Nick Castellanos has become a really good baseball player, earning an All-Star nod as a starter this season as he is sporting a league-leading .339 average with 16 home runs and 53 RBI for the Reds. He also is best known by many, particularly on the internet, as the guy who hit a drive into deep left field in the middle of Thom Brennaman’s on air apology for making homophobic comments on a hot mic before he was pulled from the Reds broadcast.
Castellanos will likely never shake free of that moment in the minds of many, something he had nothing to do with but created a lasting meme anyways. It’s been almost exactly a year since that moment back in August 2020, a once in a million moment — or so we thought. On Monday, Castellanos and the Reds were back in Kansas City, and this time it was the Royals broadcast trying to have a serious moment when Castellanos stepped up to the plate in the top of the 7th inning.
The Royals were paying tribute to the father of a member of the Royals organization who passed away over the weekend, offering a eulogy to a veteran of World War II, when, somehow, by some stroke of strange fate, Castellanos again sent a drive deep to left center field, making for an eerily similar moment of broadcast awkwardness.
Here is the Royals broadcast of the Nick Castellanos home run.
They were eulogizing someone live on the air when it Nick went deep to left-center field.
You can not make this stuff up.
Credit to @hjodoyle for the tip. pic.twitter.com/iA2grIKY61
— ɴɪᴄᴋ ᴋɪʀʙy (@Nicholaspkirby) July 6, 2021
As the Royals announcer notes, there is never a good time during a broadcast to eulogize someone because the action on the field doesn’t stop. Still, for this to have been another Castellanos home run to the same part of the ballpark, creating the same awkward call is staggering. The lesson at this point has to be, if you’re going to do something serious on the broadcast when the Reds are in town — particularly in Kansas City — save it for after a Castellanos at bat.