Actions

Scottsdale native Cody Bellinger is rewriting the MLB home run record books

Scottsdale native Cody Bellinger is rewriting the MLB home run record books
Posted at 6:07 PM, Jun 25, 2017
and last updated 2017-06-25 21:37:01-04

It wasn't even a week ago that Dodgers rookie first baseman and outfielder Cody Bellinger made Major League Baseball history by becoming the fastest player ever to hit 21 home runs.

Well, the 21-year-old Scottsdale native and Hamilton High School grad, who appears in our list of active pro athletes who went to high school in the Valley, is still on quite a roll -- and on Sunday, he made MLB home-run history yet again.

Bellinger hit his National League-leading 23rd and 24th home runs of the season in the Dodgers' win over the Rockies, giving him the most home runs by a National League rookie in the first half of a season since 1933 -- the same year the first-ever MLB All-Star Game was played.

Also, Bellinger now has six multi-home run games in just 57 games played, making him the fastest player in MLB history to reach that mark, and it's already the second-most multi-HR games by a rookie in a single season in MLB history. He needs just two more such games this season to break the rookie record set by Mark McGwire in 1987.

Bellinger's 24 home runs are the most in the first half of the season by a Dodger since Shawn Green hit 26 in 2002. Not bad for a kid who began the 2017 season in the minors.

Bellinger, who represented Chandler in the 2007 Little League World Series, is the son of three-time World Series champion Clay Bellinger. His brother Cole is a pitcher who just finished guiding Hamilton to a second consecutive Arizona state championship.