Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera hit his 500th home run on Sunday, a solo shot in the sixth inning off the Blue Jays‘ Steven Matz.
Miguel Cabrera is now a member of one of the most exclusive clubs in baseball. Cabrera put an exclamation point on his career when he became the 28th member of the 500 home run club with a sixth-inning blast for the Detroit Tigers on Sunday against the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto. The 38-year-old Cabrera connected on a 1-1 pitch from left-hander Steven Matz, sending the ball over the scoreboard in right-center field. The 400-foot homer tied the score 1-all. The 14,685 fans at Rogers Centre rose for a standing ovation as Cabrera rounded the bases. After celebrating with his teammates, the Tigers slugger came out of the dugout to accept a curtain call, taking off his helmet and bowing to the crowd behind Detroit’s dugout. Cabrera went 31 at-bats between his 499th and 500th home runs, the third-longest stretch in MLB history behind Jimmie Foxx (61) and Harmon Killebrew (43), according to ESPN Stats & Information. Now in his 19th season in the majors, Cabrera foretold his future greatness in his first major league game back on June 20,2003, when he hit a walk-off home run to dead-center field in the bottom of the 11th inning for the Florida Marlins. Indeed, he was precocious enough at the plate as a much-hyped 20-year-old that by October of that year he was batting cleanup for the Marlins in the World Series.
