The Bahamas hosted the fifth annual Don’t Blink Home Run Derby, the capstone of a multi-day event hosted by natives Todd Isaacs Jr. and Lucius Fox. Looking for a way to highlight Bahamian baseball players and bring something back to their community, Isaacs and Fox turned to one of the game’s most exciting aspects: the home run.
Of course, a home run derby has been done before. But not like this. Rather than hitting into and over an outfield, players stood on a stage that rested on a white-sand beach, sending their dingers into the clear-blue waters of Montagu Bay.
Waiting in the water were a group of jet skiers equipped with gloves and nets to retrieve the baseballs, taking Max Muncy’s immortal quote “Go get it out of the ocean” literally. Behind a buoyed-off section that determined which balls were ruled homers was a barge, complete with a target and a crew that was eager to hype up the crowd with the horn when a player got close to hitting the vessel.
