During his climb up the San Francisco Giants’ minor league ladder, right-handed pitcher Dusten Knight spent batting practice doing backflips in the outfield. He first became capable of the feat as a 9-year-old, softening his landing on wrestling pads. When former Oriole Will Clark, a special assistant in the Giants’ front office, first saw Knight flip while with Double-A Richmond in 2018, he suggested that the reliever do so if he ever got the chance to close out a game.
As Knight recalls, the opportunity came that night, a backflip providing an exclamation point to a Flying Squirrels victory.