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Associated Press
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
This Date in Baseball - Ken Griffey Jr. retires and Clayton Kershaw records his 2,000 career K
June 2 1928 -- Les Bell of the Boston Braves hit three home runs and a triple at Braves Field, but the Cincinnati Reds came away with a 20-12 triumph. 1928 -- The Philadelphia Phillies defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 2-1. All the runs came from three pinch-hit home runs. 1941 -- Lou Gehrig died in New York at age 37. 1949 -- The Philadelphia Phillies hit five homers in the eighth inning against the Cincinnati Reds. Andy Seminick hit two and Del Ennis, Willie Jones, and Schoolboy Rowe hit one apiece. Seminick had homered earlier in the game. 1959 -- The Baltimore Orioles-Chicago White Sox game at Comiskey Park was delayed for nearly half an hour as a swarm of gnats overcame the field. Groundskeepers tried using bug sprays and torches, but the gnats wouldn't budge. A postgame fireworks display was brought in from center field and a smoke bomb was attached to the framework. The gnats left and the Orioles defeated the White Sox, 3-2. 1990 -- Randy Johnson pitched the first no-hitter in the Seattle Mariners' history as he beat the Detroit Tigers 2-0. The 6-foot-10 left-hander, walked six and struck out eight while pitching the first no-hitter at the Kingdome, which opened for baseball in 1977. 1996 -- Houston starter Darryl Kile tied the modern major league record by hitting four batters in a 2-0 loss at St. Louis, and the first to do it in the NL since Moe Drabowsky in 1957. 2000 -- Tampa Bay's Fred McGriff hit his 400th career home run, but the Devil Rays lost to the Mets 5-3. 2000 -- Rick Aguilera of the Chicago Cubs became the 13th pitcher with 300 saves in a 2-0 win over Detroit. Aguilera reached the mark in 614 career appearances, third quickest. 2002 -- Philadelphia pitcher Robert Person drove in seven runs with a grand slam and a three-run homer in an 18-3 win over Montreal. Person had just come off the disabled list and collected his first win of the season. 2005 -- Kansas City completed a sweep of the New York Yankees with a 5-2 victory. The Royals, who have the worst record and second-lowest payroll in the major leagues, finished their first three-game sweep of the Yankees at home in 15 years. 2009 -- Dan Uggla of the Marlins became the fastest second baseman to 100 homers in Florida's 10-3 win over Milwaukee. Uggla's two-run shot in the bottom of the second came in his 502nd game as a second baseman, beating Alfonso Soriano to 100 by 34 games. 2010 — Ken Griffey Jr. announces his retirement after 22 seasons in the major leagues. Hitting only .184 in part-time duty for the Mariners, he retires with 630 career home runs and six seasons of 40 or more homers. Most of his career was spent with Seattle and the Cincinnati Reds. 2010 -- Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers lost his bid for a perfect game with two outs in the ninth inning on a call that first base umpire Jim Joyce later admitted he blew. First baseman Miguel Cabrera cleanly fielded Jason Donald's grounder to his right and made an accurate throw to Galarraga covering the bag. The ball was there in time, and all of Comerica Park was ready to celebrate the 3-0 win over Cleveland, until Joyce emphatically signaled safe. 2011 -- Aubrey Huff hit three home runs and matched his career best with six RBIs and the San Francisco Giants posted a 12-7 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. Huff hit two-run homers in the fourth and ninth and a solo shot in the seventh. 2015 — In a memorable major league debut, Rangers 3B Joey Gallo hits a two-run homer in his second at-bat on the way to collecting 3 hits and 4 RBIs in leading Texas to a 15-2 beating of the White Sox. 2017 — Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers records his 2,000 career strikeout. 2018 — Jacob deGrom matches a career high set just two weeks earlier by racking up 13 strikeouts in 7 innings in a start against the Cubs. _____
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ranking MLB's 25 best games of the 2000s, from October no-hitters to gripping Game 7s
