PHOENIX — Rodolfo Castro left his phone in the clubhouse, brought his bat to the field and helped the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-4 on Wednesday night.
Castro had two hits one night after an embarrassing smartphone faux pas. The 23-year-old mistakenly left his phone in the back pocket of his baseball pants during Tuesday’s game, and it came flying out on a headfirst slide into third base.
It was not the kind of impression he wanted to make; he has split time between the minors and big leagues over the past two years, and had just been recalled from Triple-A Indianapolis.
On Wednesday, he made the highlight reel for baseball-related reasons.
“Like we talked about, he made a mistake,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “Good at-bats today, played good defense, drove the ball, ran the bases well — so it’s nice to see. When we have young kids, they do things.
“But I’m pretty sure we won’t do that again — ever.”
The sparse crowd at Chase Field didn’t give Castro too much grief for the phone gaffe, though a couple of jeers could be heard during his first at-bat. Castro didn’t seem to mind, responding with a single. He added a triple in the sixth inning and scored on Greg Allen‘s double to make it 5-2.
“I don’t think there’s any professional ballplayer that would ever go out there with any intentions of taking a cellphone,” Castro told Pittsburgh media members through an interpreter on Tuesday. “It’s horrible it happened to me. Obviously, it was very unintentional.”
Castro said he put his oven-mitt-like sliding glove in his pocket and forgot about the phone.
“My first day back, if I was to be the center of attention, I would want it to be helping the team win, but never in this form,” Castro said. “This is definitely something that was an accident, a mistake, something I’m going to learn from. But definitely something I didn’t mean to happen.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.