425-foot shot<\/a> to center to cap the scoring for Detroit.<\/p>\n“I was just thinking, like, I was trying to hit (with) contact,” Valencia said. \u201cGet a good pitch, just be the most calm that I can do it. I was so excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
He’s the first Tigers player to homer in his first big-league at-bat since Akil Baddoo on April 4, 2021.<\/p>\n
The native of Valencia, Venezuela, pointed to the sky and pounded his chest as he rounded the bases with a huge smile, then pointed to his wife in the stands and made a heart symbol with his hands. He later gave her a big hug after the game.<\/p>\n
Valencia’s thoughts were also with his parents, who couldn’t make the trip to see his debut, and the people of Venezuela, who are recovering from a rare double earthquake on June 24 that killed at least 920 and injured another 3,360, authorities said. Many more are feared dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is for all Venezuela people,\u201d Valencia said of his big debut, thanking his family and coaches. \u201cThey gave me everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple of Valencia’s happy teammates then dumped a bucket of water on him as the fans remaining in the stands cheered.<\/p>\n
Valencia, who stayed in the game as the Tigers\u2019 designated hitter after his homer, was hit by a pitch from Mark Leiter Jr. in his second plate appearance.<\/p>\n
Valencia was signed by the Tigers in 2018 as an 18-year-old player and he appeared in 439 games over eight-plus seasons in the minors before making his big league debut Thursday night. He didn’t reach the Triple-A level until last year, when he played in 50 games with Toledo, and then appeared in 76 games this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, this is so exciting,\u201d Valencia said. \u201cI’m just trying to help the team to win. … I was waiting a lot (time) for this moment. It’s so exciting. … I can’t talk right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Eduardo Valencia made some history for the Detroit Tigers, got emotional while thanking his family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22696,22670,22674,22681,22697,22695,1562,1558,22683,22694,95,564],"class_list":["post-53092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-valencia","tag-akil-baddoo","tag-dillon-dingler","tag-eduardo-valencia","tag-hogan-harris","tag-kerry-carpenter","tag-mark-leiter","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40792-ap-michigan-sports-only","tag-tigers-eduardo-valencia-venezuela","tag-valencia","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}