{"id":369204,"date":"2026-08-12T09:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/369204\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T09:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:14:11","slug":"taylor-walls-homers-from-each-side-of-the-plate-to-make-tampa-bay-rays-history-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/369204\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Walls Homers From Each Side of the Plate to Make Tampa Bay Rays History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Taylor Walls homered from each side of the plate in a 12-4 victory at the Athletics on Tuesday night, becoming the first switch-hitter to do that twice for the AL-leading Tampa Bay Rays.<\/p>\n<p>Walls also accomplished the feat on April 18, 2023, at Cincinnati.<\/p>\n<p>The 30-year-old shortstop hit his first homer Tuesday left-handed in the fourth inning off Athletics starter Mason Barnett. Walls went deep as a right-handed hitter off reliever Brady Basso in the sixth, helping Tampa Bay win its eighth straight game.<\/p>\n<p>Walls is the fifth player this season to homer from both sides of the plate, joining the Chicago White Sox\u2019s Drew Romo, Colorado\u2019s Willi Castro, Pittsburgh\u2019s Bryan Reynolds, and Minnesota\u2019s Josh Bell. <\/p>\n<p>Hitting his first long ball of the season, Walls ended his personal home run drought at 105 regular-season games, dating to July 27, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Walls only has 24 home runs in 581 games in the majors, counting the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ap.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Associated Press<\/a>. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n<p>Photos You Should See: August 2026<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/august-11-pyss-x01.jpg\" alt=\"TOPSHOT - A man carries a dog as he walks past the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Pereira, Colombia on August 10, 2026. A powerful earthquake rocked Colombia and neighboring Latin American countries on August 10, 2026, with medical teams rushing to help victims after buildings were damaged or collapsed in several cities. The Colombian geological service and its American counterpart USGS put the magnitude at 7.4, with an epicenter 100 km (60 miles) underground in the west of the country. Colombia had initially put it at 6.6. (Photo by Jaime SALDARRIAGA \/ AFP via Getty Images)\" class=\"Image__PictureImage-sc-412cjc-1 bBgODV Image-sc-412cjc-2 SlideshowEmbed__Picture-fkpjfn-0 kQDDcT bUlaJL\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Taylor Walls homered from each side of the plate in a 12-4 victory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2205,3816,88592,110,1237,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-369204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-associated-press","tag-baseball","tag-collections-sports","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}