Hulu’s Paradise is set during the end of the world, and the writers apparently know their baseball.
The show, a post-apocalyptic thriller from This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman, aired its fifth episode of Season 2 this week. In a flashback to the day of the main event — a supervolcano eruption that wipes out civilization — the broadcast playing in the background is ESPN’s Get Up, where Mike Greenberg mentions offhand that Nick Castellanos just hit a walk-off home run for the Phillies before a producer cuts in his ear with breaking news. The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads that the Phillies have the best record in the National League and the Eagles are preseason Super Bowl favorites.
Philadelphia is having the time of its life right up until the moment it isn’t.
Fogelman is a University of Pennsylvania graduate who spent years working Philly references into This Is Us, and whoever made the call to use Castellanos specifically understood exactly what they were doing, because the joke only works if you know the lore.
The short version: on August 19, 2020, Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman was caught on a hot mic using a homophobic slur, and rather than being pulled off the air immediately, he was given the chance to deliver an on-air apology before stepping down. While he was in the middle of it, Castellanos hit a home run, and Brennaman — three decades of muscle memory kicking in — interrupted his own apology to call it. “I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith — as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run.” He finished the apology, handed off the broadcast to Jim Day, and resigned from the Reds five weeks later, by which point the clip had already taken on a life entirely of its own.
What followed was five years of Castellanos treating the meme as a personal obligation. He homered on Memorial Day while the Phillies broadcast was mid-tribute to fallen servicemen, went deep during a TBS playoff broadcast as the announcers discussed Charlie Manuel’s stroke recovery, and homered on the third anniversary of the original incident as if he had the date marked. On July 21, 2024, the day Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, he hit a walk-off in the ninth, which was also, in a detail that feels invented, the same day Brennaman was announced to be returning to national broadcasts. When Pope Francis died last April, FanDuel briefly locked betting on him because the market expected a home run on principle.
In the fall of 2024, ESPN approached Castellanos about doing an exclusive piece on the meme and his uncanny habit of homering at inopportune moments. Castellanos said he was open to it, but the talks broke down because ESPN wouldn’t grant him editorial rights.
The Phillies released him last month with $20 million left on his contract, and he has since landed on his feet with the San Diego Padres. But someone in the Paradise writers’ room made sure his last home run as a Phillie — at least in fiction — came right before a supervolcano ended human civilization.
As sendoffs go, it fits.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.