Before he was Aaron Judges agent, David Matranga was a literal one-hit wonder

The heirlooms reside on a mantle in David Matranga’s home in Surprise, Ariz. The bat was the property of a minor-league teammate, Alan Zinter. The ball had been cradled in the right hand of Rangers pitcher Joaquin Benoit. The two objects connected, briefly but violently, one night in summer 2003.

“I didn’t have a long career,” said Matranga, now the vice president of the agency that represents Aaron Judge, Kolten Wong and Scott Kingery. “I had one hit. I had one home run. I had one RBI. I don’t know if anybody in the history of the game has hit a home run in their first at-bat and has only had one hit in their career. I might be the only one. It might be something for you to look up.”

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These are days best spent crawling down rabbit holes, filling the void created by the absence of sports through YouTube clips and deep dives into the Baseball-Reference Play Index. Some time spent fiddling with the latter revealed where Matranga, 43, resides in the record books of miscellany.

There are 22 players whose lone major-league hit is a home run. Among that group, Matranga is part of an even tinier club: The one-hit, one-homer wonders who went deep in their first career at-bat. Luke Stuart, a 5-foot-8 second baseman from the Carolinas, did it in 1921 for the St. Louis Browns. In 2008, a Cardinals pitcher named Mark Worrell did the same. Padres catcher Eddy Rodriguez greeted Johnny Cueto with a bomb in 2012 and then went hitless for the four other at-bats he took.

And then there was Matranga. He was 26 when the Astros called him up from Triple A for a game on June 27, 2003. He had spent the past five seasons in the minors, a middle infielder rising through the ranks as a sixth-round pick out of Pepperdine. Houston made him repeat Double A after he hit .233 in 2000; his pay in his second go-round with the Round Rock Express rose from $1,500 a month to $1,600. In the offseason, he gave hitting lessons at a batting cage in Round Rock and sold motorcycles.

“I’m grateful for everything baseball has given me,” Matranga said. “I don’t have any hard feelings about any of it. I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. I understood it was going to be a grind. I understood I wasn’t going to be making a lot of money. But I also understood that I was given a chance to chase a dream to make a lot of money and have a great life.”

He tweaked his swing during his second year at Round Rock and his OPS jumped nearly 200 points. After the season, Matranga recalled, Astros general manager Gerry Hunsicker told him he was on the cusp of a chance in the majors. On the big-league roster, though, the middle infield was occupied by players like Craig Biggio, Jeff Kent, Adam Everett and Julio Lugo. When Lugo was released after a domestic-violence incident in May 2003, Matranga got called up for a day, only to be replaced the next day by Everett.

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A longer opportunity came that June. Kent hurt a wrist. Matranga arrived at Minute Maid Park from Triple A New Orleans as his replacement on June 27. He did not have to wait long to get involved. Astros manager Jimy Williams sent Matranga to pinch-hit in the fourth. Matranga was standing in the batter’s box when Everett grounded out to end the frame.

Matranga returned to the dugout, unsure what would happen next. He was still waiting when he heard from one of his coaches (he cannot recall exactly who, but he thinks it was bench coach John Tamargo): “Matranga! Get up there! You’re pinch-hitting still!”

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” Matranga thought.

He grabbed a black Louisville Slugger S216 that belonged to Zinter, his teammate and roommate in New Orleans (and is now the Reds’ hitting coach). Matranga brought the bat with him for good luck — and because “I didn’t have any bats when I got called up,” he said. “I didn’t really have anything. You’re in the minor leagues, you don’t have much, you’re pretty much swinging pro-stock crap, whatever you can get.”

Matranga soon put the borrowed lumber to good use. He took a pair of fastballs from Benoit, who was still starting before transitioning into a lengthy career as a reliever. The 1-1 fastball from Benoit hummed over the middle of the plate. Matranga hammered it beyond the Crawford Boxes in the left field. As he rounded the bases, he felt like he was floating.

The homer was not the beginning of a storybook tale. Matranga got four more at-bats before being sent back to the minors. He played through 2009, earning a one-game cameo with the Angels in 2005. He found his career extended, and his voice amplified among his peers, because of his brief time in the majors.

“It changed the course of a lot of things for me,” Matranga said. “I played for 12 years. Some people can say I was one of the fortunate ones.”

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Heading into the 2010 season, Matranga considered going to Japan and entered negotiations with the Yomiuri Giants. When Yomiuri opted to instead sign Edgar González, the brother of Adrián, Matranga hung up his spikes. His agent, Page Odle, offered him a job with PSI Sports Management. His first client was an Arizona State outfielder who hadn’t gotten drafted out of high school, or out of junior college, or after his junior year with the Sun Devils. Kole Calhoun has gone on to make more than $35 million in his career.

Judge had fewer issues generating attention coming out of college. The Yankees made him a first-round pick in 2013. He reached the big leagues three years later. His 2016 season was still troubling. Judge hit just .179 and struck out 44.2 percent of the time. Looking to help, Matranga turned to his Rolodex. In 2005, while playing in the minors, he met through the Internet a swing doctor named Richard Schenck. Matranga considered himself too old to truly capitalize on Schenck’s suggestions. But he kept the man in mind.

“I told myself, when I got on this side of the game, that if I ever had a chance to influence one of my clients, to help them, I wanted to do that,” Matranga said. “So, when Aaron struggled so bad in 2016, and it was clear that his mechanics were really going to hinder his ceiling, what he could really truly be, I talked to (Schenck). I said, ‘Hey, I’ve always been waiting for the opportunity to get you in front of one of my clients and see if this will really work. I think I have a great opportunity for you.'”

Judge met with Schenck in Arizona. They cued up video that displayed the mechanical differences between Judge and tidier hitters like Barry Bonds and Manny Ramirez. The gap was significant. Schenck chiseled away at Judge’s inefficiencies to expedite the arrival of his bat into the hitting zone. “He was willing to take the risk that the others weren’t,” Schenck said in 2018.

Judge blossomed into one of the sport’s most dangerous hitters. He has posted a .973 OPS since being introduced to Schenck by Matranga. Judge has hit 110 homers since his debut in the majors — only 109 more than his agent.

“Going back to that home run, and what I did in the big leagues, in such a small moment in time — it’s affected my entire life,” Matranga said. “It’s affected how I’ve been able to relate and communicate with people on this side of the game. The respect that you get from doing something like that, from just getting there. Being a minor-leaguer versus a guy who got to the big leagues, even if it was for only seven at-bats, you have a different sort of credibility.”

(Top photo: Cooper Neill / MLB Photos via Getty Images)

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