Jo Adell revives José Canseco meme by giving up

Nothing might probably generate a headline Tuesday night time when the worst American League staff — the Angels — performed host to the maybe the worst National League staff — the Colorado Rockies.

Except. . .

This.

A fly ball conked Angels proper fielder Jo Adell on the pinnacle and bounced over the fence for a home run, reminding followers of José Canseco’s related gaffe 33 years in the past.

Adell chased TJ Rumfield’s fourth-inning drive onto the Angel Stadium warning observe and reached up to catch it. The ball grazed his glove before bouncing squarely on his noggin and over the wall.

The ball caromed back into the outfield and Rumfield momentarily stopped at second base. But the umpires confirmed the home run, coupling Adell with Canseco in quite a few social media posts.

Canseco, the steroids-fueled, defensively challenged left fielder of the Texas Rangers, made a related blunder on May 26, 1993, when a ball hit by Cleveland’s Carlos Martínez bounced off his head and over the wall.

Mike Trout presumably has witnessed every attainable blooper, blunder and boo-boo in 16 seasons with the woeful Angels. The middle fielder stood only a few ft from Adell when this one occurred and didn’t make himself obtainable for remark afterward.

To his credit, Adell confronted reporters.

“It looks like I’ve never played in the field before, which is disappointing, because it’s beyond the truth,” he said. “I’m the only one that really knows what happened. I was out there, and it happened to me, so it is what it is.

“It was kind of the icing on the cake, because I was [expletive] all the way around the whole day today.”

Adell was hitless in 4 at-bats, putting out twice, in the 8-2 loss that dropped the Angels to 23-39, the worst file in the AL.

The play was emblematic of Adell’s seven-year profession with the Angels, who made him a first-round draft choose in 2017. At first blush, his lifetime Wins Above Replacement of 0.3 would point out that he’s little better than the fictional minor league “replacement player” to which MLB gamers are in contrast in calculating the statistic.

Yet Adell’s bodily instruments and occasional highlights scream stardom. He shouldn’t be an odd Jo. The antithesis of the embarrassing episode Tuesday night time got here less than two months in the past when he robbed the Seattle Mariners of three home runs in one sport.

“It was the Jo Show,” Angels supervisor Kurt Suzuki said at the time. “This guy works as hard as anybody I’ve ever been around. His work ethic, attention to detail, his desire to improve every single day. To see him do that, I don’t believe you’ll see that again.”

Suzuki, who was Adell’s teammate in 2021 and 2022, doubtless never thought he would see a fly ball bounce off the outfielder’s head and into the stands, the Jo Show shifting to Oh, No!

“I saw the play, but for me, Jo’s made great strides defensively from when I played with him,” Suzuki said Tuesday. “And obviously, he had the night he robbed three home runs. It was a tough play tonight, but at the same time, the strides that he’s made defensively have been great.”

Adell was thought of a defensive legal responsibility early in his profession and was saddled with a four-base error in 2020 when a fly ball hit his glove and went over the fence. But he steadily improved and grew to become a Gold Glove Award finalist in 2024.

That didn’t stop the “Tarps Off” throng of shirtless followers at Angel Stadium from chanting Adell’s identify after the gaffe against the Rockies. For his sake, they doubtless will revert to imploring Angels proprietor Arte Moreno to “sell the team” soon enough.

Adell might need to keep away from social media ceaselessly, but he would love to overlook the ball bouncing off his head as soon as attainable.

“That’s what we have to do,” he said. “I mean, there’s really no other way around it. Let it fester and tumble over, but these are plays I’ve made hundreds and thousands of times. I’ve got to just keep going, and as a team, we’ve got to keep going.”