At the dawn of this century, the designated hitter was confined to the American League, the Astros played in a six-team National League Central, there was one wild card per league and home-field advantage for the World Series was determined on an alternating basis. Baseball has evolved plenty over the past 25 years, through offensive booms and busts, questions about the composition of its athletes and its playing equipment, financial scandals around tentpole franchises and a pandemic-shortened season. The postseason has expanded twice, creating a larger pool of memorable games and moments. Advertisement Which ones stand out the most? With other writers diving into the best players of the last quarter-century, I was drawn to the best games. Which are the wildest, the most memorable, the most thrilling, the best of this century? There have been more than 60,000 major-league games played since the turn of the century, and to do this piece justice, I have gone back and watched them all, you can be assured. There have been eight perfect games this century, including ones with 14 strikeouts (by Matt Cain) and 13 strikeouts (Randy Johnson). And yes, Roy Halladay himself threw one earlier in the 2010 season. But Halladay's no-hitter in his first postseason start stands as the most memorable individual starting performance this century. A lot of the time, it isn't until the sixth or seventh inning that you take note of a potential no-hitter; you assume something will get in the way before then. But at Citizens Bank Park that night, it was clear from the first inning that Halladay had everything working. Halladay retired the first 14 Reds batters, walked Jay Bruce on a full count in the fifth, then retired the next 13. The only hard-hit ball came from reliever Travis Wood in the third. Halladay threw a first-pitch strike to 25 of 28 hitters. Afterward, Cincinnati cleanup hitter Scott Rolen mused about how many more at-bats he would have needed just to make contact: 'I think words would ruin that performance.' The final four-run margin belies how remarkable this game's pivot felt in the seventh inning. Washington had already staged a pair of comebacks in winner-take-all games — you might see one later here — but Zack Greinke was in command in a potential career-defining start. Houston even had Gerrit Cole available out of the bullpen, making its 2-0 lead feel safe. Advertisement Anthony Rendon's one-out homer off Greinke cut that margin in half, and Howie Kendrick somehow lined Will Harris' actually-very-good cutter off the foul pole in right for the lead. The Nationals added on in the eighth and ninth to finish off the biggest World Series upset (by Vegas odds) since 1990 and claim their first championship. It takes a lot for a regular-season game to make the cut, as we're about to explore more thoroughly, and this is the only one that made it without significant postseason ramifications. A major-league game played in an Iowa cornfield was destined to be memorable, though it risked coming off as too cheesy or campy. And while the Field of Dreams Game flirted with that all night, its ninth inning packed as much punch as a Hollywood script. Down three, the Yankees rallied with a pair of two-out two-run homers into the corn from Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. That served as a prelude to Tim Anderson smashing his own two-run shot off Zack Britton in the bottom of the inning to send the White Sox home winners. One thing that can set regular-season games apart is, say, if a hurricane in the final week of the season caused two postponements between two long-time rivals fighting for a postseason berth with the ensuing make-up doubleheader played the day after the rest of the league finished its regular-season schedule. That would be interesting, right? With the entire sport watching on a Monday afternoon, the Mets and Braves played an absolute classic. Atlanta was cruising, taking a 3-0 lead into the eighth, before the Mets launched the kind of late-inning rally that characterized their postseason run in 2024. New York scored six times in the eighth, with Brandon Nimmo's two-run homer feeling like a nail in the coffin. But the Braves are no stranger to Lazarus acts — especially against the Mets — and responded with four runs of their own in the bottom of the inning, thanks to Edwin Díaz forgetting to cover first base and Ozzie Albies clearing the bases. Francisco Lindor had one more twist up his sleeve: a two-run homer in the top of the ninth for one more lead change. Díaz closed it out in the ninth to clinch a trip to the postseason for New York. GO DEEPER In an instant classic, Mets clinch playoff berth with win over Braves Baseball is all about timing, and perhaps no night in the sport's history has showcased better timing than Sept. 28, 