Did Jo Adell really have the greatest defensive game in MLB history?

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And now that game will be riding alongside him forever. So cool. But when nights like that come along in baseball, America turns its longing eyes toward us, here at Weird and Wild World Headquarters. So … (America asks) … How rare was that? … How historic was that? … How Weird (and Wild) was that? Thanks for asking. After nearly a week of people saying that might have been the greatest defensive game of all time, I was no longer just wondering about that. I decided: I had to know. So, the Weird and Wild column tried to answer that question. Spoiler alert: We’re going with yes on that! But here’s how hard it was to get there. All THREE of Jo Adell’s home run robberies from tonight … Yes, you read that right 😮 https://t.co/bc0Wb9i1Ii pic.twitter.com/axhyQFpLHD Ho-ho-ho. Now that’s hilarious. The record books are absolutely no help on stuff like this. You want to know which right fielder holds the record for most putouts in a game? Oh, you can find that in your dusty old record book. But most home run robberies in a game? Good luck, pal. Fortunately, our favorite researchers could at least dish out some fun facts on this feat. Here are my four favorites: He’s a one-man team — The wild-card era is more than three decades old. In all that time, according to STATS Perform, only one team has robbed three home runs in a game. It was (yup) Team Jo Adell. Even two is an event — You should know that home-run robbery data goes back only a little over 20 years. But in all that time, according to Sports Info Solutions, there have been only two other outfielders who even stole two home runs in a game: Nook Logan in 2005 and Jesús Sánchez last year. A game for all seasons — How hard is three in one game? Only five outfielders in the sport had three (or more) all season last year: Fernando Tatis Jr. had four. Cedric Mullins, Ramón Laureano, Bryce Teodosio and Jacob Young had three apiece. (Hat tip: Sports Info Solutions.) Once (maybe thrice) in a lifetime — Just for fun, want to hear a couple of names of famous active players who never even robbed three home runs in their outfielding careers? How about Andrew McCutchen … and Bryce Harper (with two each). Of course, it doesn’t help if you play in a park where the fence is 30 feet high. But whatever! I enjoyed all those meaty tidbits. But they don’t really tell us if this was the greatest defensive game ever. So I kept plowing forward. It was time to find out … I posed that question of my friend Mark Simon of Sports Info Solutions, the folks who bring you The Fielding Bible. Over at SIS, they’ve been keeping track of all sorts of defensive data — including home run robberies — for more than two decades. So they could tell you, for instance, who rolled up the most Defensive Runs Saved in one game. But when I asked whether DRS could help us find the greatest defensive game on record, Simon basically told me: Don’t even go there. One play alone — if it’s impactful enough and the catch probability is low enough — can skew a stat like that, to the point where it offers almost no perspective on a game like Adell’s gem against the Mariners. DRS is incredibly meaningful in large samples. But it is almost no help with measuring a game like this. “So why don’t you go ask ChatGPT,” Simon suggested, slightly tongue-in-cheek. Sure. How could that hurt, right? So … This seemed like a good idea — for about 30 seconds. It’s awesome that AI can do stuff like tell Siri what to say. But why not give it a chance to do something way more important, by which I mean: Filling up the Weird and Wild column. So I asked the mysterious Chatster: What’s the greatest defensive game in baseball history? Guess what? ChatGPT couldn’t possibly have been happier that I asked. It then told me, within seconds: “One performance stands above almost everything else.” I then learned all about exactly the kind of game I was searching for — Ozzie Smith against the Dodgers, in 1978, that game when the Wizard “put on what many consider the greatest defensive game ever.” You know, that game where he had 13 assists at shortstop, “a modern-era record.” That game where he “made multiple highlight-reel plays deep in the hole, showing insane range, arm strength and accuracy.” This, ChatGPT told me, was the game when Smith “became legendary.” Great. Now we’re getting somewhere. Except for one tiny detail … This game never actually happened in real life. Yes, apparently, nobody programmed into ChatGPT that people like me could look this stuff up. Which I did, just to double-check, and discovered: (1) Ozzie never had 13 assists in any game that year, (2) Ozzie never had 13 assists in any game he played in the big leagues, and (3) Ozzie did have seven assists in a game against the Dodgers in 1978, but it didn’t seem that legendary, possibly because his team lost 7-0. Aw, what the heck. Even AI could make a mistake, I thought. Fortunately, Chat also listed “other famous defensive masterpieces worth mentioning.” Beautiful. I was re-energized — until I found out the next item on the ChatGPT list also wasn’t quite as advertised. That was Brooks Robinson, in Game 1 of the 1970 World Series. At least this game existed. So that was a start. But there was good news and bad news. The true part: Robinson did make probably the most famous play of his career in that game — the fabled Lee May backhand robbery and