Jung Hoo Lee needed only one swing and a whole lot of hustle to steal the spotlight at Dodger Stadium on Thursday, turning what looked like a routine line drive into a two-run inside-the-park home run that tied the game in the fifth inning and set off a frenzy in the Giants' dugout.
The blast, which came off Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan and knotted the score at 2 in the top of the fifth, briefly flipped the energy in Chavez Ravine, according to MLB.com. Los Angeles had the last word, though: in the bottom of the sixth, pinch-hitter Alex Call ripped a two-run single, and the Dodgers rode that swing to a 4–2 win. Sheehan went six innings, and the only runs he allowed were the ones fueled by Lee’s all-out sprint.
Lee’s shot hugged the left-field line and kicked off the wall in foul territory, skidding away from Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández and rolling toward the bullpen. That misfortune for Los Angeles opened the door for the rare play. Miguel Rojas’ relay throw reportedly sailed over catcher Dalton Rushing’s head, and Eric Haase never stopped running, scoring all the way from first on the same mad scramble, as reported by the New York Post. The umpires ruled it an official inside-the-park homer and did not charge an error on the sequence.
Inside-the-park rarity
Plays like that rarely happen at Dodger Stadium. The last inside-the-park home run at the ballpark belonged to Nick Ahmed on May 9, 2018, per MLB archive footage. ClutchPoints also noted that Lee became the first Giants player ever to notch an inside-the-park homer at Dodger Stadium, a little slice of history dropped right into one of baseball’s oldest rivalries.The
Dodgers answer late
For all the drama of Lee’s mad dash, the Dodgers had their own rebuttal waiting. In the sixth, they strung together a rally that reshaped both the box score and the vibe. Teoscar Hernández smoked three doubles on the night, matching a career high, and the Los Angeles bench delivered the decisive hit on Call’s pinch-hit knock, according to the New York Post. The Dodgers came out of it with the series edge, while the Giants walked away with the kind of clip that lives forever on highlight reels.
Lee’s inside-the-park homer is the sort of sprint that will be replayed for weeks, a flash of pure speed in a rivalry more commonly decided by towering home runs and tense late-inning drama. As the clubs head into their next matchup with Los Angeles holding the slight advantage, both sides got a fresh reminder that one hustle play can throw an entire night’s story into chaos, even if only for an inning or two.