WORCESTER, Mass. — When Trains Magazine wrote about baseball parks near railroad tracks (“High iron baseball,” June 2023), one of the qualifications for the article was the ability to see trains pass from within the ballpark.
Worcester’s Polar Park didn’t make the magazine — although it’s in this Trains.com article — but it’s clear it qualifies.
In fact, you can not only see the trains, you can hit them with a batted ball.
At least, Boston Red Sox farmhand Bobby Dalbec can. While it’s hard to see in the accompanying video clip, broadcasters and subsequent news reports say Dalbec’s home run Tuesday night against the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs carried beyond the ballpark and hit a passing train — one of the five to 10 CSX freights that passes daily.
Did Bobby Dalbec just homer off a moving train?!?@WooSox | @RedSox pic.twitter.com/6E0AqzVSNA
— Minor League Baseball (@MiLB) June 21, 2023
MassLive.com reports Dalbec is just the second player to hit a train since the ballpark opened in 2021, and that the ball traveled so far it went beyond the limits of the tracking system used to determine home-run distance.
The 27-year-old Dalbec is hitting .300 with 18 home runs in 53 games for Worcester. He’s also spent eight games this year with Boston, going 2 for 11 with seven strikeouts. He has 45 major-league homers in 281 games over four seasons.
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