back to the fan. He

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may have called baseball games all those years,

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but he would have been a wonderful conductor

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or musician, says Al Michael's

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a Scully protege dating back to his

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Brooklyn boyhood. He just has

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this intuition for the rhythm of the game.

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A viable woman for baseball.

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What a viral vomit for the country

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in the world. The running joke was at baseball

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waited for Scully, not the other way around.

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If Ben was in the middle of an anecdote and it was

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a two two count, says Ted Robinson,

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a long time MLB announcer, you

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could be sure the batter would foul off the next

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pitch, just to be sure Vin would

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get through his story.

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All of which is to say, it's a good bet

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that's Scully never much intersected

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with Philly's right fielder Nick Castianos.

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By now you likely know the story or

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stories all three of them.

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On October, Castianos

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was playing for the Reds during an

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otherwise somnolent summer game

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devoid of much significance. Cincinnati's

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played by play ban at the time, Tom Brenneman,

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spoke carelessly and cruelly into

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an open mic during the seventh

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inning of the first game of a double header. Brennaman

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didn't realize the broadcast was back from

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commercial break, and he made an anti

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lgbt Q slur. By

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the second game, as social media did its

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thing, it had become clear that Brenneman's

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vile comment was going to be a

3:17

problem. In what was both

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an apology and a clear attempt

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to salvage his job, Brennaman

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began the fifth inning with a soliloquy,

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I made a comment earlier tonight that

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I guess UH went out over

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the year that I am deeply ashamed

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of UM. If

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I have heard anyone out there, I

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can't tell you how much I say from the bottom of my

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heart I'm so very very sorry.

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I pride myself and think of myself as

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a a man of faith. As

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he was winding up, so was Kansas City

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reliever Breg Holland, who offered a

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fastball to Castianos, the batter

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at the time. As Brennaman continued,

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castiano'ss bad collided violently

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with a pitch, resulting in a towering

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four hundred and ten foot drive. And

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we got this from Brennaman. As there is a

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drive in a deep left field by Costiganos,

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it will be a home run and

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so that'll make it a for nothing ball

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game. When that awkward interruption was over,

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and as Castiano's rounded the basis, Brennaman

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went back to doing damage control. I

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don't know if I would be putting on this headset again, As

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ESPNS public Torrey puts it perfectly.

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Watching Brennaman break the fourth wall

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and then suddenly reconstruct that wall

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in the same breath remains one of the funniest

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things I've ever seen. Brenneman

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was indeed done in the Red s booth. He

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finished the apology, then turned the broadcast

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over to Jim day mid Gay. The

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team suspended Brennaman that night, and he

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resigned a little over a month later. He

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now broadcasts high school sports in the

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Greater Cincinnati area. Castianos,

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on the other hand, was just getting started.

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The next time the Reds visited Kansas City,

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he struck again George Gorman,

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a World War Two veteran and the father of

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Royal's longtime equipment manager Patrick

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Gorman, had recently died. Coming

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out of the break at the top of the seventh inning, Kansas

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City announcer Ryan la Fever began

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a poignant eulogy of Gorman. Nick

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Castiano Snow was batting, and

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he chose that precise moment to go

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deep with this seventeenth home run of the

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season. Here's the call delivered

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by La Fiver as it coincided with the first

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pitch. Well, we're gonna tell you about

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a great man, and it's

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a loss for the Royals family. That's

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a great life. Nineties six years and

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Pat, just like his dad, went to KU,

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he also went to Bishop Ward High School. And

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there's a drive in a deep left center field.

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And there's never a great time to

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eulogize someone during the broadcast,

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So we apologize

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for the timing. But by

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this point, a drive into deep left

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by Castianos had become a full fledged

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me But he wasn't done

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using his bat to interrupt somber moments

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acquired by the Phillies in the offseason.

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Castianos was in the box on the final

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Monday in May when NBC Sports

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Philadelphia announcer Tom McCarthy saw

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fit to deliver a Memorial Day tribute

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the Gold Chair, which will sit vacant

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here at Citizens Bank Park, honoring

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UH those who paid the ultimate

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sacrifice, and as if choreographed

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Castiano's rips on a deep left

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field, it is god. Three

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successive seasons, three earnest

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moments, each broken up by a nick

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Castiano's home run unlikely,

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comically unlikely, The question

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just how unlikely? To

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try and grasp the improbability, we consulted

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sports statistician and NFL dor

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actor of Data and Analytics, Michael Lopez.

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He was kind enough to help us come up with an

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answer and to show his work. The

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first and most basic question, how

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often does Castianos hit the ball over the fence?

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In twenty one, he had

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combined forty eight home runs and eight

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twenty seven plate appearances.

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The home run he hit on Memorial Day was

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his seventh home run of the two

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season. In his two hundred plate appearance,

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that's a home run five point four percent of

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the time he steps into the box. But

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that's too broad. What Lopez

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rightly calls grief announcements came

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early in the plate appearance, as baseball

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broadcasters stories usually do. Over

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the last three seasons, through his Memorial

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Day blast, Castianos hit nineteen

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home runs on the first or second pitch

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of his plate appearance, which is to say

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that there's roughly a two percent chance that in

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any given plate appearance he would

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hit a home run in one of the first two pitches. Extrapolating

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that the likely hood that he would hit

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a home run in each of those three plate appearances,

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it's about one in a hundred and twenty thousand.

