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The best bet in sports isn’t a Nick Castellanos home run after a major news event. It’s that baseball fans will go crazy to place a bet on the Phillies slugger to go yard after something happens.

So, when news broke on Monday that Pope Francis had died, social media lit up with screenshots of Castellanos home run bets and endless jokes about the topic. As one user on X, formerly Twitter, noted, FanDuel even locked Castellanos home run props once word got out of the pope’s death. Another noted that his odds to homer jumped from +750 to +560 after Pope Francis’ death.

“The first thing I did when I saw the pope died is to check if Nick Castellanos plays today,” one fan admitted, though he is surely far from the only one.

A Phillies fan, located outside the United States, hoped to get better odds on their Castellanos bet while most American fans were still asleep.

“I’m about to put the craziest amount of money on a nick castellanos homer today before the americans wake up to the news,” they wrote.

“A drive into deep heaven by Castellanos,” wrote one fan, referencing the day the whole meme began.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that he is the most-bet player to hit a home run on Monday.

How Phillies veteran Nick Castellanos became a meme

For the uninitiated, the Castellanos home run meme has been around for years. It began in August 2020 when Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman issued an on-air apology for using a homophobic slur on a hot mic earlier in the broadcast. Castellanos, then of the Reds, was at the plate at the time, and he homered mid-apology, causing Brennaman to awkwardly break from his remarks.

“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 said at the time. “And so that’ll make it a 4–0 ballgame.”

A year later, Castellanos homered against the Kansas City Royals while the Royals broadcast was eulogizing a military veteran.

The trend continued when he reached the Phillies. He recorded his first Spring Training hit for Philadelphia while the broadcast was discussing Toronto pitching coach Pete Walker’s DUI from two days earlier. That Memorial Day, he homered while the Phillies’ broadcast was talking about the team’s American Gold Star Mothers Chair of Honor.

In June 2023, Castellanos homered the day of the I-95 collapse in Philadelphia that killed one driver. One year later, he homered the day of the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump. Hie next home run came eight days later — the same day then-President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election.

It was even a thing before it was a meme. Castellanos hit his first home run in the minor leagues the same day Osama bin Laden was killed.