Rockies shortstop Trevor Story made ridiculous amounts of history Friday when he homered for the fifth and sixth times in his first four games in Colorado's home opener against the San Diego Padres. 
 
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 "I've said it before, I'm not trying to hit home runs, sometimes it kind of happens," Story said. 
 
 According to Elias Sports Bureau, via ESPN, he is the first player in 100 years to homer in each of his first four major league games. And he's the fifth player since 1900 — Chris Davis (Orioles, 2013), Nelson Cruz (Rangers, 2011), Mark McGwire (Cardinals, 1998) and Willie Mays (Giants, 1971) are the others — to hit a home run in each of his team's first four games in a season. 
 
 Trevor is on pace for 243 homers in 2016 … True Story.https://t.co/vZ3Sp7nuSn — MLB (@MLB) April 9, 2016 
 
 "It's legendary what he's doing," Rockies slugger Carlos Gonzalez said. "He's fearless. He's playing like a Hall of Famer right now." 
 
 After going yard in both the fourth and ninth inninngs of a 13-6 loss, he has six home runs and 11 RBI in his first 19 major-league at-bats. 
 
 And this isn't a product of Coors Field. Story, 23, belted his first four home runs in the Rockies' season-opening series at Arizona. 
 
 "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it, let alone a rookie," manager Walt Weiss said. "He's fun to watch, one of the few bright spots today." 
 
 Story hit 20 home runs all of last season at Class AA New Britain and Class AAA Albuquerque. He won the starting job when Jose Reyes was suspended under MLB's new domestic abuse policy before the start of spring training. 
 
 Story said Thursday he had donated his helmet and batting gloves from his historic start to the Hall of Fame, but wasn't about to part with any of his bats. On Friday, Story had three hits and drove in four runs while playing for the first time at Coors. 
 
 The Padres, meanwhile, broke loose after they were the first team in big league history to be shut out in their first three games. San Diego was outscored 25-0 while getting swept by the Dodgers. 
 
 Even the Padres were talking about Story, however. 
 
 "He's come out of nowhere," Kemp said. "I think anybody who hits six homers in four games, especially being his first week in the big leagues, is impressive. He's got a great swing. It's definitely harder than it looks." 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| DENVER -- Colorado rookie sensation Trevor Story's home-run surge continued Friday, when he homered twice to become the first major league player to connect in each of his first four games. 
 
 Editor's Picks Story, Padres set and break multiple records in the same game Trevor Story continues his record home run tear while the Padres finally score in a game with numerous records being set 
 
 Rockies owner: Reyes 'should pay' if in the wrong Rockies owner Dick Monfort on suspended shortstop Jose Reyes: "If he did something wrong, he should pay for it." 1 Related 
 
 Story became just the fifth major league player since 1900 to homer in each of his team's first four games of a season. He joins Chris Davis, who did it for the Baltimore Orioles in 2013, Nelson Cruz for the Texas Rangers in 2011, Mark McGwire for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998 and Willie Mays for the San Francisco Giants in 1971. 
 
 Story, 23, has hit six home runs since he made his debut on Opening Day. He hit a two-run drive off San Diego right-hander Colin Rea in the fourth inning and then hit a solo shot off Ryan Buchter in the ninth. The Padres won, however, 13-6. 
 
 "I've said it before, I'm not trying to hit home runs," Story said. "Sometimes it kind of happens." 
 
 Nobody before him had ever posted two multi-homer games in his first four big league games, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. 
 
 "It's legendary what he's doing," Rockies slugger Carlos Gonzalez said. "He's fearless. He's playing like a Hall of Famer right now.'' 
 
 Cooperstown already has Story's helmet and batting gloves. Keep this up, Gonzalez said, "and he's going to go to the Hall of Fame'' himself. 
 
 From the on-deck circle, Gonzalez has had the best view of Story, who hit 70 homers in five minor league seasons. Story got three hits and drove in four runs Friday. He's hitting .368 with 11 RBIs. 
 
 Rockies shortstop Trevor Story became the first rookie in major league history to homer in his first four games and just the fifth player since 1900 to homer in four games to start a season. Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY Sports 
 
 "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it, let alone a rookie," Rockies manager Walt Weiss said. "He's fun to watch, one of the few bright spots today." 
 
 Even the Padres were talking about Story. 
 
 "He's come out of nowhere,'' San Diego outfielder Matt Kemp said. "I think anybody who hits six homers in four games, especially being his first week in the big leagues, is impressive. He's got a great swing. It's definitely harder than it looks." 
 
 Story played for the first time at Coors Field on Friday. The Rockies raised the height of the fences over the winter, but Story's 411-foot drive down the left field line Friday was a no-doubter. It pulled the Rockies to 6-5 and chased Rea. 
 
