The 22-year-old outfielder hit the first pitch he saw for a home run, with family on hand to celebrate.
The best part about a moment like this is sharing it, and Akil Baddoo would be the first to tell you so. But that’s also another way in which fortune smiled on the Tigers’ rookie on a sun-splashed Easter Sunday at Comerica Park, where he made a smashing major-league debut against the Cleveland Indians. There were witnesses who can fill him in on some of the details. Because if you ask Baddoo, the 22-year-old outfielder who’d never played above Class A ball before this season, to describe the scene and his emotions as he rounded the bases after belting the first pitch he saw in the first at-bat of his MLB career, you’ll just get a laugh and a shake of the head. “I cannot tell you,” he said. “I literally can’t tell you. Like, it was just … I don’t know. I was just so happy I was able to put a good swing on the ball and hit a home run.” And the rest? Well, it’s a lot like Baddoo’s trip to the ballpark Sunday, knowing he’d be in the lineup for the first time, three games into a career no one expected to take this kind of turn this spring. “It was all kind of a blur,” Baddoo said, smiling again. Good thing the cameras were rolling, I guess. Even better, there were fans allowed in the stadium, most especially his family, who’d made the trip up from their home in suburban Atlanta for this. And kudos to Tigers manager AJ Hinch, who took some of the drama out of the wait for Baddoo this weekend, telling him prior to Thursday’s Opening Day that he’d be in the lineup at some point in this first series with Cleveland. On Saturday, he gave the rookie a heads-up — “Let your family know you’re getting your first start on Sunday,” Hinch told him — and then nearly inserted him in the game as a pinch-hitter that same afternoon when Miguel Cabrera started cramping up in the late innings. His teammates, most of whom he’d only just met a couple months ago at the start of spring training — the Tigers plucked Baddoo from the Minnesota Twins’ farm system in December’s Rule 5 draft — were razzing him about that in the dugout, too. “A lot of guys were joking about how good I look in the on-deck circle,” he said. “But I was glad I was finally able to get up there.
