People make fun of Delmon Young for many reasons: He's never really lived up to the No. 1 overall draft pick hype — unless you only watched baseball in 2010.
He's gotten in trouble off the field and had to go to anger management classes. He says the wrong thing sometimes. He has a stipulation in his contract about his weight. He won the 2012 ALCS MVP, only to be called the worst player to ever win that award. He ... well, you get the idea.
Young made his Philadelphia Phillies debut on Tuesday after starting the season on the disabled list. The jokes came, because we knew they would. But Young came up in his first at-bat against the Cleveland Indians and hit an impressive opposite-field home run off Zach McAllister.
It's the smallest of sample sizes, but Young doesn't look like a walking punchline in the video above. He looks to be in decent shape and he certainly showed off his power. (Btw, he was hit by a pitch in his second at-bat Tuesday and singled in his third).
If Young can hit with some frequency for the Phillies, it'll make his $750,000 contract — which he signed in the offseason when nobody else really wanted him — look like a steal. And maybe it'll stop some of the Delmon Young jokes. Some of them.
Baseball is back. Don't miss anything.
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