Historic Debut for Baylor’s Tyce Armstrong
A college baseball player at Baylor University had a memorable debut, leaving him quite “speechless” afterward.
Tyce Armstrong, a redshirt senior who switched to the Bears after spending four years at UT Arlington, matched a college baseball record by hitting three grand slams in a single game. He accumulated 12 RBIs during Friday’s 15-2 victory over New Mexico State.
Batting fourth in the lineup, Armstrong faced a pitcher right away. He was hit by a pitch in his first at-bat but later connected with a pitch from New Mexico State’s Cooper Reese, sending it over the left-field fence to establish a 5-0 lead in the third inning.
Just a frame later, he hit another inside pitch out of the park, bringing the score to 9-0 with two outs.
In the seventh inning, to cap off the win under the mercy rule, Armstrong hit another grand slam off Matthew Yerke to nearly the same spot. As he traversed the bases, the play-by-play announcer exclaimed, “No way!”
“That’s odd,” the announcer remarked later during the game. “That’s totally strange.”
This achievement makes Armstrong the second player ever to hit three grand slams in a single game since the NCAA began tracking this statistic in 1957. He follows in the footsteps of Jim LaFountain from Louisville, who accomplished the feat in 1976, as noted by MLB’s Sarah Langs.
Interestingly, the only Major League Baseball team to achieve three grand slams in one game is the Yankees, including players like Russell Martin, Curtis Granderson, and Robinson Cano. Yet, no individual player has done this in a major league game.
After the game, Armstrong, who played first base and was previously an All-Western Athletic Conference second-team member at UT Arlington, shared, “It was definitely the coolest night of my life.” He mentioned that he stuck to his game plan, focusing on hitting fastballs hard. Though he wasn’t specifically aiming for another grand slam in his last at-bat, he acknowledged that the right pitch could certainly lead to it.
“I mean, it’s a fantastic feeling,” Armstrong expressed. “And I want to keep that going.”
Looking forward, Armstrong and the Baylor team are set to continue their season-opening series against New Mexico State on Saturday.
