Thirteen times.
That's how many instances this young baseball season the laundry cart has had to be put in place, loaded up and rolled through the Red Sox' dugout. It is also, not coincidentally, how many home runs Alex Cora's club has hit.
You hit a home run, you get a ride. Starting early September, it has been that simple for the Red Sox.
Sunday? Let's just say the hamper got a workout. There were six trips down the makeshift run, with J.D. Martinez serving as passenger for three of them.
"It's just fun," Martinez said after his three-home run day at Camden Yards. "It's just something stupid but fun. We enjoy it. Any little thing we can do to create some camaraderie with the guys and kind of bring everybody tighter and closer together, it's been fun. We get a new cart every park. This one was too deep. It was freaking really deep. I was like, you guys are going to have to carry me to get me out of this thing. We had to fill it up with towels."
Nobody said it was going to be seamless. But, nevertheless, it's a celebration that doesn't figure to be stopping any time soon.
So, how did the whole thing come about? Let Christian Arroyo, one of the first participants, explain ...
“It basically started in Tampa," the Red Sox infielder said while appearing on the Bradfo Sho podcast. "In the dugouts, they’re a little narrow, and because of the whole COVID stuff and all of the guidelines and whatnot, they were trying to get it to where if you used a towel or something to just toss the towel in like a laundry basket cart-type thing. So, some of the guys — because you don’t really think about this stuff when you’re playing — you use the towel, you wipe your face and you throw it (somewhere), you’re not thinking let me go walk down to the other end of the dugout and throw it in the laundry cart of whatever.
"So it was funny, actually, (Jason Varitek) was down at the end of the dugout just watching the game, taking his notes, taking in the game. And Tek turns around, and there was nothing in (the cart) and he says ‘What is this thing and why is it in the dugout?’ And everyone was like ‘Hmm, we don’t know.’ Because it took up like the last two or three spots at the end of the dugout, Tek finally looked at it and said we’ve got to get this thing out of here."
So, who are the true Godfathers of the exercise?
“It was (Kevin) Plawecki and Tek kind of together were just like ‘When someone hits a homer why don’t we throw them in the laundry cart, see how it goes. Use it for something.'
"As he’s rounding third I saw Plawecki kind of look at him and start pointing at him because we said ‘Today whoever hits the first homer, you’re going in the cart.’ So we didn’t know if Vazquez was going to just go in it or not. It honestly was like a coin toss, and he was cool about it, he’s smiling and we’re like ‘get in the cart, get in the cart."