2011. The Rays and Red Sox entered the evening tied for the final playoff spot in the American League, the product of an already remarkable September collapse by Boston. But facing a Yankees team with its postseason berth clinched, Tampa Bay ace David Price was rocked and a series of New York relievers preserved a 7-0 lead through seven innings. In Baltimore, the Red Sox held a 3-2 lead over the last-place Orioles when an 86-minute rain delay interrupted the proceedings during the seventh-inning stretch. Advertisement While waiting out the weather, the Sox watched the Rays apply pressure. Tampa Bay scored six runs in the eighth inning, capped off by Evan Longoria's three-run homer. With two outs and nobody on in the ninth, pinch-hitter Dan Johnson — who hadn't had a major-league hit in five months — took Cory Wade deep to right to tie the game. Boston and Baltimore restarted play just as extras started at the Trop. Handed the lead in the ninth, Jonathan Papelbon struck out the first two Orioles. But one out away from ensuring the Red Sox would live to play another day, the closer allowed back-to-back doubles to Chris Davis and Nolan Reimold to tie the game. Robert Andino won it with a sinking line drive to left that Carl Crawford just couldn't snag. Four minutes later, Longoria homered off Scott Proctor to send the Rays to the postseason. Four years later, MLB started scheduling every game on the last day of the season at the same time, hoping to recreate the same magic. The 2013 Red Sox led the AL East wire to wire. They didn't face an elimination game in their postseason march to a championship. And yet, it's hard to be more out of a series than they were in Game 2 of the ALCS. Over the first 14 innings of this ALCS, the Red Sox went 1-for-43 with 26 strikeouts. They were also down 5-0 in Game 2, staring at a 2-0 deficit heading to Detroit to face Justin Verlander. In the eighth, though, Boston broke through. A double, walk and base hit loaded the bases for David Ortiz. Before you even registered that Ortiz was all of a sudden the tying run, he was ripping Joaquin Benoit's changeup away to right field, just beyond the reach of Torii Hunter and into an ecstatic home bullpen. In a career full of big hits, this might have been Ortiz's biggest. The Red Sox walked it off on a hit by Jarrod Saltalamacchia in the ninth. Brandon Backe and Woody Williams were an unlikely duo to produce one of the great pitchers' duels of the century. Backe had started nine games all season for Houston, Williams was a league-average pitcher who'd been shelled in his last start of the regular-season — in Houston. But in the pivotal Game 5, Williams threw seven one-hit innings. Backe threw eight one-hit innings. That's right: When Carlos Beltrán led off the bottom of the ninth with a solid single to right field, it was the third hit of the game for either team. Advertisement After a one-out intentional walk to Lance Berkman, Jeff Kent teed off on Jason Isringhausen's first pitch, sending it to the train tracks in left field. It was the first walk-off homer in the NLCS since Lenny Dykstra and the Mets had beaten the Astros in 1986. It would be joined two days later by Jim Edmonds' shot to force a Game 7. While baseball provided a diverse experience throughout the 2010s, its favorite trend was dishing out heartbreaking Division Series losses to the Nationals, often in Game 5. The Nats had blown a ninth-inning lead to the Cardinals in 2012 and lost one-run thrillers to the Dodgers in 2016 and the Cubs in 2017. So 2019 felt like more of the same, with Washington trailing Los Angeles 3-1 when Clayton Kershaw — who'd closed out that 2016 series — came on in relief. Vengeance would be swift: Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto mashed stunning back-to-back homers off Kershaw to tie the game. Kendrick followed with the first of his enormous postseason hits with a 10th-inning grand slam off Joe Kelly. It ended Washington's postseason hex, propelling the Nationals to a championship. This was the first of four 18-inning postseason games this century, and the one that packed the most action. Atlanta took a comfortable early lead thanks to a grand slam from Adam LaRoche. Down five in the eighth, Houston's comeback was sparked by Lance Berkman's grand slam — the first and still only time that both teams have hit a grand slam in a postseason game. Still down one in the ninth and with Jeff Bagwell on the bench, the Astros stuck with light-hitting Brad Ausmus, whose two-out solo homer