Cory Provus became the latest broadcaster whose heartfelt moment was hijacked by a home run.
During Saturday’s Rangers-Twins game, Minnesota’s play-by-play voice was in the middle of a tender tribute in the top of the fifth inning, with Texas ahead 5-1. Provus praised the broadcast’s sideline reporter, Audra Martin, for the player-fan connections she chronicled throughout the year, many involving Kody Clemens, including one earlier in the season when she helped arrange a meeting between Clemens and a fan facing terminal cancer.
“We showcase these players and all they do on the field, the stats, the big swings, the home runs, but the impact that these guys can have on the game and on this fan base is much larger than that,” Provus said.
Jake Burger picked that exact moment to unload on a pitch and send it soaring over the wall in center field. Provus, instantly recognizing the eerie familiarity of the situation, couldn’t resist borrowing a line from the most infamous home run call of the decade.
“Swing and a drive by Castellanos, and Burger just hit a home run to center, and now it’s a 6-1 Texas lead,” Provus said before letting a beat pass and deadpanning, “Anyway.”
#MNTwins broadcaster Cory Provus was talking about a Twins fan battling terminal cancer when Jake Burger launched one to center.
And then Provus hit us with:
“Swing and a drive by Castellanos…”He followed it with the rest of the call, creating one of the most surreal home-run… pic.twitter.com/Ix1imNb6fl
— Talkin’ Twins (@TalkinTwins) September 27, 2026
Provus was, of course, invoking the most famous interrupted apology in broadcasting history. On Aug. 19, 2020, then-Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman was yanked off the air in the middle of a doubleheader against the Royals after a hot mic caught him using a homophobic slur during the first game. Given a chance to apologize before exiting the booth, Brennaman was midway through his mea culpa when Nick Castellanos crushed a 410-foot homer to left-center, and the longtime announcer reflexively halted his apology to call it, declaring that he considered himself a man of faith “as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos.”
As Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley detailed on the moment’s fifth anniversary, the phrase didn’t fully take off as a meme until Brennaman resigned more than a month later.
It has only gained steam since, largely because Castellanos kept supplying new material. He homered while Royals broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre eulogized a World War II veteran in 2021, during a Phillies Memorial Day tribute in 2022, as TBS discussed Charlie Manuel’s stroke recovery during the 2023 postseason, and on the day Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid in 2024. The phenomenon became so entrenched that FanDuel briefly froze betting on Castellanos after Pope Francis died in April 2025. Castellanos has largely kept his distance from the meme, but he revealed in 2024 that ESPN pitched him an exclusive feature that would’ve examined his uncanny knack for ill-timed home runs, only for him to scrap the project when the network balked at his demand for final approval.
After resigning in disgrace from the Reds in September 2020, he spent years clawing his way back from the professional wilderness, calling winter ball in Puerto Rico’s Roberto Clemente League, broadcasting high school games for Chatterbox Sports around Cincinnati, and sitting down with local LGBTQ activists and broadcasters in an effort to make amends. That penance eventually won over skeptics at Outsports and paved the way for his return to national television, when The CW tapped him as its lead college football voice in 2024. That November, Brennaman couldn’t resist a sly nod to his own infamy during a broadcast featuring quarterback Thomas Castellanos. By April 2025, he had completed his homecoming, landing the weekday morning show on Cincinnati’s 700 WLW.
Six years after that night, even Brennaman is in on the joke, and on Saturday, Provus showed that he is, too.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.