You know, most of the team when a baseball team records five runs and seven hits in a game, it probably feels pretty good about itself at the end of the day.
Not so for George Mason on Saturday in Durham.
The No. 14 Blue Devils won their second straight game to start the season in a mammoth 23-5 win over the Patriots as Duke hit a program-record 11 home runs within one game.
The fireworks came early and often for the Duke team. After George Mason scored one run in the top half of the first, recent Harvard transfer Logan Bravo doubled home the first Blue Devils run of the day.
Duke didn’t stop there.
Freshman AJ Gracia, who got the start in right field on Saturday, stepped into the batter’s box still without a collegiate hit after a three-walk debut against Indiana. He made his first hit a memorable one, launching an absolute moonshot to right field for a three-run home run.
First career hit. First career home run for AJ Gracia. 😎
B1 | Duke 4, GMU 1 | #BlueCollar | #GoDuke pic.twitter.com/Zym7HKoiuX
— Duke Baseball (@DukeBASE) February 17, 2024
In the very next at-bat, centerfielder Devin Obee bounced a line drive off the center field wall and made his way around for an inside-the-park home run. Just three batters after him, shortstop Wallace Clark and second baseman Zac Morris launched back-to-back shots to give Duke an 8-1 lead before the end of the first.
Gracia didn’t slow down after his three-run jack, either. The freshman came to the plate for his second at-bat of the game in the second inning, again with two runners on base. How does one follow up his first collegiate home run, you may ask? With his second collegiate home run.
Two innings. Two homers. Six RBIs.
Have a day, AJ Gracia.
E2 | Duke 11, GMU 1 | #BlueCollar pic.twitter.com/KtwzM8qXzk
— Duke Baseball (@DukeBASE) February 17, 2024
If you’re gonna do something twice, however, you might as well do it a third time just for good measure. In the bottom of the seventh, Gracia again pounded a ball over the fence, this time to right-center field with, you guessed it, two runners on base.
Gracia finished his second collegiate game with four hits, three home runs, and nine RBIs.
Obee also decided that an inside-the-park home run wasn’t quite the same as the firepower his teammates were showing off, so he decided to hit another home run in the sixth inning, this time the old-fashioned way by powering a ball over the left-field fence.
The Patriots kept adding runs wherever they could, scoring two more in the top of the third and another in the top of the seventh, but Duke had 13 runs by the end of the third inning.
Not to be outdone by his classmate Gracia, freshman Kyle Johnson tossed three scoreless innings from the fourth through the sixth in his first appearance on the mound in Durham.
The Blue Devils kept the fireworks show going in the seventh inning when third baseman Ben Miller fired an opposite-field bomb for Duke’s eighth home run of the game, a new program record. Gracia’s third homer followed, as did Morris’s second to give the Blue Devils 10 home runs in the first seven innings.
Freshman Chase Krewson joined in on his classmates’ fun right at the buzzer, knocking a ball over the right-field fence into the parking lot for the 11th and final home run of the day.
The offensive explosion added up to a 23-5 victory for Duke and a second straight win to open the season. The Blue Devils end their opening weekend on Sunday against No. 18 Coastal Carolina at 3:00 p.m. ET.