Mets History: Bartolo Colon's improbable Mets home run, six years later

“Bartolo has done it! The impossible has happened!”

Those eight words that capped off Gary Cohen’s epic call of Bartolo Colon’s home run on May 7, 2016 will live in Mets history forever.

In his 21 big league seasons, Colon’s batting stats, well, they left a lot to be desired. 

A Cy Young winner with 247 career wins, Colon could dazzle on the mound. But his at-bats were another story.

A career .084 hitter, Colon’s trips to the plate often ended without him lifting the bat off his shoulder, or with his helmet flying off as he took a Herculean-but-futile hack.

But on the fateful day in San Diego in 2016, Colon connected on a James Shields fastball, and as the crack of the bat echoed throughout Petco Park, it was clear that history was in the making.

"There are moments that you can anticipate and then there are moments that completely come out of nowhere," Cohen has said about that day.

"From the day that Bart became a Met, he was not only a beloved figure because of his size, because of his calm, because of his precision, his ability to beat Father Time, but also because of the -- let's just say -- entertainment value of his at-bats.

"So when he hit the home run, it was something that I had never really thought was possible. And that's why I reacted the way I did."

Colon’s epic blast was a feat most baseball fans could have never foreseen, but he always hoped he’d have a chance to one day show off his power at the dish.

"I still have the bat; it's a beautiful memory for me," Colon once told ESPN's Marly Rivera about the home run. "Ever since [my debut] with Cleveland, I always dreamt of playing interleague baseball. When I was with the White Sox [in 2003], one time I thought it was going to happen, when I faced Carlos Zambrano of the Cubs. I really thought I was going to hit it out that day because the ball was flying out of the park.

"Then, after 2014, I thought my dream of ever hitting a home run would never happen. I was getting old. But apparently I had some power that day (in 2016). I knew Shields was going to throw me a fastball. I let the first two pitches go by. I told myself I wasn't going to swing but that if he threw me another fastball I would put a swing on it. And I did."

Colon won 44 games in a Mets uniform with a 3.90 ERA and 1.225 WHIP, helping the Mets advance to the World Series in 2015.

But despite everything else that the right-hander accomplished on the mound, he’ll always be remembered for hitting his first – and only – major league home run in a Mets uniform.

"That Mets team was really something special," Colon told Rivera in 2020. "I've played with 10 teams, but with the Mets, the way all those players treated me, how that entire franchise treated me, from the front office to the kitchen staff, it was amazing. And Mets fans are the best. In the beginning, when they laughed at me every time my helmet fell off, at first I felt uncomfortable. But when I saw how much the fans enjoyed it, I asked for a bigger batting helmet so that it would fall more because it was so much fun for them!"