Hunter Renfrow and Hunter Renfroe sure sound a lot alike

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — This could get a bit confusing, so to start this out real simple: Hunter Renfroe and Hunter Renfrow are two different people.

They share much more in common than you realize.

But not their real first names.

Renfroe, 28, is an outfielder with the Tampa Bay Rays. Renfrow, 24, is a receiver with the Las Vegas Raiders. If it’s hard to know which is spelled which way, try to remember that Baseball Renfroe ends in “e,” just like a baseball runs-hits-errors scoreboard. Football Renfrow got a “W” for Clemson when he caught a game-winning touchdown pass with one second left to beat Alabama and win a national championship in January 2017.

.@Hunter_Renfroe sticks the landing. pic.twitter.com/4qgKgWoUTC

— Cut4 (@Cut4) August 22, 2020

They got to meet in person last year, but even that was nearly a coincidence. Last June, shortly after Renfrow had been drafted by the Raiders, who were playing their final season in Oakland, he and his newlywed wife, Camilla, went to a Padres-Giants game across the bay in San Francisco. They did this because Camilla’s roommate at Clemson is now Madie Wisler, married to then-Padres pitcher Matt Wisler. But while at Oracle Park, Renfrow and Renfroe got to meet and talk and pose for photos together.

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“Got to meet the real Hunter Renfroe tonight #legend,” Renfrow wrote on Instagram, posting a photo of the two together. “Insert Spider-Man meme,” wrote a commenter. “I’ve been waiting for this to happen,” wrote another.

“Same name, different stories,” Renfroe wrote on Instagram, posting a photo of the two together.

As Tim Bourret, Clemson’s longtime sports information director, pointed out, Renfrow was a good-luck charm for Renfroe, who would hit three home runs in a game two days later, and two home runs in a game two days after that. And Renfrow proudly wore a No. 13 jersey while at Clemson, while Renfroe went to the Padres with the No. 13 overall pick in the 2013 MLB draft.

Renfroe first realized he had a namesake of sorts in the fall of 2015 when Renfrow was a freshman walk-on at Clemson and Renfroe was a Padres minor-leaguer who would get congratulatory Twitter messages intended for the other Hunter.

“They’d say ‘Great game, blah blah blah,’ and I’m like ‘I don’t know what they’re talking about. We didn’t even play yesterday,’” Renfroe said. “Sure enough, I looked up the Clemson roster and it’s ‘Oh, my God, there’s a wide receiver with my name. That’s pretty cool. He’s my favorite player of all time!”

In January 2016, Renfrow had found national prominence as he caught two touchdowns for Clemson in a national title game loss to Alabama, new fans mistakenly tagged Renfroe in their comments. “2 touchdown catches already!?!? Unreal bro!!” one fan wrote, again to the wrong Hunter. A week later, Renfroe eventually tweeted to Renfrow: “you can imagine the confusion during the national championship!” and Renfrow quickly responded: “It will only get worse when you’re in the World Series in a few years.”

Textbook breakdown by @renfrowhunter with no wasted steps at the top of his comeback & bursting out of the break pic.twitter.com/cpuXwdlvAN

— Receiver School (@ReceiverSchool) August 25, 2020

The two started communicating by direct messages, congratulating each other on big games and offering support for the other’s team. They found they had much in common, both playing baseball and football well in high school.

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“I didn’t know if I was going to play baseball or football after high school, like until my senior year,” said Renfrow, who was a rangy outfielder at Socastee High in Myrtle Beach, once ranked by one outlet as the state of South Carolina’s No. 6 outfielder in his class. “I love baseball.”

“Renfrow can run down balls in center as he shows good range and gets to the gaps well,” reads his Class of 2014 scouting report from Diamond Prospects. “Renfrow can run as I clocked him at 4.69 secs to first base on a turn. He shows very good athleticism and I think if he played baseball all year around, he could be a special baseball player.”

Renfroe, at Copiah Academy in Mississippi, played football in addition to baseball, working as a quarterback and safety. A 2009 story in the Brookhaven (Miss.) Daily Leader tells of him rushing 10 times for 115 yards and passing for another 60 in a win early in his senior year.