off Kyle Farnsworth tied the game. And then the teams traded zeroes deep into extra innings. Roger Clemens first came off the bench for the Astros (to bunt as a pinch hitter) and then out of the bullpen (for the first time in 21 years) to toss the final three scoreless innings for Houston. Chris Burke, who'd run for Berkman in the 10th, delivered the long-awaited knockout blow with a line-drive homer into the Crawford Boxes off Joey Devine in the 18th. Before he cut his hair and emerged as an overpowering two-time Cy Young Award winner, this was the night that Jacob deGrom established himself as one of the game's best pitchers. Without anything resembling his best stuff, deGrom danced through trouble all night. He allowed two Dodgers runs on four straight hits in the first inning, and Los Angeles put a runner on second base with less than two outs in the second, third, fourth and fifth frames. DeGrom stranded the runner(s) each time, proving even low-scoring games could be full of action. Advertisement On the other side, Daniel Murphy was just starting his run as an October hero. Murphy drove home the Mets' first run, scored their second (after advancing two bases on a walk) and hit the go-ahead homer off Zack Greinke in the sixth. Noah Syndergaard and Jeurys Familia finished what deGrom started. Nearly a quarter-century later, it's hard to overstate how difficult it felt to beat this version of the Yankees, especially in the Bronx. New York had won three straight World Series and four of the previous five. The roster was deep, buoyed by established October heroes and the much-ballyhooed 'mystique and aura' of the old Yankee Stadium — which never felt more resonant than in this Game 5. One night earlier, as October turned to November, Tino Martinez had cracked a game-tying, two-out, two-run homer in the ninth inning off Byung-Hyun Kim, who then allowed Derek Jeter's walk-off shot in the 10th. And so when Scott Brosius lofted another game-tying, two-out, two-run homer in the ninth inning off Kim, Joe Buck's call — 'It borders on the surreal' — felt entirely appropriate. Alfonso Soriano won it with a single three innings later. The Yankees felt unkillable. Roy Halladay may have had the most memorable pitching performance in a start this century; the most memorable pitching performance, period, belongs to Madison Bumgarner here. Supposed to be available briefly for this Game 7, three days after he shut out the Royals on four hits to win Game 5, Bumgarner entered earlier than expected: in the fifth inning of a 3-2 game. He didn't give the ball back. Bumgarner mowed through Kansas City the way he had twice previously in the series. (The Royals would finish the series 9-for-71 off Bumgarner, a .127 average.) He had retired 14 in a row when Alex Gordon came to the plate with two outs in the ninth to propel this game beyond just Bumgarner's performance. Rationally, Mike Jirschele was right to hold Gordon at third. Irrationally, was it better to bet on the Giants messing up a relay than on Bumgarner allowing another hit? Advertisement Salvador Perez popped up, and San Francisco won its third title of the decade. In the New Yorker, the late Roger Angell described Bumgarner, 'his expression mournful, almost apologetic, even while delivering his wide-wing, slinging stuff. Sorry, guys: this is how it goes. Over soon.' Every 2020 postseason contest looks and feels weird in retrospect. This game between Tampa Bay and Los Angeles was played in Arlington, Texas, in front of a crowd the same size as the 2024 Oakland Athletics averaged. Watching it back on YouTube, you can't tell if the crowd noise is real or manufactured. And yet, the Rays and Dodgers conspired to create a classic. The first three games of the series had not contained a lead change; Game 4 made up for it. Tampa Bay took the lead in the bottom of the sixth, L.A. took it back in the top of the seventh. The Rays tied it in the bottom of the inning, and the Dodgers grabbed it again in the eighth. With two outs in the ninth, down one, the Rays sent little-used Brett Phillips to the plate to face Kenley Jansen. Phillips stared at a near-perfect pitch on the outside corner for strike two, then looped a single into right-center. As Kevin Kiermaier scored the tying run, Chris Taylor booted the ball, prompting Randy Arozarena to try to score from first. But Arozarena face-planted halfway down the line, and the Dodgers had him stuck in a rundown — except that catcher Will Smith had forgotten to catch the relay throw. Arozarena