{"id":821271,"date":"2026-08-21T18:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/821271\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T18:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:42:13","slug":"a-minor-leaguers-first-professional-home-run-caught-by-a-lucky-fan-his-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/821271\/","title":{"rendered":"A minor leaguer\u2019s first professional home run caught by a lucky fan: His dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sawyer Strosnider stepped into the batter\u2019s box for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday afternoon with his mom, Kandi, in the second row behind home plate, and his dad, Scott, a few hundred feet away in the right-field bleachers.<\/p>\n

Kandi was recording Sawyer\u2019s at-bat, as she has done since he was young, but when Sawyer blasted his first professional home run, she was too elated to watch where it landed. When Scott called her to say he had caught it, she couldn\u2019t believe him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018You did not,\u2019\u201d Kandi told The Athletic on Thursday. \u201cI go back to the home video that I\u2019ve just taken, and I look, and sure enough, it\u2019s the man who has the outfit on that my husband has on. I\u2019m like, \u2018You did catch that ball!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott was also filming the at-bat, and as the ball hurtled toward him in right field, the early 90s Morehead State player knew a play had to be made. He dropped his phone as it was recording to make the catch.<\/p>\n

His POV video made it onto \u201cSportsCenter\u201d on Thursday night, with the footage showing the phone tumbling to the ground before Scott exclaimed, \u201cThat\u2019s my son!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have this conversation if I don\u2019t catch that ball,\u201d he said Thursday. \u201cWhen I saw it coming, I was like, \u2018I\u2019m gonna have to catch this baseball now. I\u2019ll get rid of this phone.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Minor leaguer’s first pro HR caught by his dad<\/p>\n

Sawyer, a Milwaukee Brewers 2026 second-round pick out of TCU, said he knew the ball found his dad. As the High-A outfielder rounded third for the first time as a professional, he told the third-base coach as much. The bottom-of-the-seventh shot gave the Timber Rattlers a 3-2 lead over the Lake County Captains en route to a 5-3 win.<\/p>\n

However serendipitous the moment seemed, it wasn\u2019t fully a coincidence that Scott was there to catch the ball. He felt his son, a left-handed batter, would pull one to right field if he finally saw something straight instead of the off-speed pitches he had been facing.<\/p>\n

The father figured it might be his son\u2019s final at-bat of the games his family, from Weatherford, Texas, was in town to see, and Scott wanted a memento.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen him bat 10,000 times,\u201d Scott said. \u201cI was like, \u2018He\u2019s due. I think I\u2019m going to go over here and see if we can make a memory.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sawyer added an RBI double in the eighth inning, finishing 2-for-4 with a walk in his seventh career game. He\u2019s 11-for-33 (.333) with four extra-base hits and one home run this season.<\/p>\n

If \u201cthere\u201d means wandering the stadium, sitting away from his wife behind home plate, that\u2019s how Scott watches his son\u2019s games. Scott said there\u2019s too much to see at any given ballpark to sit still. Too much individual culture to absorb. Too many people to meet and stories to collect.<\/p>\n

That included the private-party viewing area he confidently wandered into at Fox Cities Stadium in Grand Chute, Wis., positioning himself where Sawyer\u2019s home run would land.<\/p>\n

When reminded, nicely, that he was in said private party, Scott told them, \u201cMy son\u2019s getting ready to hit a home run to me, so I\u2019m going to catch this ball real quick, and I\u2019ll get out of your way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a wanderer,\u201d Sawyer said. \u201cHe\u2019s always (been that way). He can\u2019t sit still. He likes to go talk to a bunch of different people and see the game from everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even after long days as an equine veterinarian, Scott made a point of attending as many games and family events as possible for Sawyer and his two younger twin brothers, one of whom has Down syndrome.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents, they\u2019re very hard-working,\u201d Sawyer said. \u201cBut also family comes first, so they\u2019re always setting aside time, knowing that they had other things to do. My dad was out on a farm all day, but even though he was tired, he was going to make the games.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was super important to me, just knowing that they were there to support me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kandi has always made a point of being there for her children. After she worked for 22 years in international finance, the family moved at Scott\u2019s urging from Cincinnati to Texas when Sawyer was 10. Part of the deal in uprooting from her own family was that she would no longer have to work. Kandi poured that time into being there for her kids.<\/p>\n

She missed only one of Sawyer\u2019s games at TCU, home or away, during his two seasons with the Horned Frogs. She was there when he was named Big 12 freshman of the year and a second-team All-American by Baseball America in 2025. He finished his college career with a .315 batting average and 24 home runs in 106 games.<\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t she attend them all?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was because my boy with Down syndrome didn\u2019t feel great, and I didn\u2019t (want to leave him),\u201d she said. \u201cHe loves the games. We actually got to watch it on ESPN Plus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both of Sawyer\u2019s brothers would also have been in attendance Wednesday had they not been starting their junior year of high school back in Texas.<\/p>\n

The family\u2019s attendance streak will become harder to sustain. With Sawyer farther away and playing more often, his parents plan to make the trip monthly.<\/p>\n

That made Wednesday\u2019s moment feel even more fleeting. After the game, the family reconvened on the field for pictures, laughing over the strange coincidence, or not, of it all.<\/p>\n

Kandi was still stunned that the man who caught her son\u2019s first home run, the man captured in her video, was her husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe walked over (after the game), and she was like, \u2018You really caught the ball?\u2019\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I caught the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sawyer Strosnider stepped into the batter\u2019s box for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers\u00a0on Wednesday afternoon with his mom, Kandi,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2325,363,99],"class_list":["post-821271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}