It's a Beautiful Day for a Home Run, Or Even 5 TRIPLES are OK

They call that right field wasteland at AT&T "triples alley."  There's so much acreage out there that you could graze cattle in right center and there'd hardly be anyone that notices.   If there ever was a ballpark in the league that required a rover, San Francisco is it.

(AP Photo, July 25, 2014)

The Giants designed the park for Barry Bonds, we all knew that.  The thinking was that he'd hit a ton of dingers down the right field line, where there's a short porch at about 303 feet at the foul pole.  To make up for the porch, the designers of the place made the right centerfield fence a full 421 feet from home plate.

That right-center field acreage became the place were lofty homers went to die.  As so often happens when plans are put in place to keep a ballpark honest, there was an unexpected result.  First, it was that Bonds lost a lot of homers to right centerfield.  The other unanticipated consequence of the right field abundance was that liners or fast grounders hit there would become easy triples.

Dubbed triples alley by Giant broadcasters early in its inaugural 2000 season.  We've now seen the ballpark in action a lot over the years.  There's the occasional inside the parker too because of all the crazy angles that create caroms off those weird angles out there.  Tonight's episode might be a game remembered by Dodger fans for years.  Five triples.  Three by Puig.  Three triples in one inning alone.

You saw something tonight that you'll probably never see again and that was the Puig Triple-Triple.  You'll see a perfect game more often than that.  I'm pretty sure that hitting 3 triples in a game is more rare than a cycle.  The last time four triples was accomplished by a player in one game was back in the day when 5 pitches outside the strike zone constituted a walk and balls bouncing over the fence counted as homers.  It was back in 1885 and the first World Series wouldn't be played for another 15 years.

So treasure this one folks.  That was a gem of a performance.  One of those games that we'll be talking about years from now.  Will it also be considered the game that turned the Dodger season around?  I hope so.

I guess it's safe to say that Puig has recovered from the hand injury, and he couldn't have picked a better time for it.