Jo Adell (7) holds the ball in his glove aloft after his third Saturday night home run theft proved the most spectaculer of the three.

Let’s assume there were cynics in Angel Stadium Saturday. Let’s assume at least a few of them said, “I’d like to see him do that again,” when Jo Adell took a flying leap and robbed Mariners star catcher Cal Raleigh of a home run. Those cynics and Raleigh hadn’t seen anything yet.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a guy rob two homers in one game, much less three,” said Raleigh after the game. “Baseball can amaze you night in and night out. You can see something you’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Did the Big Dumper say three?

He did.

And he wasn’t just whistling tea kettle, either.

Raleigh was only the second batter of the game. It took until the eighth inning for Adell to get another crack at grand theft homer, when Josh Naylor lofted a long fly to just about the same right center field real estate over which Raleigh tried to fly. Once again, Adell took a flying leap. Once again, he snatched the fly before it could hit the high wall above the yellow line that determines whether a drive might be a homer or not when hitting the wall.

Adell had one more piece of business to tend an inning later. This time, J.P. Crawford thought for dead last certain that his long fly toward the seats behind the lower right field corner wall would make it into those seats for the run that eluded the Mariners all game long to that point.

Not quite.

Adell ran toward that wall, leaped with his back to the fans in that section, extended his glove hand, and speared the ball, snapping his glove around a split half-second before he fell all the way behind the wall . . . before springing up none the worse for wear and with the ball still secured.

Only two players stole four home runs at all all last season, Jacob Young of the Nationals and Fernando Tatis, Jr. of the Padres. Adell stole three of them in one night’s work.

For an outfielder who’d always had the tools but not always the results, you could only imagine what was or wasn’t shooting into and back out of his head after the Angels banked the 1-0 win. (The lone run? Zach Neto taking Emerson Hancock’s fourth service of the game over the left center field fence in the first.)

“Defense was something that I struggled with,” Adell told reporters postgame. “Just finding ways to improve and get better and find a way to learn. At the end of the day, defense is one of those things where it’s just about trying to get the job done.”

Sounds very much like a man who took some wise counsel on more than one occasion from former Angel and longtime former Twins center field star Torii Hunter. But what did Hunter think? “It’s amazing, man,” said the man who’s mentored Adell during spring trainings. “That’s probably the greatest defensive game I’ve ever seen.”

“Front row seat to the Jo Show,” Xtweeted Mike Trout, whose healthy resurgent season took a rude but hopefully very short disruption Sunday afternoon, incurring a contusion when hit by a pitch late in the Angels’s 8-7 win.

“You just get there, and it’s just decision-making,” said Adell of his backward leap and fall while robbing Crawford. “Just got there, and was able to fall over and end up in somebody’s lap. I don’t know who, but it was a softer landing than I thought it would be. It’s kind of crazy.”

“Kind of crazy” might be a kind way to phrase it. He may have been lucky the landing was far more shallow than the one Tampa Bay’s Manuel Margot had catching one in a flying leap over a right-side wall with a deeper landing in Game Two of the 2020 American League Championship Series. But then Margot was lucky to come up with his skeleton intact.

The Mariners proved to be good sports about it all. On their clubhouse bulletin board, someone inscribed the Sunday game plan: “Don’t hit the ball to Joseph Adell.” They only hit three in Adell’s direction Sunday—once for a double, once a home run, and once an RBI single.

The home run, from second baseman Cole Young in the top of the fifth, flew high enough over the right field fence in front of a ballpark maintenance alley that Adell couldn’t have even thought of stealing it, even by catapult. Even the best of thieves need time off for good behaviour.