There’s being “in the zone,” then there’s the area where Mike Ford resided on Sunday.
Ford, a first baseman for the Yankees’ Low-A affiliate in Charleston, hit four home runs in a wild 17-10 victory over the Hickory Crawdads.
“Honestly, my first two at-bats, I was seeing the ball OK but nothing out of the ordinary,” Ford said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “My next four kind of clicked. I got some pitches I could handle.”
Ford’s first homer was a two-run shot that came off Hickory’s Paul Schwendel in the top of the fourth inning and gave the RiverDogs a 7-0 lead.
“On the first homer, I was sitting fastball and he left a changeup up in the zone,” Ford said. “That helped my timing for the rest of the day.”
After the Crawdads came roaring back in the bottom of the frame to tie the game at 7, Charleston reclaimed the lead in the top of the sixth with Ford’s second homer.
“Once you get the first one out of the way, you say, ‘My day is pretty good already,’ ” Ford said. “I was just seeing the ball real well.”
Charleston then broke it open with seven runs in the top of the seventh inning, pulling away for the victory. Ford’s third homer came at the end of that onslaught and his fourth came leading off the ninth.
“They brought in a lefty for the third one and he left a slider up,” Ford said. “At that point, you’re so locked in.”
Ford, 21, is a native of Belle Mead, NJ, who attended the Hun School and played his college ball at Princeton. Last season, he was named both the Player and Pitcher of the Year for the Ivy League after going 6-0 with a microscopic 0.98 ERA in 64 innings on the mound while hitting .320 with six homers and 38 RBIs.
Last summer, Ford signed as an undrafted free agent with the Yankees and reported to Staten Island, where he hit .235 with a .346 on-base percentage in the short-season league. This season, he has a .315 batting average with eight homers, 27 RBIs and a .418 on-base percentage.
Ford’s feat matched a four-homer game by Diamondbacks minor leaguer Jon Griffin four days prior. According to the Society for American Baseball Research, it is the first time two players have had four-homer games in the minors since 2007.
Ford was on Cloud 9 after his historic effort.
“It was an amazing feeling,” he said. “I have a great group of guys. A lot of them are in the dugout wondering, ‘What is going on?’ I get a lot support from back home. It’s really hard to put into words. It’s a feeling that you don’t get very often in baseball.”