LOS ANGELES — Ronald Acuña Jr. hit a grand slam that made baseball history, and it wasn’t even the highlight of his day.
Acuña secretly married his fiancee and longtime girlfriend Maria Laborde at a house in the mountains near the team hotel without telling anybody beforehand, and a few hours later blasted a second-inning grand slam out of Dodger Stadium to break a 1-1 tie and became the first player in Major League history to hit 30 homers and steal 60 bases, WSB reported.
The Braves took an 8-7 thriller over the Dodgers and Acuna’s rival for MVP honors Mookie Betts, who hit a couple of homers to pace a Dodgers comeback in a regular-season clash between the two best teams in the National League.
Betts now has 38 homers, 98 RBIs, and the Dodgers fell five games behind the Braves for the top NL playoff seed with the loss, MLB.com reported. The two homers brought his August hit total to 51, the most by a Dodger in a single month since the team moved to L.A.
Acuña and his new bride have two little boys together -- he said he’d been planning the wedding for weeks, but didn’t tell anybody, WSB reported.
His manager, Brian Snitker was totally in the dark about the wedding.
“Holy cow,” Snitker said to Atlanta TV station WSB, “I’m better off not knowing most of this stuff, quite honestly, but congratulations to him.”
The game lived up to the hype. Acuña’s 429-foot slam to left highlighted a 6-run second inning. The Braves built a 7-1 lead before Betts’ three-run homer in the fifth and a two-run shot in the seventh helped cut the lead further. The Braves’ bullpen hung to an 8-7 lead for the win, with Raisel Iglesias getting Max Muncy to fly out with two men on and two-out in the ninth for his 27th save in 29 tries and his 19th in a row, ESPN reported.
Acuña said he’s saving his honeymoon for later. “Preferably after the World Series,” ESPN reported.
©2023 Cox Media Group
