20-year-old Ozzie Albies became the first Major Leaguer born in 1997 to hit a home run
By
Andrew Mearns and Mark Bowman/MLB.com
Given the exploits of Carlos Correa, Cody Bellinger and many others, Major League Baseball is currently in a fantastic era for young talent. It might be inevitable, but perhaps the scariest part of it all is the fact that these players' birthdays keep going deeper into the 1990s. It was just a month and a half ago that Franklin Barreto of the A's became the first Major Leaguer born in 1996 to hit a home run. Red Sox rookie Rafael Devers is six months younger than Barreto, and on July 26, he pushed the bar back even further with his first dinger. Then, along came Ozzie Albies, who was just promoted by the Braves. He immediately became the youngest player in the Majors and the first born in 1997, so naturally, he took the youth movement to the next level with a three-run homer on Thursday night against the Dodgers:
The 20-year-old phenom could hardly contain his excitement. "It was amazing and awesome. As soon as I hit it, I was like, 'Man, this is going to be the first one,'" Albies said to MLB.com's Mark Bowman. "I'm excited that I got it." Albies also became the youngest player for the Braves to homer since his Curacao countryman, Andruw Jones, who was smashing World Series homers as a teenager in 1996. "I'm just happy I did it," said Albies. "There are many more to come." Now, though, 1997 has entered the home run fold. The No. 1 movie on the day Albies was born? The Relic. The No. 1 song in the country? An even more alarming throwback: