Grand slams in back-to-back innings for Grissom at High-A Rome

A good measuring stick for determining whether a huge performance qualifies as the best game of a player’s life is if you have to start pulling out the Little League game logs.

The last time Vaughn Grissom hit a grand slam? “I was like 12 years old, maybe 11,” he recalls.

A two-homer game? Surely there was one in high school. “I didn’t hit my first until the second-to-last game I ever played.”

Therefore, Thursday night was surely the game of Grissom’s life. The sixth-ranked Braves prospect swatted a pair of grand slams in back-to-back innings, about as close as one can come to Fernando Tatis Sr.'s feat of two grand slams in one inning. Grissom also added a double and a single and scored five times in High-A Rome’s 22-1 rout of Asheville.

“It was an incredible game,” Grissom said. “We never got complacent and it really worked out in our favor.”

The night wasn’t too out of the ordinary for both Grissom and the Braves early on. With his team leading 6-1 through six innings, the shortstop didn’t drive in any of Rome’s seven runs in the seventh, but made sure to leave his mark in the eighth and ninth, belting a grand slam in each frame.

“I hit the first one and I kind of forgot there were people on base,” Grissom said. “I was running around and was like ‘Oh my god, I forgot we had the bases loaded!’ The second one — I knew.”

The 21-year-old has been strong in June but has ascended to another level on the current road trip in Asheville, N.C. Grissom had three hits in each of the first two games before Thursday’s eruption, which raised his month-long slash line to .377/.431/.604 across 13 games.

The 2019 11th-round pick has rebounded from a tough May to bring his season line back up to .288/.378/.451.

“I feel really good,” he said. “I just feel like my timing is there, trying to be early. It’s been a good series to control your at-bats and take what they give you instead of trying to do too much, which is what I had been doing before the last couple days.”

Part of Grissom’s motivation as of late has been watching good friend and former Minor League teammate Michael Harris II find quick success upon his recent promotion to the Majors, where he has an OPS near .900 through 18 games with the Braves. The pair, separated by just two months in age, played together throughout their first three years in the organization before Harris’ quick leap to Atlanta.

“It’s still baseball,” Harris tells Grissom about the differences between the levels they’re currently at.

Perhaps they’re not too far off from a reunion, especially if Grissom keeps hitting the way he has throughout his young career.

“The second day after he got called up someone [in the Rome clubhouse] said ‘Hey, we’re right here. You guys see that?’ It was a realization through everybody,” Grissom said.

For now, his goal remains squarely on helping Rome get back in a playoff spot. After their big win, the Braves are two-and-a-half games out of first place in the South Atlantic League South Division with the clock ticking on the season’s first half.

“We’re not letting anyone get easy wins off us,” Grissom said.

22-1 victories? Message received.