crawled home and banged on the plate as the winning run. In The Washington Post, Dave Sheinin wrote, 'If you couldn't necessarily hear the tapping — thump, thump, thump — you could at least feel it. It was your heart.' Leading into the later stages of this World Series, the 2002 postseason hadn't been especially memorable. Admit it: Your main memory of it outside of this game is either J.T. Snow saving Darren Baker or Barry Bonds' home run off Troy Percival. But that was before the Angels stormed back from five runs down in the final three innings of Game 6, denying the Giants the title. The series felt so over that Dusty Baker let Russ Ortiz walk off the mound with the baseball as a memento, moments before Scott Spiezio's three-run homer made it a game again. Anaheim surged into the lead on Series MVP Troy Glaus' two-run double in the eighth. The Angels closed it out in Game 7 a night later. You think there were a lot of games this century? How about innings, how about more than one million innings this century? And none of them were as wild, as insane, as dramatic as the seventh inning of this deciding game of the Division Series between Texas and Toronto. Advertisement The Blue Jays had rebounded from a 2-0 deficit in the series, and they'd just tied the game at two on Edwin Encarnación's sixth-inning homer. In the top of the seventh, with two outs and Rougned Odor on third, Russell Martin's throw back to pitcher Aaron Sanchez hit Shin-Soo Choo's bat, caroming away and allowing Odor to score. The game was delayed 18 minutes, first for the umpires to deliberate on what the proper ruling would be, then to clear the field of debris thrown from the Rogers Centre stands. Toronto surged back in the bottom of the frame, assisted by a nightmarish defensive inning for shortstop Elvis Andrus. Andrus bobbled Martin's leadoff grounder, couldn't corral Mitch Moreland's errant throw for a forceout at second, and dropped Adrián Beltré's throw to third on an otherwise fantastically run wheel play. After Josh Donaldson tied the game with a bloop forceout — I mean, the inning was just making stuff up at this point — José Bautista untied it with one of the century's most memorable home runs. The benches cleared when Sam Dyson had words with Encarnación — and then again as the inning ended when Dyson and Troy Tulowitzki chatted at the plate. The inning took 53 minutes. It was one in a million. Hobbled all postseason by a bad ankle, Freddie Freeman had hardly looked himself. He sat out three games in the first two rounds and had yet to collect an extra-base hit until a first-inning triple off Gerrit Cole. So when he strode to the plate in the 10th inning, the bases loaded, two outs, and the Dodgers down one, the connection to that other limping Los Angeles star who came through in this spot was easy to make. Wouldn't it be crazy, you might have thought, if he did that, too? And then Freeman absolutely unloaded on Nestor Cortes' first pitch, holding his bat up high as Joe Davis copped a little Scully: 'She is gone!' Gibby meet Freddie, indeed. GO DEEPER Freddie Freeman wallops his way into World Series history with walk-off slam that'll float forever This was less Game 5 of a single series than it was Game 167 (168 for Los Angeles) of a season-long war in the NL West. The Giants and Dodgers had waged one of the great pennant races you'll ever see, San Francisco surprisingly holding off L.A. by winning 107 games in the regular season. Its reward? Home-field advantage for this winner-take-all contest. Advertisement That seemed crucial: The Giants hadn't lost a Logan Webb start at Oracle Park all season, and for the second time in the series, Webb shoved. The two teams traded runs in the sixth — a Corey Seager double, a Darin Ruf homer — before Cody Bellinger's single in the ninth off Camilo Doval broke the tie. Since there's nothing Dave Roberts likes more than a starter on two days' rest as his closer, the Dodgers turned to Max Scherzer for the ninth. With a runner on first, Scherzer struck out LaMonte Wade looking and Wilmer Flores on what every Giants fan will tell you was ball one. In one sense, Boston's four consecutive wins to come back from a 3-0 series deficit and shock the Yankees happened in an anticlimactic order. Game 7, the culmination of that comeback, was not an especially compelling game on its own. In another sense, there's value to Game 4 being the best game of the series, and the one that required the biggest in-game comeback of the series. It's hard