As soon as the news dropped Sunday that Thom Brennaman was returning to Major League Baseball broadcasting, you just knew that Nick Castellanos was going to do something.
Then, when President Joe Biden announced he would drop out of the 2024 election race, you had to assume the Philadelphia Phillies slugger was set for four grand slams when they took on the Pittsburgh Pirates later that day.
By the time Castellanos launched a home run in the top of the ninth inning to secure a 6-0 victory, it was less a moment of delight and more of one that caused sports fans everywhere to say to themselves “Of course he did.”
2 outs in the 9th… Nick Castellanos came through. pic.twitter.com/qQVQ4r1OrG https://t.co/cMUMaklYzZ
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 21, 2024
I probably don’t need to explain the Nick Castellanos meme to you but in case you just fell out of a coconut tree, here’s the short version. On August 19, 2020, Cincinnati Reds announcer Thom Brennaman began an on-air apology after being caught on a hot mic using a homophobic slur. In the middle of that apology, then-Reds slugger Castellanos launched “a drive into deep left field” that Brennaman stopped his mea culpa to call, before returning to finish it, never changing his somber tone. Brennaman would soon lose that job but Castellanos was just getting started interrupting delicate broadcasting moments with a big hit.
Nick Castellanos when a major world-altering event transpires – a thread:
Moments after Thom Brennaman calls Kansas City ‘one of the fag capitals of the world’, during his apology:pic.twitter.com/Y9hEivZHAQ
— Paul C (@HurtsyIvania) July 22, 2024
In July 2021, the Kansas City Royals broadcasting team was eulogizing George A. Gorman when Castellanos launched another homer into deep left-center field. A few weeks later, Frontier League announcer Kyle Dawson was eulogizing his uncle and uttered the ill-fated phrase “Hope we don’t get Nick Castellanos’d and somebody hits a home run to tie the game right now,” which is exactly what happened next.
The meme was truly cemented in May 2022 when the Philadelphia Phillies broadcasters were paying tribute to fallen service members on Memorial Day and Castellanos jacked another home run.
A somber moment on Memorial Day is interrupted by, who else, Nick Castellanos. pic.twitter.com/F3cJv6vDTB
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 30, 2022
The beauty of the whole meme at this point was the way each instance followed a very specific pattern. A broadcaster is speaking somberly, only for Castellanos to rip away the solemnity with a massive hit that could not be ignored, bringing the focus back to baseball. It was the kind of absurdity that everyone could rally around (except perhaps broadcasters), enjoy, and understand.
This is where the meme starts to evolve. It begins to mold itself onto moments that don’t meet all the aforementioned criteria but enough that we can still accept it.
In March 2022, Castellanos hit a single as the Toronto Blue Jays broadcasters discussed a DUI arrest involving their pitching coach. In June 2023, Castellanos ripped a double, breaking up a broadcaster discussion about Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Everyone agreed that the meme still qualified, but home runs were no longer a requirement.
Castellanos returned to form in October 2023 when he rocked a homer as TBS broadcasters were literally showing video of former Phillies manager Charlie Manuel recovering from a stroke. So lost in the sauce was Nick that they didn’t even have time to get back to the game until after he’d already hit the ball. The meme went back to its roots and was reborn anew.
At this point, people just wanted Castellanos to continue hitting dingers during sad broadcasting moments. Unfortunately, perhaps as announcers cottoned on to Nick’s knack, those opportunities dried up. That’s when the meme really started to evolve, from Castellanos hitting homers during specific moments to him getting big hits on days in which something sad or notable has already happened.
We can probably source this back to when Castellanos hit a home run on the second anniversary of Brennaman’s apology, something we all took note of without realizing we were adjusting the mythos in real-time. It wasn’t really until recently when that adjustment came into full view.
After news broke that Willie Mays died on June 18, Castellanos hit a walk-off double an hour later. On the same day Donald Trump was almost assassinated, Castellanos homered (beforehand) and hit a double (afterward). Finally, on Sunday, after the Brennaman and Biden news, Nick knocked that ball to deep left field for old time’s sake.
While the reactions to a somber Nick Castellanos dinger were almost universally beloved before, this weekend’s moment, or the excitement around it, actually garnered some negative reactions.
Writer Zachary Levine took to X to say that we had officially lost the plot on the meme.
Fine, I’ll say it. We lost the plot on the Castellanos thing. The thing is homering to interrupt very serious-toned monologues by broadcasters, not homering on the same day as world events.
— Zachary Levine (@zacharylevine) July 21, 2024
And then there was a piece on USA Today’s FTW from Bryan Kalbrosky that said the meme “is unfunny and lost the plot.”
“Major news is literally happening around us all the time,” writes Kalbrosky. “Perhaps it isn’t the hardest challenge to find a pro athlete able to accomplish something on their field of play on the same day that something else significant happens. We are trying to fit a round peg into a round hole and then act surprised when it fits.”
While I think Levine, Kalbrosky, and other critics are correct in sussing out the ways the meme no longer specifically represents what made it iconic, I think they miss the point of how its evolution was natural and befitting the current state of the internet.
We’ve reached the point where a bad or notable thing happens in the world and the first thing some people think is, “Is Nick Castellanos playing today?” That’s not what the initial moment was about.
We currently live in a world where “nothing matters,” so to speak. A former U.S. president was found guilty of 34 felonies and found liable for sexually abusing a woman and suffered no real ramifications. That same person was almost assassinated and the internet largely kinda moved on four days later. The sitting U.S. President just announced he’s leaving the race three months before the election, an unprecedented event, and it inspired memes and social media nonsense as much as it inspired any critical conversation.
Our world moves lightning fast now, for better or worse. Social media and the internet have carved up the moments of our lives and turned them into fodder you’ll digest in a Substack newsletter and TikTok video before returning to your cavalcade of cat pics. The somber moments that helped create the Nick Castellanos meme are less memorable than the fact that they were, in fact, somber, thereby fitting nicely into the box we needed in order to say “he did it again!” And our need to be able to ring that bell in our cerebral cortex means we’ll bend the rules and remake the meme to make it work. Because we want it to happen again.
Has the Nick Castellanos meme jumped the shark? Yes and no. It’s not what it was, but it’s taken on a life of its own because that’s what we want it to do. We’d rather continue living in a world where Nick somehow does it again than one where he doesn’t.
Critics might do best to “touch grass,” as is the parlance of our time. Just know that if something bad happens when you’re out there, Nick Castellanos isn’t going to wait around for you to see him sock another dinger in its honor.
