Phillies

Kyle Schwarber’s Game-Winning Home Run Cost a Braves Fan a New Lawnmower

By Matt Schultz

Published: Sep 8th, 2026 · 10:42 AM EDT

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Kyle Schwarber has been on an absolute tear. Over his last three games, he’s batting .500 (5-for-10) with 3 home runs, 4 RBI, 5 runs scored, 3 walks, and a 2.015 OPS. He has 43 home runs this season, which leads all of MLB. He’s doing stuff at the plate that I’ve never seen before — including hitting a home run so powerful, so clutch, and so perfectly timed that it robbed a Braves giveaway contestant a brand new lawn mower:

And how Kyle Schwarber's mammoth and eventual game-winning home run sounded on Braves radio

Sorry, Daniel. No Yanmar ZTR for you https://t.co/v11VqbCUo2 pic.twitter.com/m89dAaioAJ

— Nick Piccone (@_piccone) September 7, 2026

Poor guy. Imagine this. Imagine being Daniel. You enter the “Atlanta Braves Yanmar Strike Out the Side Sweepstakes online for a chance to win a Yanmar ZTR (zero-turn mower) or UTV,” which is something I just Googled, and sounds pretty nice. Then you actually get selected out of the presumably tens of millions of Braves fans out there who’d like to win a new lawn mower. Then on Sunday, you find yourself within reach of Didier Fuentes striking out the side. This is crazy good luck. You can’t believe it. You’re right there.

“This is actually gonna happen,” you mutter. You can feel it. You can picture yourself plopping onto your new mower seat. You can feel the handles trembling in your hands after you start her up. You can smell the cut grass mixing with gasoline. And you smile.

Maybe you’ll buy special mowing goggles, you think to yourself. Maybe gloves, too. You go to the Yanmar website and see images of this guy doing his thing and think, “I’m definitely going to buy the goggles and gloves. Now that I see that he has them I’m going to get them too. There’s no chance I’m doing this without goggles and gloves.” And you smile even bigger, thinking about your new mower and mower accessories:

“This is easy,” you then think to yourself after Schwarber fell behind two strikes. “I should just do this contest again. I guess I’m really good at getting free lawn mowers. I wonder how many more times I can win this contest.” You’re getting ahead of yourself now, counting your chickens before they hatch, imagining an entire fleet of mowers that would soon be yours. You see them standing at attention, awaiting the command of their leader, their god, their Daniel. You smile your biggest smile yet. A whole new life awaits you:

Then you watch Kyle murder the baseball, and the lawn mower dream is over:

Kyle Schwarber!

Schwarbomb No. 43 breaks the scoreless tie in the 8th! pic.twitter.com/UehLSi2UOo

— MLB (@MLB) September 7, 2026

Sorry for your loss, Daniel. Good luck getting your mowers some other way.

Kinkead: Daniel Dodge is the contestant’s name? “Not David Dodge, Harry.” <Tony Bruno voice>