“I played a lot. I loved football. I loved Friday nights,” Renfroe said of his football days. “I don’t think it was necessarily my passion. It was just a thing to keep me in shape to go to baseball. I loved the ability to go out and hit somebody. I never really thought of going to practice and working on my craft. It was just a way to hang with my buddies, and I was really good at it. It never was even thought of in my head that I’d play (college) football. Baseball was always No. 1 in my mind.”

They both had fathers who were multi-sport stars, as Renfrow’s dad, Tim, played baseball and football at Wofford. He once stole seven bases in a game and remains Wofford’s career leader with 84 steals. He also has the school’s career interceptions record with 19, and is in the Wofford Athletics Hall of Fame. Renfroe said his dad, Todd, played baseball, football and basketball (“the whole nine yards”) in high school as a speedy, undersized running back in Mississippi.

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The best bond between Hunter and Hunter? They’re both hunters. Yes, they like to talk about hunting, and about how their respective sports seasons get in the way of their favorite hunting seasons each year.

“He loves to turkey hunt, and I do too, as well as deer hunt,” Renfrow said. “I’m never able to deer hunt in the fall, and he can never turkey hunt in the spring. He was able to this year some because of all the COVID stuff, so we’d text each other back and forth about that.”

“He gets to turkey hunt, and I get to deer hunt,” Renfroe said. “I love turkey hunting, and got to turkey hunt this year because of the whole COVID deal, the first turkey hunting I’ve done in seven years. So I’m always envious of him doing turkey hunting, and he’s always envious of me going deer hunting in the fall. We get to see each other’s hunting pictures on Instagram and hear each other’s stories.”

This summer, they’ve traded texts to ask how each other’s teams were handling COVID-19 protocols, how they were finding ways to work out with team facilities off-limits due to quarantine protocols. They both grew up with Chipper Jones as their favorite player, both are proud of their faith, both married their high school sweethearts, but more often than not, any text exchange is often hunting-related.

“I want to go hunting with him sometime, so we’ll probably have that in the future, for sure,” Renfrow said.

What’s most incredible in their friendship is just how far back it goes, even if only one was aware of the encounter. It’s reasonable to expect that with the small-world aspect of today’s social media, once they had made a name for themselves with the Padres and Clemson in 2016, Renfroe and Renfrow could find each other online and even become friends.

But what are the odds they would be in the same place at the same time four years earlier, when neither had a household name? In April 2012, when Renfrow was a high school sophomore (and lifelong Clemson fan), his baseball coach at Socastee took him to a University of South Carolina baseball game in Columbia, about 150 miles west. The Gamecocks were playing that weekend against Mississippi State, and batting fifth in the order, as a college sophomore, was Renfroe.

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“I had no idea,” Renfrow said. “I was just going to see South Carolina play, and there’s a Hunter Renfroe playing. I’m like, ‘What is going on here?’ He had a couple hits that day, and that was my first interaction seeing him and knowing there’s another Hunter Renfroe out there in the sports world.”

As much as they have their names in common, both go by Hunter but have that as their middle name. Renfrow is James Hunter Renfrow, and Renfroe is Dustin Hunter Renfroe, but they’ve both always gone by Hunter.

“I think my parents just liked the name Hunter,” said Renfrow, who was happy to see his former receivers coach at Clemson, current South Florida head coach Jeff Scott, named his newborn son Hunter earlier this month.

“There’s no reason for it, except I guess my dad wanted to call me Hunter,” Renfroe said.

Others have noticed the Renfroe/Renfrow confusion and had fun with it. The Atlanta Braves’ stadium organist, Matthew Kaminski, who likes to play clever songs when opposing batters are at the plate, has played “Tiger Rag,” the Clemson fight song, when the other Renfroe is at the plate, even while in an empty stadium last month. Renfroe hit two home runs in his first game in Atlanta this season as part of a 14-5 Rays win on July 27.

Once baseball and football start having crowds again, both have made it clear to the other that anytime they can make it, there are guest passes with their name on it.

“He’s just a cool guy,” Renfrow said. “We have a lot of mutual respect for each other.”

(Photo of Hunter Renfrow and Hunter Renfroe: Courtesy of Hunter Renfroe / Instagram)

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