 One Heckuva Story Rockies rookie shortstop Trevor Story is one of only five major league players since 1900 to homer in each of his team's first four games of a season. Year HRs in first 4 Total 2016 Trevor Story ?? 2013 Chris Davis 53 2011 Nelson Cruz 29 1998 Mark McGwire 70 1971 Willie Mays 18 >> Source: Elias Sports Bureau 
 
 His ninth-inning shot came with the bases clear and the Rockies trailing, 13-5. Story also had an RBI single in the second. 
 
 Story won the starting job this spring after star shortstop Jose Reyes was suspended with pay under the sport's new domestic abuse policy just before the start of spring training for an alleged incident with his wife at a Maui resort hotel on Oct. 31. 
 
 Rockies owner Dick Monfort said Friday that if Reyes "did something wrong, he should pay for it." 
 
 Monfort, who spoke with commissioner Rob Manfred on Thursday and wasn't given a timetable for a decision, said he was unsure whether the public relations aspect or a possible fan backlash would play a part in any future decisions about Reyes. 
 
 "I'd like to know exactly what happened," Monfort said. "It's easy for us all to speculate on what happened. But really, until you really know, it's hard. You're dealing with a guy's life too. But if he did something wrong, he should pay for it." 
 
 Reyes was scheduled to go on trial last Monday after pleading not guilty to abusing a family or household member. However, prosecutors decided to drop the charge after saying Reyes' wife wasn't cooperating with the investigation. Manfred has said he expects to make a decision on Reyes soon. 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| Rob Foldy/Getty Images 
 
 José Fernández, the 24-year-old Miami Marlins pitcher who died this weekend in a boating accident off the coast of Florida, was imprisoned in Cuba as a teenager for trying to escape the island. He finally managed to defect at age 15, but only after saving his mother Maritza from drowning. Just five years later, he won the 2013 National League Rookie of the Year Award and finished third in the voting for the Cy Young. 
 
 Though he started only 76 games in his career, Fernández had the potential to be a Hall of Famer. This season, just his second full one in the big leagues—he missed parts of 2014 and 2015 due to a torn elbow ligament and his subsequent recovery from Tommy John surgery—he averaged an incredible 12.5 strikeouts per 9 innings, the fifth-best mark in history for a starting pitcher. But Fernández also had the potential to change a sport that desperately needs changing. The Marlins starter loved the competition and camaraderie of baseball, and he loved striking fools out. From the moment he made his debut for the Marlins, he ignored the fusty expectation that players—often young, Latino players—dial back their exuberance lest they annoy their tight-assed opponents. At age 24, he’d already started to modernize the game’s old-fashioned codes and what it meant to “play the game the right way.” 
 
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 Fernández defied those codes during his rookie year. The then 21-year-old hit his first major-league home run on Sept. 11, 2013, though “hit his first major-league home run” doesn’t do this shot justice. Fernández crushed the ball, and he was justifiably thrilled, dropping his bat and watching his shot arc over the left-field fence before commencing a slow trot around the bases. 
 
 When Fernández reached home plate, Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann started lecturing him, whereupon the benches cleared, and both teams pretended to want to fight each other. “I just told him you can’t do that,” McCann said later. “You can get someone hurt. It was just something that didn’t need to happen.” Braves third baseman Chris Johnson added, “The kid is a good pitcher. He’s got some other stuff going on, too, that upsets people sometimes. There were some guys in the dugout who weren’t too happy with the smiling after getting people out and all of that kind of stuff.” 
 
 Fernández did not try to defend his actions. “I feel I don’t deserve to be here, because this isn’t high school no more,” he said. “This is a professional game, and we should be professional players. I think that never should happen. I’m embarrassed, and hopefully that will never happen again.” 
 
 A Slate Plus Special Feature: The Best Moments From Hang Up and Listen History, According to You Revisiting the show’s most noteworthy afterballs from the vault. Listen to this special Slate Plus bonus segment by joining - your first two weeks are free. 
 
 Veterans lecturing rookies on how to behave is as much a part of baseball’s folkways as players scratching their crotches. These lectures are typically focused on ensuring the game is as much of a joyless slog as possible, and that lesson is enforced via threats of retaliatory violence. If you stop and stare because you’re happy about hitting the ball very far, then someone will throw a 95 mile per hour fastball at your head. If you smile at people after striking them out, then … someone will throw a 95 mile per hour fastball at your head. (Baseball players’ revenge plots are not very creative.) 
 
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 Last October, the Toronto Blue Jays’ José Bautista threatened to rip the game apart by launching his bat into orbit—a spontaneous reaction after hitting one of the most dramatic home runs in playoff history. 
 
