Texas Rangers powerful prospect Joey Gallo hit a 448-foot opposite field blast after getting called up to the big leagues on Tuesday, but he wouldn’t have been able to do so without some help from a state trooper.
Gallo got a phone call at 1:30 PM on Tuesday that he was headed back up to the bigs (he played in 36 games with the Rangers in 2015), so he had to hurry up and get to Arlington from Round Rock where the Rangers’ Triple-A affiliate is located.
To make this happen, the Rangers got Gallo a police escort from a Texas state trooper, who met Gallo in Alvarado, about 27 miles south of Globe Life Park. Additionally, Gallo got the help of a rain delay, as the Rangers’ game against the Oakland Athletics didn’t start for an hour after the scheduled start time.
Here’s more, from the Star-Telegram:
“We got to skip a lot of that standstill traffic,” said Gallo, who followed the trooper all the way to Globe Life Park. “I just followed him. [He used] yellow lights, some times he would put the red, white and blue on. Most people just pulled over. That definitely helped me get here on time. It was definitely pretty sweet.”
“I was like, ‘Oh, good, now I can eat, so it was good,” he said. Before he got to Alvarado, Gallo said, he was hitting speeds like he hits baseballs. His homer Tuesday had an exit velocity of 110 mph.
“I probably shouldn’t talk about it,” he joked. “Probably a little dangerous but I had to get here. Especially when I heard I was in the lineup. I was like, ‘Now, I really need to get there.”
So, Gallo had quite an incredible way of arriving to the ballpark, and then he did an incredible thing once he was there. Check out video with the Statcast measurements of Gallo’s 448-foot oppo dinger:
Gallo’s homer unfortunately wouldn’t be enough to help the Rangers get a victory, as they fell to the A’s by the score of 6-3. Despite the loss, Gallo certainly had an amazing day he won’t soon forget.
