Austin Barnes hit his first home run of the season for the Los Angeles Dodgers Thursday night, but no one was more excited than Nomar Garciaparra.
Prior to the first pitch being thrown in the Dodgers’ matchup with the Milwaukee Brewers, Garciaparra was on Spectrum SportsNet LA’s pregame show and predicted Barnes would hit a home run. This wasn’t like an analyst forecasting a homer from Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, or Pete Alonso during some sort of “best bet” segment. This was Garciaparra predicting a bomb from one of the worst home run hitters in the sport.
Nomar Garciaparra reacts to the Austin Barnes home run.
Joe Davis and Orel Hershiser love it.⚾️🕺😂 https://t.co/dEf6zlzBWr pic.twitter.com/0MdDvuYZor
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 18, 2023
“I’m going with Austin Barnes. I know he hasn’t had one. Today, Austin Barnes goes deep, he hits one out,” Garciaparra said during the pregame show.
In the eighth inning of a scoreless game, Barnes stepped to the plate and sent the pitch over the left field fence, breaking the tie, ending his homerless streak, and sending Garciaparra into euphoria. After the homer, the broadcast peaked at Garciaparra who was watching from the pre and postgame set, and the former All-Star shortstop’s reaction, full of exaggerated finger guns, did not disappoint.
You can almost hear Garciaparra yelling “pew, pew, pew, pew” as he whipped out the finger guns, waving them eagerly to celebrate his prediction. Meanwhile, Dodgers play-by-play voice Joe Davis and analyst Orel Hershiser got a good laugh out of Garciaparra’s excitement.
Barnes entered the game with a .123/.206/.139 slash line and zero homers in 138 at bats on the season. Further depicting just how rare it is for Barnes to go deep, the Dodgers catch had just 32 homers in 528 career games. But ‘Nomarstradamus’ Garciaparra made the seemingly outlandish prediction and Barnes fulfilled the prophecy.
