With the crack of a bat in Seattle on Sunday, a Mercer Bear made history.
Former Mercer Bear baseball player Kyle Lewis hit his fourth home run during his sixth Major League Baseball appearance, helping lead the Seattle Mariners to a comeback win against the Chicago White Sox.
“I’m just trying to see how things go, get in the flow of it and give it my best shot every day,” Lewis told the Seattle Times. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
The home run continued what has been one of the most historic MLB debuts in league history. Lewis homered in the first three consecutive games of his career, becoming only the second player in MLB history to do so, according to ESPN Seattle. The shot was Lewis’s fourth home run, a three-run blast that traveled 420 feet into the night air.
Lewis’ historic start has established him as a recognizable young talent in Major League Baseball. His home runs have already helped the Mariners win three of their previous four games, and some fans are claiming he is the future of the organization.
“I don’t think you can put a torch on somebody after a week of games,” Lewis told the Seattle Times when asked about his future with the Mariners. “It takes a while to get that. But I’m just going to keep working.”
The home run came in the eighth inning, scoring three runs and sending electricity back into the Mariners’ clubhouse as the team went on to come back from a 5-0 deficit against the White Sox. Lewis further aided the comeback in the ninth inning by advancing a runner that went on to score the game-winning run for Seattle. The club won the matchup 11-10.
The hot streak Lewis is on is the story many Mercer baseball fans were expecting after Lewis was a premier player at Mercer University for three seasons.
In his final season at Mercer, Lewis hit .395 and ranked fifth in the nation with 20 home runs on a powerful Mercer team. Lewis also ranked sixth in the nation in on-base percentage (.535) and was awarded the 2016 Golden Spikes Award, according to Mercer University Athletics.
Lewis’s torrid start offensively has given a spark to both Mariners and Mercer fans alike and has proved to be a fun storyline for anyone who is a baseball enthusiast.
Micah Johnston ‘22 is a journalism and media studies double major who has written for The Cluster since his freshman year at Mercer. He has written on and reported for Georgia Public Broadcasting, The Macon Telegraph and The Macon Newsroom on a variety of topics. He received the Center for Collaborative Journalism’s Junior Honors Award for the 2020-2021 academic year. Micah’s other interests include obsessively following Braves and Mariners baseball, constantly listening to all kinds of music and probably eating junk food.
