Bartolo Colon Becomes Oldest Major Leaguer In History To Hit First Career Homer

Bartolo Colon has reinvented himself over the course of his career several times. Is it possible we’re about the see the birth of Bartolo Colon, the slugger? It’s highly unlikely the New York Mets pitcher isn’t suddenly going to be a consistent power hitter, but for one day, he put as much of a charge into the ball as we’ve seen in Petco Park. The 42-year-old pitcher became the oldest player in Major League Baseball history when he launched a pitch into left field for the first home run of his long career.

"Bartolo has done it! The impossible has happened!" – @Mets TV broadcaster Gary Cohenhttps://t.co/IMQ1qVDBTs

— MLB (@MLB) May 8, 2016

Colon eclipses the record previously held by Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks who hit his first blast when he was 40 years old. What makes Colon hitting his first homer, a two-run shot in the top of the second inning, that much more special is that the pitcher is far from a physical specimen. As he was running the bases, the announcers for the game, clearly in high spirits after Colon hit his home run, commented on how long it took him to run the bases.

A shot of Bartolo Colon in the dugout showed him talking to one of his teammates and undoubtedly patting his chest as though his heart was beating pretty fast. This is one of the many reasons why Colon is considered one of the most popular players in baseball. He’s seen as a good teammate, and he’s been around for quite some time. As Yahoo Sports points out, the record was almost even more impressive as Colon turns 43 in a couple of weeks.

Colon has long regaled baseball fans with what can only be described as feeble swings at the baseball when he’s had to bat. Despite that, he’s also considered himself someone who could hit, as witnessed by the fact that he had a $500,000 bonus inserted into his contract with the New York Mets. To get the bonus cash, Colon would have to win the Silver Slugger award for pitchers. That would mean he was the best hitting pitcher in the National League.

It doesn’t appear that Bartolo Colon has much of a claim on the title of best hitting pitcher in the league, considering his home run was his first hit of the season. In fact, since coming back to the National League for the New York Mets, he has 11 hits in his three seasons. Over the course of his very long career, Colon is hitting .089. Of course, Colon isn’t someone who has managed to make a career out of his batting. When he’s had to make a living off his pitching, he’s done quite well.

Bartolo Colon broke into the big leagues back in 1997 with the Cleveland Indians. Struggling in his first year in the bigs, he managed to turn it around quite quickly. In 1999, Bartolo Colon won 18 games for the first time and won at least 10 games every season for the next seven. Colon won 20 games for the first and only time in 2005 for the Los Angeles Angels. There have been several times when it looked as though Colon’s career might be winding down, and there was also a time when he was nabbed for using performance-enhancing drugs when he was with the Oakland A’s. From 2006 until 2012, Colon never won as many as 10 games and had to settle for minor league contracts a couple of times to stay in baseball.

It appears Bartolo Colon is making one final push as he slowly creeps up on 250 career victories. Bartolo Colon came into today’s game with exactly 220 wins, so he’s going to need a few more seasons if he manages to get to that 250 victory mark. If he starts helping himself with the bat a bit more often, Bartolo Colon might still be able to hit that mark before it is all said and done.

[Photo by Denis Poroy/Getty Images]