When the Blue Jays and Red Sox played June 26, catcher Danny Jansen was up to bat in the second inning when the game was stopped for a rain delay and later postponed to Aug. 26. But when it resumed, the lineup was not the same.
Toronto traded Jansen to Boston on July 27 for three minor league players. On Monday afternoon, Jansen became the first player in MLB history to play for two opposing teams in the same game.
“Yeah, he’s catching. Let’s make history,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said last Friday.
When the game picked up again, the Blue Jays put in a pinch hitter, Daulton Varsho, to replace their former catcher. Varsho kept Jansen’s one strike from the June game and then struck out, which went into his own stat sheet. Had Jansen’s count read two strikes instead of one in June, Varsho’s Monday strikeout would’ve been recorded in Jansen’s stats—with a pitch caught by the player himself.
“It’s a cool thing to be part of something that lives on and is just a rarity, something that does not happen very often at all. That would be awesome,” Jansen told The Athletic on Aug. 19.
The situation has happened once in the minor leagues, when Dale Holman played and recorded hits for both teams, the Syracuse Chiefs and Richmond Braves, in a game also postponed because of rain. That was in 1986.
The 29-year-old Jansen was drafted by the Blue Jays in 2013, and he made his debut for the team in 2018. He has a career batting average of .222 with 73 home runs, and this season, his play in those two categories on average is slightly better in Boston than it was in Toronto.
