Major League Baseball

Home run derby in the Bahamas offers a picturesque celebration of baseball

Updated Dec. 20, 2021 12:39 p.m. ET

By Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writers

NASSAU, Bahamas — The premise is shockingly simple.

Players crush baseballs into the ocean from a beach in the Bahamas. Whoever hits the most wins.

Local Bahamian players such as Jazz Chisholm Jr. get to showcase their skills in front of a home crowd. A smattering of American big leaguers and top prospects fly down to launch bombs into orbit and enjoy some time in the tropical sun. The visuals are incredible, the atmosphere one-of-a-kind, the vibes beyond immaculate.

Yes, they scoop up all the balls from the ocean.

And to think, the idea for this picturesque scene of beautiful baseball bliss was conjured up hundreds of miles away in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Rewind about four-and-half years to May 2017, when Lucius Fox and Todd Isaacs Jr. were playing in the Low-A Midwest League. Isaacs, who was with the Lake County Captains in the Cleveland organization, got to play against his good friend Fox, one of the few other Bahamian players in the minors. Fox was with the Bowling Green Hot Rods in the Rays' organization.

Between games, the two friends got to brainstorming.

"We figured we spend so much time playing in America, but we never get the chance to play back home," Fox told FOX Sports. "We never get to do anything for our people here."

"So we were like, what can we do here that would be exciting? Home runs. You don’t need to know baseball to understand when a ball is launched. Todd was like, ‘Let’s do a home run derby.’ Where do we do it? We don’t have a field that’s normal regulation size. So let’s do it on a beach. How we gonna do it on the beach? Let’s hit it in the water. Everyone thought we were crazy!"

"We knew we would have an event, but we didn’t know it was gonna be this big — a whole brand, a whole event, a whole week … we didn’t see this coming, but we did just know we wanted to have a home run derby in the Bahamas."

The first two editions in 2018 and 2019 were won by Bo Bichette. The Jays infielder has since graduated from participation but still made the trip this year and watched the entire time. Lewis Brinson won in 2020, just before the pandemic.

This year’s edition, which took place in a new location on the island, atop an oceanside bluff in the shadow of the enormous Atlantis resort complex, was bigger and better than ever.

The Derby in Paradise is a true rarity in the modern sports world: an event that exists primarily for fun. Sure, the organizers make a smidge of money and get to promote baseball in the Bahamas, but the whole thing is first and foremost a Good Times Vehicle. There were ribs and jerk chicken and rum punch aplenty, and a local DJ spun top-40 rap hits nonstop. Temporary bleachers were constructed for about 500 or so spectators. It was an all-day party with some baseball going on.

And again, the whole thing was on a beach in the Bahamas. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.

Not even a tropical rain blast could dampen the proceedings, though it absolutely poured for 30 minutes less than halfway through the derby — torrential stuff that sent both tourists and locals scattering for cover.

That delay, combined with the derby’s 3 p.m. local time start, meant that by the time the eventual champion, Royals prospect MJ Melendez, slammed his final big fly, the Bahamian sun had already dipped below the horizon. It was baseballs hurtling through a Creamsicle-orange sky into clear, blue waters with juuuuust enough light for hitters to see.

And while the derby was mostly about setting, energy and culture, it was, at least officially, a competition. Professional baseball players, especially the ones in this clique, like to play it cool, but at the end of the day, they’re also competitors trying to win.

So how’d we go from a whopping 35 contestants to one shimmering MJ Melendez?

The original plan was to have every hitter get 15 swings in the first round before cutting it to eight finalists. After the rain delay, the competition was shortened to ensure they could finish before they ran out of sunlight — just eight swings in the first round, followed by a final round of three hitters who got 10 swings each.

Condensing the derby made it much more difficult for some of the top performers to advance to the finals, but there were still some notable displays in round one worth mentioning. Guardians prospect Will Benson, who once hit four homers in a minor-league game, launched some of the farthest balls of the afternoon. Dom Smith of the Mets was one of the few hitters to go the opposite way with some of his splash hits.

The highlight of the opening round by far, though, was Chisholm swinging out of his shoes — and one of his chains:

We ended up with three excellent finalists: eventual winner Melendez, defending champion Brinson and — who else? — Chisholm, the bona fide face of Bahamian baseball.

That Melendez was in the finals was hardly a surprise. After a catastrophically bad 2019 in High-A (.571 OPS in 110 games), the former 2017 second-round pick broke out in epic fashion in 2021, with 41 home runs across Double-A and Triple-A, which led the entire minor leagues. After a stellar, six-homer first round here, he kept the momentum going into the finals and set the bar at seven homers.

Next up was Brinson, who was back to defend his title and fresh off a titanic blast Wednesday in the celebrity softball game.

Brinson has long been a tantalizing talent due to his nearly unmatched physical tools, but he has struggled to put it together at the major-league level and was recently released by the Marlins. He is perfect for this kind of event, though, and he got into an impressive rhythm but ultimately finished with six in the final round, just short of Melendez’s mark.

Finally, with the sun all but set and the darkness starting to envelop the beachside stage, Chisholm stepped up to the plate with a chance to walk off the derby in style.

Chisholm is the island nation’s biggest baseballing figure, its face and its motor, and he received by far the biggest cheers of the day in his first-round performance. Even though he ran out of juice in the final round, landing Melendez the win, the young Marlin’s effervescent stardom was very much on display for the hundreds of Bahamians who came out to see him.

And it’s all just the beginning — for Jazz, for Todd and Lucius, for the derby and for Bahamas baseball as a whole. The event is only going to keep growing as the minor leaguers who participate start to percolate up to the bigs. What's more, before the lockout, MLB Network showed interest in live-streaming the derby. CC Sabathia said he wants to come watch next year. The sport is set to blossom here.

And we’ll be back, too, for as long as they’ll have us. Again, it’s not complicated: It's home runs on the beach.

Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman, creators of the Twitter account Céspedes Family BBQ, write about all things baseball for FOX Sports.