to be down more in a seven-game series than the Red Sox were in that ninth inning: Down 3-0 in the series, down by a run, down to the bottom of their order, down to facing Mariano Rivera. But Kevin Millar worked a walk, Dave Roberts worked his magic, and Bill Mueller came through with the oft-overlooked game-tying single. One game after a disastrous 19-8 loss, the Boston bullpen held the Yankees scoreless for six innings, setting the stage for David Ortiz's walk-off home run. With apologies to Backe and Williams (and to Curt Schilling, Matt Morris and Game 5 of the 2001 NLDS), this is the pitchers' duel of the century so far: a winner-take-all matchup between aces and old friends Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter that exceeded its promise. The Cardinals scored two batters into the game on consecutive extra-base hits from Rafael Furcal and Skip Schumaker. (Schumaker's at-bat, in particular, was terrific.) Halladay was lights-out the rest of the way, allowing only four more hits in finishing eight innings. Problem was, Carpenter didn't stumble for even two hitters. The former Cy Young Award winner, in the last great game of his career, tossed a three-hit shutout. He survived a pair of drives to the warning track from Raul Ibañez and Chase Utley and elicited 16 ground-ball outs — about as dominant a three-strikeout performance as a starter could have. Advertisement Carpenter's heroics knocked out a juggernaut Phillies team whose 102 wins were the most by a National League team in seven years. Thanks in part to the torn Achilles Ryan Howard suffered at the end of this game, Philadelphia's five-year run atop the NL East would end the next year, and Citizens Bank Park wouldn't host another playoff game until 2022 — earned by a series win over the Cardinals. Theoretically, minimizing a grueling 162-game regular season into a single contest to determine who advances is abhorrent. Practically, the single-game wild-card format, used for nine seasons and 18 games, delivered classic after classic. None were better than this one, which marked Kansas City's return to the postseason stage after a 29-year absence. A team built on contact, speed and outfield defense, those 2014-2015 Royals were an outlier in their own time. A decade later, it's mind-boggling to watch Kansas City's trademark late-inning rallies, constructed from single after single, with excellent base running thrown in. This late comeback against Jon Lester and an Athletics team that had looked like a powerhouse through the first half of the season foreshadowed the next two Octobers in K.C. The Royals compiled three singles, two walks and four stolen bases to cut a 7-3 lead to 7-6 in the eighth, then turned a leadoff single into a run thanks to a sac bunt, a brazen steal of third by Jarrod Dyson and a sac fly off Sean Doolittle to tie it in the ninth. Down again in the 12th — extra-inning games where the home team comes back to win in the bottom of the inning are a personal favorite of Matt Holliday and me — the Royals tied it on Christian Colon's chopper and won it on Salvador Perez's line drive to left. Not only were the Red Sox going to stun their archrivals in the Bronx in a Game 7, but they were also going to do it with Pedro Martínez on the mound to beat Roger Clemens. But just when it looked like Boston could really finish it off, the Yankees roared back. Aided by a pair of Jason Giambi homers and long relief from Mike Mussina, New York entered the eighth down 5-2, with Martínez still on the mound. With one out, a Derek Jeter double and Bernie Williams single scored one run and brought Grady Little to the mound. Martínez was at 115 pitches and lefty Alan Embree was ready in the pen. Little stuck with his ace — a move so bold it would have gotten 'First Take' to talk about baseball, had the show existed at the time — only for Martínez to allow consecutive doubles to Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada to tie the score. Rivera tossed three scoreless innings — his longest outing since he'd been a set-up man seven years earlier — to get the Yankees to the 11th. That's when Aaron Boone took Tim Wakefield, a hero earlier in the series for the Sox, deep to left to win the pennant. Advertisement Canvass the baseball establishment about great games, and this back-and-forth (-and-back-and-forth-and-back, etc.) affair is never overlooked. If you were to steal the format of Daniel Okrent's classic 'Nine Innings' to dive into modern baseball, this would be the game you'd