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But the probability really plummets when

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we ask how likely was he to

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have three plate appearances in grief announcement

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settings. To answer this question,

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we first need some sense of frequency. How

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often to broadcasters depart from the

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game to offer the sorts of sombers

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soliloquies that Castiano's has an uncanny

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way of interrupting the sonic equivalent

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to photo bombing. We put this to Ted

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Robinson, a veteran of calling more than MLB

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games, mostly for the Giants and Twins.

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But how often a broadcaster would deliver a

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somber monologue. His estimate

8:42

once a month, and that's maybe, he says,

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there's a question of what do we want to impose

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on an audience honoring Memorial

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Day. Absolutely, maybe there's

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an unfortunate death of someone close to

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the team or an arrest you feel you have

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to acknowledge, but weeks can

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go by between those that.

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As a guide, a monthly grief announcement

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would equate to ten such announcements

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over the last three seasons, accounting

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for the pandemic short and twenty campaign.

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Given that Castianos has played in most

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games over that period, one can assume that

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in a given game with a grief announcement, he'd

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have a one in twenty chance of being a bad

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after that. Extrapolating

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that to the ten grief announcements,

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the likelihood of his being the bat or after three

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such announcements is one. Combining

9:29

castianos Is early plate appearance

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home run rate with the odds of

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Castianos would be batting when the rare grief

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announcement was made. Rate Lopez

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makes the back of the envelope calculation. We'd

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say there's one in ten million chance

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that Castianos would follow three grief

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announcements with first to pitch

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home runs. Those are literally

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powerball odds. Lopez

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points out that the odds improve if we consider

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the probability that any member of the

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population of Major league batters do what

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Castianos did. The odds also

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improved when we consider that the grief announcement

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could have been made by broadcasters of either

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team. Then

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again, the odds become longer if we want

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to refine this and note that Castiano's

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not only hit home runs, but did so

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to left field each time, and

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though it wasn't a home run. Castiano's

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interrupted a fourth grief announcement. Earlier

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this season in spring training, Blue

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Jay's announcer Buck Martinez was awkwardly

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addressing the d u I arrest of Toronto

10:30

pitching coach Pete Walker when

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Castianos laced a single to right

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field, fittingly his first at

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bat with the Phillies. But

10:39

little that's gonna drop for a basic Castianos

10:42

reached out of propin in the right fair

10:45

no sport revels and coincidence and numerology

10:48

and statistical cork quite like baseball

10:50

does. Pictured Joe Nicro's

10:52

only career home run, it came

10:54

off his brother Phil niekro a

10:57

stand Musual's thirty six hundred

10:59

and thirty hits eighteen

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fifteen came at home in eighteen

11:03

fifteen, came on the road. Mutual

11:06

incidentally was born on November twenty

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one, nineteen twenty and Tiny

11:10

Dinorah, Pennsylvania, population

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four thousand, five d eighty. That's

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the same unlikely birthplace as

11:18

Ken Griffy Jr. Who was also born

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there on November twenty one, nineteen

11:22

sixty nine. Castiano's

11:25

speak, though, set the standard for improbability

11:28

one in ten million for perspective,

11:32

the odds of being struck by lightning in

11:34

your lifetime. For the National

11:36

Weather Service, it's one in fifteen

11:38

thousand, three hundred. The odds of getting

11:40

bitten by a shark one in three

11:42

point seven million. The odds

11:44

of getting struck by a meteorite.

11:48

The astronomer Allen Harris once haded

11:50

it one in one point nine million. The

11:53

odds of being elected president of the United

11:55

States one in ten

11:57

million, which is to say the

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awe and amusement we all have for

12:02

Castianos, who's grief announcement triple

12:04

Crown is well placed with

12:06

that kind of timing. When his baseball career

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ends, he might have a second career as a

12:11

baseball announcer, the successor

12:13

to Vince Scully.

12:20

Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please

12:22

rate and review our show. It helps people find

12:25

us. Sports Illustrated Weekly

12:27

is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart

12:29

Radio. For more podcasts from

12:31

my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio

12:33

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

12:36

you get your favorite shows. And

12:38

for more of Sports Illustrated It's best stories and

12:40

podcasts, visit SI dot com.

12:43

This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced

12:45

by Jessica Armoski, Jordan Rizzieri,

12:48

and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer.

12:51

Our senior producer is Dan Bloom.

12:53

Our acting senior producer is Harry

12:55

Swartout. Our executive producers

12:58

are Scott Browny and me John Gonzales.

13:01

Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider,

13:04

and if you've stuck around this song, we leave

13:06

you with this. He might have a second

13:08

career as a baseball announcer, a

13:10

successor to Fid Sculling. That's

13:15

all I got. I mean, you'll you'll

13:17

cut in the audio there. You don't need me saying right

13:20

like yeah yeah

13:22

good good h