Mark Canha is addressing “The Staredown Heard Around Oakland.”
The Detroit Tigers outfielder Canha homered in Friday’s win over his old team, the Oakland Athletics. After he deposited a JP Sears fastball into the left-field bleachers in the sixth inning, Canha dropped his bat and seemed to stare directly into the A’s dugout as he made his way up the first-base line.
Take a look.
Mark Canha to A's dugout on his home run. pic.twitter.com/3ypeI8wVtZ
— Jason Beck (@beckjason) April 5, 2024
After the game, which Detroit 5-4, Canha insisted he was not intentionally dissing his former team.
“I didn’t look in the dugout,” he said, per Jon Morosi of MLB Network. “I looked above the dugout, just looking at the fans, trying to get people fired up. Wasn’t anything personal with me and the A’s. I wanna make that clear.”
Friday’s game was indeed played in Detroit, so it seems very plausible that Canha was in fact just trying to hype up the home fans. But few would blame Canha if he still had something against the A’s. Despite being a homegrown Oakland player who played seven seasons there and clubbed 89 home runs, Canha was not tendered a qualifying offer by the A’s as a free agent in 2021. He would sign with the New York Mets instead that year and also went on to play for the Milwaukee Brewers before joining the Tigers in a trade this past offseason.
Still, we should probably take Canha at his word here. Even when he was still on the A’s, he was already drawing attention with his emphatic home-run celebrations.