choose, and not just because it went 10. The Astros and Dodgers have been the sport's preeminent powers over the past decade, and their only postseason meeting was the sport's first in almost 40 years between teams that each won 100-plus regular-season games. The constitution of the baseball had become a paramount topic in the sport as home runs kept flying out of stadiums all October. Three years after the Royals and Giants combined for five homers in a seven-game World Series, this contest alone featured seven long balls. Three times in this game, a team came back from three runs down. At one point, three-run homers were hit in three consecutive half-innings. At another, stalwart L.A. reliever Brandon Morrow allowed four runs in six pitches. (The Astros, as we'd find out later, had a little help in home games at the time.) The last of those big comebacks came in the ninth, when the Dodgers scored three on Yasiel Puig's homer and Chris Taylor's two-out base hit. In the 10th, Houston built a two-out rally on a hit batter and a walk, with Alex Bregman delivering the walk-off hit to give the Astros a 3-2 series lead. Baseball's oft-stated promise is that, every night, you might see something you'd never seen before. Game 6 of the 2011 World Series tried to change that by packing everything you could possibly see into four hours and 33 minutes. In an elimination game they ultimately won, the Cardinals dropped popups in consecutive innings and had a runner picked off third with the bases loaded. Texas was on the verge of its first championship twice: It led by two in the ninth thanks to back-to-back seventh-inning homers by Adrián Beltré and Nelson Cruz. It led in the 10th thanks to Josh Hamilton's go-ahead homer. However, with apologies to Lance Berkman's two-out hit to tie it in the 10th, this game is about David Freese. Advertisement Think about this: Kirby Puckett hit a walk-off home run leading off the 11th inning of Game 6 of the 1991 World Series — which Joe Buck referenced when he mirrored his father's call for Freese's own leadoff homer in the 11th inning of Game 6 of this World Series. It is undoubtedly Puckett's most famous hit as a Hall of Fame major leaguer — the one they literally bronzed outside Target Field. Freese's walk-off homer, though, was only his second-biggest hit of this game, following his game-tying triple in the bottom of the ninth, just over the reach of Cruz. He'd hit a key double the next night, too, when the Cardinals completed their comeback with a Game 7 victory. GO DEEPER 60 Moments: No. 17, David Freese lives the dream in Game 6 It's hard to say where this game would have ranked if we stripped away some of its context — if it had been a Game 3 instead of a Game 7, if it had not been played between the teams with the longest championship droughts in the sport. But a Game 7 of the World Series is a rarer gift than it felt for a few years there in the middle of last decade. A Game 7 of the World Series that lives up to and exceeds its hype is more precious still. Having fought back from an unexpected 3-1 series deficit, the Cubs had built a 5-1 lead in the middle innings — up until two Cleveland runs scored on one Jon Lester wild pitch. Chicago's lead was 6-3 entering the eighth, which is when this game joined the all-time greats. Facing Aroldis Chapman, Brandon Guyer sliced a two-out RBI double to right, and Rajai Davis followed with a gob-smacking, game-tying home run. (Using championship win probability, Davis' home run is the second-biggest hit of the century and the fourth-biggest in baseball history. Unfortunately for him, it's the biggest to ever come in a loss.) And then the rain came. The Cubs gathered themselves, Jason Heyward made a speech, and Ben Zobrist lined an opposite-field go-ahead double off Bryan Shaw in the 10th. Chicago added an insurance run, which it would need when Davis drove home a run with a two-out single in the bottom of the inning. But Cleveland was down to the last man on its bench in the biggest spot, and Mike Montgomery induced a groundout from Michael Martínez to end the Cubs' 108-year drought. I'm not sure how you beat this. You start with the pitching matchup. Roger Clemens won the AL Cy Young Award that season, one of seven he'd win in his career. Curt Schilling finished second in the NL Cy Young voting that year and was arguably the best big-game pitcher of his generation. Oh, and the pitchers who finished the night on the mound? That would be Randy Johnson, who bested Schilling for one of his