Jeremy Hermida

About Jeremy Hermida

Jeremy Ryan Hermida [her-MEE-da] (born January 30, 1984 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an outfielder in Major League Baseball who plays for the Florida Marlins. He bats left-handed and throws right-handed.

Called up from the Double-A Carolina Mudcats, Hermida made his major league debut with the Florida Marlins on August 31, 2005. On the first at bat of his major league career, he did something only one other person had done. At Dolphin Stadium, he had a pinch hit grand slam in the seventh inning off the St. Louis Cardinals' Al Reyes on a 1-1 pitch in the Marlins' 10–5 loss. Hermida, who hit 18 home runs and 63 RBI in 118 games in Double-A, batted for pitcher Brian Moehler and homered to right field, some 373 feet away. But he made a name for himself by becoming the third player in baseball history to hit a grand slam in his first game, the second to do it in his first at bat, and the first to pull it off as a pinch hitter.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the only other player with a grand slam in his first major league at-bat was pitcher Bill Duggleby, who did it for the Philadelphia Phillies at home against the New York Giants in the second inning on April 21, 1898. Duggleby was the winning pitcher that day. However, since then Kevin Kouzmanoff, while on the Cleveland Indians, hit a grand slam on the first pitch of his first major league at bat against Edinson Volquez. Bobby Bonds of the San Francisco Giants also hit a slam in his first game off Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Jack Purdin, doing so in his third plate appearance on June 25, 1968, at Candlestick Park. The Giants won 10–0.