 Bautista’s spectacular bat flip, Hall of Fame pitcher Goose Gossage later explained, represented everything wrong with the sport he’d once loved. “Bautista is a fucking disgrace to the game,” Gossage said in an interview with ESPN. “He’s embarrassing to all the Latin players, whoever played before him.” Gossage made the subtext of the sport’s on-field policing explicit: White players born in the United States don’t think their Latino counterparts conform to the sport’s behavioral norms. 
 
 As Jay Caspian Kang noted in a New York Times Magazine story headlined “The Unbearable Whiteness of Baseball,” baseball’s demographics have shifted multiple times since Jackie Robinson broke the game’s color line in 1947. That season, 98.3 percent of players were white, 0.9 percent were black Americans, and 0.7 percent were Latino. By 1975, 71.3 percent of major leaguers were white, 18.5 percent were black Americans, and 10.2 percent were Latino. At the start of the 2015 season, white players represented 58.8 percent of all major leaguers and 8.3 percent were black, while the sport’s Latino minority had grown to 29.3 percent of all major-league players. 
 
 Back in November, the bat-flipping Bautista argued in a piece that appeared under his byline in the Players’ Tribune that Latin players can make baseball great again if the sport’s powers that be allow them to be themselves. “Baseball is a metaphor for America,” the Players’ Tribune article said. “It’s a giant melting pot made up of people from all over the world and all walks of life. How can you expect everybody to be exactly the same? Act exactly the same? More importantly, why would you want them to?” 
 
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 I disagree with the Blue Jays slugger. It would be perfectly fine if every baseball player acted the same way on the field, so long as they all chose to act like José Bautista and José Fernández. 
 
 In 2013, a month before the Braves got mad at him for hitting a home run, Fernández snared a liner hit by the Rockies’ Troy Tulowizki. The subsequent byplay between the two All-Stars was joyful and human, and a reminder that intense competition doesn’t have to be unsmiling competition. 
 
 One of the best Jose Fernandez moments. Rest in Power. You'll never be forgotten. 🙏🏻 
 
 pic.twitter.com/P5Lvi1v0kj — E (@esheikh_) September 25, 2016 
 
 The next spring, the Rockies’ Carlos González hit a massive home run off Fernández and loitered around the plate to admire his achievement. Fernández didn’t pout or act aggrieved. He grinned, broadly. 
 
 González “was just acting like a really good baseball player who was excited about crushing a massive home run against another really good baseball player, and Fernández understood that,” Deadspin’s Tom Ley wrote the next day. “Together they helped make a baseball game something that baseball games increasingly struggle to be: fun.” 
 
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 In the end, Fernández failed to live up to the terms of his 2013 apology—his admonition to himself that “this isn’t high school no more”—and thank goodness for that. Goose Gossage, who was born in 1951, is not the face of the modern game. Neither is crusty 32-year-old catcher Brian McCann. Fernández, smiling after he gave up a home run—that is the look everyone in baseball should aspire to emulate. 
 
 The sport’s young stars seem to understand that. In an ESPN the Magazine profile earlier this year, reigning MVP Bryce Harper said that Fernández represented a new image for a sport that truly needed one: 
 
 [Baseball is] a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. … 
 
 José Fernández is a great example. José Fernández will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist. And if you hit a homer and pimp it? He doesn't care. Because you got him. That’s part of the game. It’s not the old feeling—hoorah ... if you pimp a homer, I’m going to hit you right in the teeth. … 
 
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 Fernández could himself be susceptible to upholding baseball’s old codes. Just this month, he plunked Nick Markakis with a fastball a couple of innings after the Braves outfielder hit a two-run homer. Later in the game, Atlanta’s José Ramirez threw a pitch over Fernández’s head, leading both benches to clear. 
 
 But far more often than not, Fernández played with a kind of generosity of spirit that’s rare at any level of any sport. To understand what Fernández represented, watch this sequence in which he swings and misses at a breaking pitch from the Dodgers’ Kenta Maeda. 
 
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– Colorado Rockies rookie Trevor Story is socking dingers and mashing taters at a historic rate through the first four games of the baseball season. ESPN reports the 23-year-old is the first major league rookie to homer in each of his first four professional games and only the fifth player since 1900 to homer in the first four games of the season. He's also the first player ever with two multi-homer games in the first four games of the season. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it, let alone a rookie," Rockies manager Walt Weiss says. With six home runs through four games, Story is on pace for 243 on the season, Fox Sports reports. The record is 73. "It's legendary what he's doing," ESPN quotes Rockies outfielder Carlos Gonzalez as saying. "He's playing like a Hall of Famer right now.'' In fact, Story's batting gloves and helmet have already been sent to Cooperstown due to his historic start. Story, who only hit 20 home runs in all of last season in the minor leagues, is modest about the whole thing. "I'm not trying to hit home runs," he says. "Sometimes it kind of happens." The Rockies gave Story his chance after the team's starting shortstop was suspended over domestic abuse allegations.