It was part of the first question Hunter Renfroe received from the Boston media as a member of the Red Sox.
"How tough is it to play in the National Football League and Major League Baseball at the same time?"
The Mississippi native politely obliged.
"As far as playing football, me and Hunter Renfrow actually have a really good relationship and keep up with each other often," Renfroe said. "I’m excited for what their team is doing and how well he is doing as well.”
The reference was, of course, in relation to the Las Vegas Raiders' wide receiver who is one letter off from having the exact same name as the Red Sox outfielder.
As it turns out, besides the 12 identical letters, the pair have formed a connection.
“He actually was visiting South Carolina to play football and I was actually at that game,” Renfroe told NESN’s Tom Caron. “He went to the game I was at. I was playing for Mississippi State baseball, playing against South Carolina at the time, while was he visiting South Carolina for a football scholarship. That’s when he first noticed it. He first noticed me and said, ‘Wow, we’ve got the same name. That’s going to be weird.’ Obviously, this Twitter stuff started happening.
When he was doing so well at Clemson, I was getting all the notifications of ‘You just caught a touchdown’ and stuff like that. I was like, ‘Man, who is this guy? So I started doing a little research and followed him and hit him up on Twitter and we’ve built a relationship since then. Once he got drafted by the Raiders, I was able to make contact with him when we were in San Francisco. We got to meet. It was pretty cool.”
While the Red Sox got their man in Renfroe, Boston sports fans probably wish they were sitting with a two-fer, with the Patriots having passed on the fifth-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft. In two seasons, the Raiders slot receiver has 96 catches and six touchdowns.