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.
Nice shot.
Using the Google measuring tool it is about 410′ from home plate to the closest track.
LOL 😀
Reading Company had a spur from Reading Yard to a plant that produced auto and truck frames. It went right behind the stands along the right field line of the Reading ballpark. A shifter pulled the day’s production from the plant around the third inning. I’ll bet that got hit more than a few times.
When the automakers moved thair production away from the East Coast, the plant closed.
Reading’s ballpark didn’t make the list either but you can still see NS through Harrisburg-Jersey City trains on the Reading Belt Lline.
It would be a switcher, not a shifter. That is what the English and Aussies call them.
Now this is something you don’t hear of everyday.
Dalbec gets only a locker room visit from the CSX Railroad Police. He didn’t have these issues at Fenway Park.
They probably thought the ball was a bomb masquerading as a baseball…
So, if hitting the bull gets you a steak dinner what does hitting the train get you?
Spelling error, second paragraph. No “H” n Worcester.
Fixed. Thanks.