We could all use a few more smiles in our life these days, right? If that’s the case for you, you’ve come to the right place, because we defy you not to smile at this video of Phillies minor leaguer Logan O’Hoppe smiling from ear to ear during his first professional at-bat at Yankee Stadium.
First, a little bit of backstory, courtesy of the one and only @Jomboy_. In the video you’re about to see, you’ll hear Jomboy pointing out that just a few years ago, when O’Hoppe was still a teenager, he went to see his beloved Yankees take on the Orioles in the Bronx. That night, Manny Machado, the Orioles’ shortstop at the time, hit a towering drive to deep left field. O’Hoppe, then 18 years old, caught Machado’s homer in the upper deck in left field. In typical Yankee fan fashion, he threw it back on the field.
That year, O’Hoppe, a West Islip, N.Y. native, was drafted by Philadelphia. Two years later, in the middle of a pandemic, O’Hoppe found himself at home plate in the Bronx, taking a professional at-bat in a scrimmage. You can imagine how exciting it was for him:
Pretty f---in’ awesome, indeed. Just think about what needed to take place for O’Hoppe to reach home plate at Yankee Stadium on Monday night. First he had to get drafted, then he needed to be good enough to stay in the minors for two years, then he needed a global pandemic, then he needed to get called up to the big club (he did on March 8), then he needed to get invited to “Spring Training” part two (he did on July 1), then he needed the team to throw him a bone in a random scrimmage against his favorite team growing up before the MLB season begins. Just a hilarious course of events that needed to unfold. No wonder the kid could not stop freaking smiling.
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