throw from foul territory. The not-so-true part: Chat claimed that was just one of “a string of unreal plays” Robinson unfurled that day. Except (whoops!) no he didn’t. Robinson did put on a glove show throughout that World Series. Just not in that one game! He had only two other assists that day, and even made an error. So I really appreciate ChatGPT being so eager to help that it basically just made stuff up. But I’m done with that. So I moved on to another Mark Simon suggestion and wondered … It’s always reassuring to know that there’s such a thing as the “official historian of Major League Baseball” hanging around, waiting for people like me to ask questions like this. So of course I asked John Thorn, that official historian himself, if any games in history notably rival the Adell game. But guess what? Even the Historian King didn’t have any of those in his archives. Thorn has written extensively about The Greatest Plays You Never Saw — highlight-reel moments with no actual highlight reel, mostly because stuff like video cameras weren’t invented yet. But those are just plays, he said — not whole games. So that led me to yet another guy who remembers just about everything that ever happened in baseball … Whenever you go in search of baseball lore that reverberates through time, it’s always a fine idea to dial Bob Costas’ number. I once asked him about Vin Scully, and he told stories for two and a half hours. So did he have some thoughts on this? Of course he did. But could he truly answer this question? He waved the white flag on that. He dropped names and plays, from Willie Mays to Denzel Clarke, from the Wizard of Oz to Austin Jackson. But three “what-just-happened” plays that rivaled Adell’s trifecta, all in one game, let alone an electric flight into the stands for the finale, to save a 1-0 game? “Never before,” Costas said, “at least that we can think of. And likely never again … or at least for a very long time. “Now watch it happen again,” he quipped, “under a full moon in about a week … because baseball is funny that way.” At this point, I was almost out of places to turn. I pivoted back to Mark Simon, to see what else he’d dug up in the Sports Info Solutions files. He told me about a game in 2005 in which the Tigers’ Craig Monroe became the only player in SIS’ 23 seasons to record four “Good Fielding Plays” in one game. (Adell had “just” three.) But that was in an 11-1 game. So did it match a game in which the defensive hero leaped over the fence and literally saved a 1-0 game? Nope. Simon found two other home run robberies in the database that compared with Adell’s third grab, because they came in the ninth inning of a 1-0 game: Curtis Granderson for the 2009 Tigers, Jake McCarthy for the 2024 Diamondbacks. But it’s not as if those guys did that two other times in those games. So for my next step, I tried buying a book on great outfield catches from 1887 to 1964: “Going, Going … Caught,” by Jason Aronoff. It’s quite a collection. If you’re interested in reading all about Willie Mays’ 17 greatest catches, for instance, this is the book. But it, too, is a recounting of individual plays, but not the greatest games of that era. Where else could I turn? I even asked Alexa, because what the heck. I hate to break this to you Alexa fans out there, but she was also no help. She mostly told me about Adell’s game — no matter how many different ways I tried to ask. That led me to one last call — to my buddy Tim Kurkjian, fellow lover of all sorts of historical quirkiness. He told me there was so little recorded history of stuff like this, he didn’t even feel comfortable in declaring it the greatest defensive game in history by a right fielder. “I would be fascinated to see if somebody could actually prove this,” he said of my noble quest. “My guess is, you can’t actually prove it. But I would love someone to try, and you are the perfect person.” No, I told him. Apparently, I’m not. I recounted all the places I’d turned, from John Thorn to the bogus alternative-universe history of ChatGPT. “So just write it like you write everything else,” Kurkjian advised me. “Like: I’ve never seen this. Has this ever happened before? If it has, I can’t find it. I would quote yourself on all of this. And then say: If John Thorn hasn’t heard of it, then it hasn’t happened. Period.” I’m glad I called Tim. I wrote what he told me to write. I’ve done all I can do. But here’s a confession. Even after all that, I can’t bring myself to say: It hasn’t happened, period! I could talk myself into a question mark, possibly even a semi-colon. But who the heck knows what happened in 1886. I’d like to think we do. But we know better. We know that nothing is impossible, because after all, it’s … Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Jayson Stark is the 2019 winner of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award for which he was honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jayson has covered baseball for more than 30 years. He spent 17 of those years at ESPN and ESPN.com, and, since 2018, has chronicled baseball at The Athletic and MLB Network. He is the author of three books on baseball, has won an Emmy for his work on "Baseball Tonight," has been inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame and is a two-time winner of the Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year award. In 2017, Topps issued an actual Jayson Stark baseball card. Follow Jayson on Twitter @jaysonst