NL Best of the Night: Norichika Aoki Goes Deep Twice in Brewers' Walkoff Win

Thursday was Deuces Gone Wild in the National League. Four different players had two-homer games.

Jason Heyward went deep twice for the Braves, while Ryan Ludwick hit a pair of bombs for the Reds. Meanwhile, David Freese cranked two homers out of the park while driving in six runs for the Cardinals.

Normally, Freese would get "Best of the Night" honors for two homers and six RBI, and the Cardinals have to be relieved that he's busted out of his slimp and gone 8-for-21 in his past five games. That being said, both of his home runs on Thursday came while the Cards already held a big lead over the Astros. Freese just piled more runs on. 

Therefore, let's go with the guy who not only hit two home runs, but gave his team a walkoff win. Norichika Aoki launched two balls out of Miller Park for the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday, the second of which resulted in a 5-4 extra-inning win over the Chicago Cubs. 

Leading off the bottom of the 10th, Aoki made sure no one had to hang around Miller Park longer than they had to. It was a matinee—fans had to get home for dinner. Facing Casey Coleman, Aoki only took three pitches to send Brewers fans out of the gates happy

As Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes, Aoki's two homers were the first two times he'd hit a baseball over the fence in a major league game. If you look at Aoki's season stats, he actually has three home runs. However, the first one was truly a round-tripper, with Aoki running out an inside-the-park homer.

Later on, the 30-year-old rookie had another major-league first, when Shaun Marcum gave him a shaving-cream pie in the face during a postgame interview. 

“They don’t do shaving cream to the face in Japan," Aoki said, according to Haudricourt, "but it’s a good feeling.”

On the other side, Cubs manager Dale Sveum didn't seem too thrilled about his pitching staff serving up two home-run balls to a 5'9" slap hitter who's not exactly known as a slugger.

"To lose a game because Aoki hits two homers, that’s kind of the way things are going," Sveum told Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times. “You’d expect [Ryan] Braun or Corey Hart to hit two homers."

With a .303/.357/.487 slash average, Aoki could arguably warrant NL Rookie of the Year consideration. However, unless there aren't any other viable candidates (and there are plenty), honoring a 30-year-old who played eight professional seasons in Japan seems to violate the spirit of the award. 

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