Curtis Mead has made Australian baseball history twice as the post-season started badly for the Tampa Bay Rays.
Mead started at second base and picked up a hit for the Rays, who lost to the Texas Rangers 4-0 in game one of their American League wildcard series.
Mead became the first Australian positional player to reach the post-season in Major League Baseball, and the first to hit safely in the MLB playoffs.
All the other five Australians to play in the MLB post-season have been pitchers.
Mead, who made his debut at this level in August, has played mostly at third base.
Last month he became the first Australian in 12 years to hit a major league home run.
On Wednesday morning (AEDT) he led off the second inning in his first at-bat of the game with a single to centrefield, but ended the inning stranded at third base.
Mead also picked up a hit with his first major league at-bat two months ago.
The 22-year-old, who made his name with Adelaide Giants, was among three players with Australian Baseball League experience to feature in the game.
Teammates Junior Caminero (Perth Heat) and Andrew Kittredge (Adelaide Bite) also played in Australia.
It was a bleak afternoon at home for the Rays, who fell behind when Texas scored a run in the second and were sloppy in the field with four errors.
Tampa Bay, wearing throwback Devil Rays jerseys in the style of 1998-2000, lost their sixth-straight post-season game since winning their 2021 division series opener against Boston.
Rangers’ starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery scattered six hits over seven innings for the win, while Corey Seager and Josh Jung drove in runs.
Montgomery (1-0), a 30-year-old left-hander acquired from St. Louis at the trade deadline, struck out five and walked none.
Tampa Bay also fizzled offensively before a home crowd of just 19,704 – roughly 5300 below listed capacity – at Tropicana Field.
Texas moved within a victory of an American League division series matchup against Baltimore, with the best-of-three wildcard series continuing on Thursday (AEDT) at Tampa Bay.
– with AP