SAN FRANCISCO — Carlos Santana lifted his arm and pointed up towards the sky as he trotted around the bases. He had just hit a home run that barely stayed fair in left field, and it was one that was both very meaningful in the game and for him personally.
That blast regained the lead for the Twins and provided what would be the game-winning run in their 4-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday evening. It was also his first career home run at Oracle Park, the final current ballpark where the veteran had yet to hit a longball.
“I’m blessed,” he said. “I’ve got to thank God for giving me all the opportunities in my career,” Santana said. “I’ve played a long time, 14, 15 years in my career. I think it’s very important for me and my family.”
He is now believed to be one of just three current players to have hit a home run at all 30 stadiums, joining Giancarlo Stanton and Manny Machado in accomplishing the feat.
It’s a milestone that Santana, who recently played in his 2,000th game, was well aware he was chasing, and he had talked before the series began about how he needed to hit a home run this weekend.
“His body of work produces a lot of big moments,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He keeps racking up these really impressive accomplishments and these things do not happen overnight. They don’t happen over even a decade. You can’t accomplish these things with 10 years of great play. Like, it takes almost a baseball lifetime to accomplish this stuff.”
Santana, who reached base four times, helped lead the charge on a day when the Twins were shorthanded with Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and Jose Miranda all banged up on the bench, which forced them into a situation where they had to use catcher Christian Vázquez at third base.
The Twins (54-41) scored the first two runs of the game in the fourth inning with Ryan Jeffers coming around to score on a Matt Wallner double and Wallner touching home on a passed ball.
But their lead wouldn’t hold.
The Giants (46-50), who nearly took a lead on a three-run home run in the first inning that was just foul, grabbed a run on Mike Yastrzemski’s slow groundball, which found a hole through the left side of the infield in the fourth.
They grabbed one more an inning later off Simeon Woods Richardson, with a run coming around to score after a ball deflected off his shin and subsequently was out of the reach of second baseman Brooks Lee and into the outfield, tying the game.
“I was trying to come back down to field and it hit the in-between hop and kind of ricocheted through,” Woods Richardson said. “So yeah, it was kind of frustrating.”
But shortly after, Santana’s history-making home run put the Twins back on top for good.
They grabbed an insurance run in the top of the ninth and closer Jhoan Duran flashed some of his highest velocities of the season in the bottom of the inning to help the Twins seal the win on a day where they were very thin on available players.
“Not very often are you playing a catcher at third base for nine innings, but we pitched well, we produced enough runs,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with coming out of here with a win on a day when we didn’t have very many moves to make.”
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