PHOENIX -- When Eugenio Suárez stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning, the 43,043 in attendance at Chase Field began to chant.
Geno! Geno! Geno!
But Suárez didn’t hear them. The Diamondbacks’ third baseman was locked in, about as locked in as humanly possible it turned out. His team trailing by a run, Suárez already had hit homers in each of his previous three at-bats as he stepped in against Raisel Iglesias.
“I didn’t hear anybody,” Suárez said. “I was just ready for that at-bat. I knew it was going to be tough for me against Iglesias, who for me is one of the best relievers in the game. I was just looking for one pitch in the strike zone and put my best swing on it. I never thought I would hit a homer against him.
But after the count went to 3-2, Suárez did just that, hitting a homer into the left-field bleachers and launching himself into the history books as the 19th player in MLB history to hit four homers in one game.
Suárez, who increased his homer total to a Major League-best 10, became the first player with four homers since another D-backs slugger, J.D. Martinez, did it in September 2017.
The homer tied the game at 7 and forced extra innings where the Diamondbacks lost, 8-7 in 10 innings. Suárez was able to retrieve the ball from his fourth homer when he traded a signed hat, jersey and ball.
Suárez had hit three home runs in a game twice, once last year and once in 2020.
“I never thought in my life that I'd be able to do that -- hit four home runs in a game,” Suárez said. “To be honest, it feels great. I just want to thank God for this opportunity. It's very special for me to be able to do that here in Arizona and do it for my team, do it for my family. They watch me every single day. They support me, my teammates and that's awesome. I have mixed feelings right now because we didn’t win the game.”
Only two other times in MLB history has a team had a player hit four home runs and wind up losing the game. The most recent was the Braves’ Bob Horner in 1986. The other came back in 1896, when Ed Delahanty hit four homers and his Philadelphia team still lost.
Suárez’s first homer came in the second inning, a towering 418-foot homer to left, according to Statcast. Two innings later, Suárez hit one 411 feet to left-center field with a runner on to give Arizona a 5-2 lead.
Then in the sixth, Suárez hit a 443-foot homer to center field, pushing the Diamondbacks’ lead to 6-2. He is the third player in franchise history with two three-homer games, joining Steve Finley and Luis Gonzalez.
While it was the first time Suárez had hit four homers in a game, he had seen the feat done before when his teammate in Cincinnati, Scooter Gennett, hit four homers against the Cardinals on June 6, 2017.
“I think that at some point [tonight] that came into my mind that I was there then and that was awesome to see Scooter hit four homers for us,” Suárez said. “I always thought that has to feel really good to hit four homers in a game and today the dream came true.”
With Martinez and Suárez, the Diamondbacks are the fourth franchise with multiple individual four-homer games joining the Phillies, Braves and Dodgers who have had it happen three times. Of course, Arizona has been a franchise since only 1998, while the other three began playing before 1900.
It was a bit of a historic night for Torey Lovullo, who was managing the Diamondbacks when Martinez hit his four homers as well. Lovullo is the only skipper in MLB history to manage two of those games.
“I was left feeling the same way that I feel right now,” Lovullo said of the two games. “It's awesome. You don't see it very often, and you’ve got to appreciate it. You’ve got to really embrace this moment that you're watching something special.”
Suárez came into the game hitting .136 in his previous 75 plate appearances. Lovullo met with Suárez in his office while the team was in Miami a little more than a week ago and said that Suárez assured him that he was getting close to breaking out.
Saturday night, Suárez did just that and made history in the process.