Whatever is going on at the Athletics' Las Vegas ballpark right now, it's not baseball as we know it. It's slow-pitch softball with a major-league scorebug slapped on top. The Brewers rolled into town and what was supposed to be a normal interleague set has turned into a nightly track meet, with baseballs disappearing over the wall at a rate that doesn't make any physical sense.
William Contreras did his part to set the tone, crushing a 463-foot bomb at 106.7 mph off the bat.
That Contreras blast pushed Milwaukee to 14-10, which felt like a comfortable lead in any other ballpark in America. Not in Vegas. The A's came right back, because of course they did, and Nick Kurtz answered with a 447-foot 2-run shot of his own off a 99 mph four-seamer to make it a one-run game in the late innings.
Kurtz's no-doubter cut the Brewers lead to one and reset the chaos meter.
And then they tied it. In the 10th. On another home run. The final box from that night was the stuff of beer-league dreams: 29 runs, 34 hits, and 11 homers between the two teams. Eric Hubbs took one look at the scoreboard and started filing reports from his couch like a man watching a UFO.
Hubbs summed up the vibe in one tweet.
I am glued to these game in Vegas. It's like they're playing in outer space
The wildest part is that it didn't stop the next night. The Brewers and A's came back the following evening and the ball was STILL flying, with the A's tagging Robert Gasser for yet another homer — the third straight game in the series with one. At a certain point you have to wonder if the humidor is broken, if the desert air is doing something to the baseball, or if the dimensions of a converted minor-league park just don't play at this level. Whatever it is, it's appointment viewing.
Game 3, another A's homer, another reminder that Vegas is operating on its own physics.
The A's playing in a 10,000-seat ballpark in the middle of the desert was always going to be a weird chapter in MLB history. Nobody had this on the bingo card though. Until the schedule mercifully moves on, every Athletics home game is must-watch — because the over is hitting, the under is dead, and Hubbs is glued to the screen looking for signs of intelligent life.