Danny Jansen will make Major League Baseball history on Monday at Fenway Park.
The Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays will resume a rain-suspended game from June 26. It will be the first game of a doubleheader on Monday. In June, Jansen, then playing for the Blue Jays, was at bat with one out and one on base in the second inning when play was suspended. After a 1 hour and 48 minute delay, the Red Sox and Jays announced that play would resume where it left off in a doubleheader on August 26.
Jansen was traded to the Red Sox on July 27, raising the possibility that he could be on the other side of the field when play resumes on June 26.
On Friday, Red Sox manager Alex Cora confirmed to reporters that Jansen will be substituted at the start of the resumption of play, making him the first player in history to play for both sides in the same game.
“I don’t even know how that works,” Jansen said when asked about the suspended game after he was traded to Boston. “I’ve heard about it a couple of times. That would be weird.”
The athleteJayson Stark has been delving into the issue and the uniqueness of the situation in depth over the past week:
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Danny Jansen could make history by playing for the Red Sox and Blue Jays in the same game
In 13 games for the Red Sox since the transfer, the right-handed catcher achieved a batting average of .257 and an OPS of .794.
The Blue Jays will also see some unusual developments in the game. Blue Jays manager John Schneider said Friday that Jose Berríos will take the ball when play resumes, but since Yariel Rodríguez was the starter before play was suspended, Berríos will actually be used as a relief pitcher. It will be his first relief appearance since he threw 1 1/3 innings in relief in his final appearance of the 2017 season – a span of 166 consecutive starts.
Rodríguez, meanwhile, will start the next day, Tuesday, making him a two-day starter, so to speak. Although the suspended game ends on August 26, it will officially go into the record books as a game that took place on June 26.
(Photo by Jansen: Paul Rutherford / Getty Images)