five career Cy Young awards and had thrown more than 100 pitches the night before, and Mariano Rivera, the first and only unanimous Hall of Famer. Advertisement The Diamondbacks broke the ice with Danny Bautista's sixth-inning RBI double. Tino Martinez answered with a seventh-inning RBI single, and Alfonso Soriano put the Yankees ahead with a solo shot off Schilling in the eighth. And then we get to the bottom of the ninth — to Mark Grace's leadoff single, to Rivera's error on one bunt and gutsy play to secure the lead out on the next one, to Tony Womack delivering the biggest hit of the century by championship win probability to tie it. (Don't overlook Womack; he'd also delivered the walk-off series-winning hit in the NLDS.) It's part of baseball's beauty that the big at-bat often goes to Gene Larkin or Francisco Cabrera or Rajai Davis. There's no Golden At-Bat rule. Which is what makes it especially memorable when you get a matchup like Rivera against Luis Gonzalez, the NL's best hitter not named Barry Bonds. Rivera's cutter was as good as ever, sawing Gonzalez off at the handle. But Gonzo got just enough of it to flutter over the drawn-in infield and into baseball history. (Illustration: Kelsea Petersen/ The Athletic; Photos: Joe Cavaretta / Associated Press, Matt Slocum / Associated Press, Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
Washington Post
2 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
Chris Sale becomes fastest pitcher to reach 2,500 strikeouts as Braves beat Phillies 9-3
Chris Sale became the fastest pitcher to reach 2,500 strikeouts, pitched six scoreless innings and the Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 9-3 on Thursday night to split a doubleheader. The Phillies won the afternoon game 5-4. Sale (3-3) struck out Edmundo Sosa in the sixth inning for his eighth strikeout, to reach the milestone. He did it in 2,026 innings, surpassing the record of 2,107 2/3 set by Randy Johnson.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
Chris Sale reaches 2,500 strikeouts, Braves beat Phillies 9-3 for a doubleheader split
PHILADELPHIA — Chris Sale became the fastest pitcher to reach 2,500 strikeouts, pitched six scoreless innings and the Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 9-3 on Thursday night to split a doubleheader. The Phillies won the afternoon game 5-4. Sale (3-3) struck out Edmundo Sosa in the sixth inning for his eighth strikeout, to reach the milestone. He did it in 2,026 innings, surpassing the record of 2,107 2/3 set by Randy Johnson.
CBS News
3 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Phillies split doubleheader with Braves without Bryce Harper, but Philadelphia picks up another series win
Chris Sale became the fastest pitcher to reach 2,500 strikeouts, pitched six scoreless innings and the Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 9-3 on Thursday night to split a doubleheader. The Phillies won the afternoon game 5-4. Sale (3-3) struck out Edmundo Sosa in the sixth inning for his eighth strikeout, to reach the milestone. He did it in 2,026 innings, surpassing the record of 2,107 2/3 set by Randy Johnson. Sale became the 40th pitcher in major league history to reach 2.500 strikeouts and joined Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer as the only active pitchers to have reached that plateau. Sosa was the last hitter Sale faced. He allowed just two hits in six shutout innings. Austin Riley had a double, a homer, and four RBIs, Ozzie Albies homered and drove in three, and Luke Williams had a pair of RBIs for the Braves, who snapped a three-game losing skid. Zack Wheeler (6-2) allowed six runs in 5 1/3 innings for the Phillies, who lost for just the second time in their last 13 games. After the game, the Phillies acquired left-hander Josh Walker from Toronto for cash considerations. Walker goes on the Phillies' 40-man roster, but will be assigned to Triple-A Lehigh Valley. Key moment Sale loaded the bases in the fifth inning on two walks and a hit batter, but got out of it by getting Alec Bohm to ground out to Williams to end the threat. Key stat Albies' homer, his sixth of the season, extended his hitting streak to 14 games. Up next RHP Grant Holmes (3-3, 3.68 ERA) is scheduled to start for the Braves when they open a three-game series at home against Boston on Friday. Philadelphia will turn to RHP Taijuan Walker (2-3, 2.97) in the first game of a weekend home series against Milwaukee. RHP Quinn Priester (1-2, 4.23) is slated to start for the Brewers.
