Guardians rookie Petey Halpin slapped Grant Fink after first home run

CLEVELAND — Guardians outfielder Petey Halpin hit the first home run of his career, and hitting coach Grant Fink knew what was coming once the rookie returned to the dugout. 

It’s not often anyone welcomes a slap to the face, but this circumstance fit that bill. 

For the last month or so, as mostly a joke, Fink has slapped Halpin before games to sort of get him ready, in a sense, and wake him up a bit. It reached a point that Halpin joked that once he hit his first career home run, he’d slap Fink back. 

“We’ve talked about it a bunch of times and he was like, ‘Go for it, I’d love to see it,'” Halpin said with a smile. “Every time he hit me, I’m like, ‘My home run’s coming.’ He’s like, ‘I want you to.'”

hits first home run, slaps hitting coach Grant Fink

So as Halpin rounded the bases after his first home run in the second inning of the Guardians’ 13-4 win over the Minnesota Twins on July 20, Fink was getting ready for his end of the bargain in the dugout. The piper must be paid. 

“I was running around the bases and I kind of saw him take his hat off, put it on backwards,” Halpin said. “So I was like, ‘All right, well let’s go, let’s let it rip.'”

He sure did. And manager Stephen Vogt might have jokingly encouraged Halpin to get his money’s worth while he was at it. 

“I didn’t know about [the agreement] until right after it went out of the ballpark, and Grant said, ‘Oh, no, I’m going to get slapped,'” Vogt said. “And then I saw it as he ran by, I said, ‘You better do it hard.’ And he did.” 

That was only the first of two home runs Halpin hit that night in what was a career-best game that also included a double, for good measure. But Fink didn’t receive a second slap for the second home run.

Fink and Halpin have been working on shortening his swing, something they worked on between the two games of the July 28 doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Fink only received a celebratory slap to the face after Halpin’s first home run. But if the shorter swing keeps working, he might welcome a few more all the same.

Ryan Lewis covers the Guardians for the Akron Beacon Journal. He can be reached at rlewis1@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Guardians rookie Petey Halpin slapped Grant Fink after first home run