Trae Young isn’t the only star Atlanta athlete who can have fun with the New York crowd.
Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna homered in the fifth inning Monday night in Queens, sending the Braves to an eventual 1-0 victory that salvaged a doubleheader split against their division rivals.
It was the Braves’ second consecutive 1-0 win thanks to an Acuna home run. He became only the second player in the modern era to homer for the only runs in consecutive 1-0 team wins (joining Joe Panik, 2018).
Braves players are used to being heckled at Citi Field, but Acuna was waiting to give it back to the fans. After his homer, when the stadium grew quiet, Acuna did an “I can’t hear you gesture,” egging on the Mets fans.
“I enjoy it a lot,” Acuna said about the New York crowd (via team interpreter Franco Garcia). “I feel like I’m getting booed every time I go out there and I’m getting booed on the field, so I think to myself, ‘OK, I’m gonna wait until I do something. I’m gonna say something.’ And then as soon as I hit it out, I didn’t hear anything, so it got pretty quiet. So as soon as I started around the bases, I just motioned like this (gesture) because no one was saying anything. It got real quiet after that.”
The home run was clocked at 115.7 mph, the third-hardest hit homer of his career. He also made a 97-mph throw in the second inning to throw out Mets slugger Pete Alonso at third base. So his fingerprints were all over Monday’s evening victory.
“I thought that home run (Acuna) hit in Philly might have been the hardest hit ball I’ve ever seen, (but) that right there might be one of the hardest-hit balls I’ve ever seen in my life,” manager Brian Snitker said of Acuna’s homer.
Acuna and the Braves will try to cut into the Mets’ National League East lead Tuesday night. The Braves enter play trailing the Mets by five games in the division.
