Andrew Benintendi's single called to mind the other times a player hit the ball more than once with a swing
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In the seventh inning of the Phillies' 7-4 win over the Red Sox in Philadelphia, Boston outfielder Andrew Benintendi hit a single to center field. No big deal, right? That sounds like a pretty normal event in an average baseball game.
This one wasn't normal, though, since Benintendi's bat happened to hit the ball two times on its journey through the infield:
You don't get credited with two base hits if you hit the ball twice with the same swing, but maybe you should. If you did, this would have increased the batting averages of other players to accomplish this oddity in the past, including (but not limited to):
Manny Piña, 2018
One of the most recent examples of this phenomenon occurred in Los Angeles in early August of this season, when the Brewers' Manny Pina picked up a base hit that knuckled its way past shortstop Chris Taylor, who really couldn't quite handle the weirdness:
Eric Hosmer, 2017
In Hosmer's final season with the Royals, he demonstrated the other way to pull off this quirk. His efforts resulted in a foul ball, however:
Logan Morrison, 2016:
When LoMo was a member of the Rays a couple seasons ago, he earned himself an RBI with this double-contact single:
Chris Carter, 2016:
Carter, then with the Brewers, also picked up a single after double-hitting a fastball from Jeff Samardzija:
Brandon Phillips, 2016
This one, delivered by Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips in a game against the Indians in May 2016, also looked ... well, weird:
Troy Tulowitzki, 2011
Back in 2011 as a member of the Rockies, Troy Tulowitzki added himself to that list with an adventurous single of his own:
But all of the above pale in comparison to the ultimate example, off the bat of Hunter Pence (of course) in Game 7 of the 2012 NLCS. Pence's lunging, broken-bat swing hit the ball three times and squibbed its way into left-center for a huge three-run double:
Weird all around!
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