No one expected Brock Holt to be the first.
There have been 324 cycles in all of baseball history. The first 323 of them have all been hit during the regular season. Brock Holt was number 324, but the first in a postseason game.
Game 3 of the American League Division Series was filled with the unexpected: the Yankees’ bats going to sleep, the Yankees crowd being unusually quiet, and a Texas-born player with only 20 home runs for his career going up against a position player. A home run shy of a cycle at that moment, Holt knew this was his best chance to accomplish something no one has in history.