JJ Wetherholt is a month and change removed from his MLB debut with the St. Louis Cardinals. On Friday night in San Diego, he was the beneficiary of a play that belongs at a much, much lower level.
With the bases loaded in the top of the fifth, Wetherholt beamed a single to right field, where Padres three-time All-Star Fernando Tatís Jr. was well positioned to field it and limit the scoring.
Except Tatís missed the ball. He reached down to snag it, but it rolled right past him and all the way to the wall. Tatís had to double back to track it down. By the time he finally reached the ball, the Cardinals were on the verge of plating their third run. And by the time the cut-off man, second baseman Sung-Mun Song, fired it home, Wetherholt had already scored.
Helmet off, the 23-year-old Wetherholt hooted and hollered as he finished his race to complete a Little League grand slam. His highlight-reel single complemented Michael McGreevy’s nine-strikeout gem. Together, they fueled a 6-0 Cardinals victory at Petco Park.
Before Wetherholt’s single and Tatís’ subsequent gaffe, the game was scoreless. McGreevy was four innings into his dazzling, six-inning outing without run support.
He got plenty of it, of course, in the most unusual way.
Here’s another vantage point of the sequence, as captured by Cardinals broadcaster Stefan Caray:
The groans of Padres fans could be heard as the error occurred.
Tatís is actually a two-time Gold Glove Award winner. He first earned that honor in 2023 and then did so again in 2025. Although Tatís began his Padres career playing shortstop, he’s primarily been in right field since the start of the 2023 season — in other words, since he returned from his motorcycle accident and positive PED test.
Tatís’ blunder on Friday wasn’t his finest moment in the outfield. For Wetherholt, it was a sequence to remember.
“A no-doubt grand slam might be, like, a little more exciting, because you feel like you earned it more,” Wetherholt said postgame, per MLB.com. “But, I mean, at the end of the day, four runs scored in a big spot.”
They came in a big spot indeed, and in a Little League way.
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