Hoskins reflects on Mays' impact on career

SAN DIEGO -- For years, Rhys Hoskins traveled with a signed baseball tucked safely into a sanitary sock. Hoskins grew up in Sacramento rooting for the Giants, and Willie Mays was his father’s favorite player.

The priceless ball came from Hoskins’ first big league road trip in 2017, which happened to take him home to Northern California. That visit produced a chance meeting with Mays in the visiting clubhouse manager’s office and the surprise of a signed ball. At that point, Hoskins decided it felt right to keep it in his baseball bag. For years, it traveled wherever he did.

Only this year, when Hoskins moved from the Phillies to the Brewers, did the ball find a more permanent home. But with Mays’ passing this week at age 93, and Hoskins searching throughout recent weeks for a good feeling at the plate -- the sort that finally arrived in the ninth inning of the Brewers’ 7-6, walk-off loss to the Padres on Thursday at Petco Park -- it led to some reflection about that autographed ball.

“Probably the reason I’m playing baseball is because my dad loved watching Willie Mays,” Hoskins said. “I’m sure there’s so many stories like that out there. That tells you a lot about the Say Hey Kid.”

Thursday’s game did not have a storybook ending to match Hoskins’ memories. Hoskins snapped a stretch of 16 hitless at-bats with runners in scoring position with a double off the left field wall in the ninth inning that tied the game at 6-6, but San Diego’s Jake Cronenworth hit the Padres’ fourth home run of the night in the bottom of the inning off Joel Payamps for a two-out winner.

Defense was as much a story of the night as the home runs. In the top of the first after the Brewers took a 1-0 lead, Padres third baseman Manny Machado made a tricky play on a Hoskins bouncer for an inning-ending double play.

It added to Hoskins’ recent frustration. He delivered a sacrifice fly in the first inning of the Brewers’ 2-0 win in Anaheim on Wednesday, but entered Thursday with a .506 OPS and two RBIs in 15 games since returning last month from two-plus weeks on the injured list with a hamstring injury.

Then, in the bottom of the first, sure-handed Brewers second baseman Brice Turang muffed a surefire double play ball that could have ended a scoreless inning. The Padres pounced with homers off Brewers starter Bryse Wilson. Both Machado’s three-run homer on a fastball at the outer edge of the zone and Jackson Merrill’s solo shot on a back-foot curveball -- Merrill’s sixth home run in his last eight games -- came on 0-2 pitches.

“That’s very unusual back to back,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “I’ve never seen that in 40-plus years in baseball.”

Said Wilson: “What ensued after [the fumble], it sucks. But I’m not mad at [Turang] whatsoever because over the course of the season and hopefully the next few seasons playing with him, he’s going to save me so many more runs.”

It was one of those nights for the Brewers. In the seventh, Christian Yelich lost a low line drive in the lights and it gave the Padres a critical insurance run.

There’s not much Yelich could do about that, just like there is not much more Hoskins can do to get the bat going. While his teammates scattered Thursday night, Hoskins was in the weight room working on his hamstrings. His right hamstring injury in May came as he was still getting his legs under him after losing all of last season to a left ACL tear.

The Brewers signed Hoskins as a free agent hoping he’d deliver right-handed power, and he did to the tune of an .813 OPS before the injury.

“Before he went on the IL, he was raking,” Yelich said. “The hardest part about going on the IL during the season is you’re just playing catch-up after you come off. Especially if you miss enough time that it just resets everything, your timing and seeing pitches and [the pace of] the game. The hardest part is the starting and stopping.

“He’s grinding. He’s working. I think it’s starting to come back. You’ve seen it the last few days – he’s hitting some balls hard that they’re catching. His work is starting to show.”

Thursday was close to a breakthrough.

“If his ball in the first inning is six inches to the left, it’s past Machado and it’s a three-run double and then who knows what the inning turns into,” Yelich said. “It was one of those nights where we didn’t help ourselves and a little bit of luck didn’t go our way. But we fought to the end.”