Ortiz's walk-off home run sends Virginia baseball team to Super Regionals
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Players often encircle teammates who hit a walk-off before dancing and roughhousing to celebrate their victory. During a walk-off celebration on May 29, 2010, Kendrys Morales, then a member of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, broke his left leg while celebrating a walk-off grand slam. As a result of this injury, team manager Mike Scioscia instituted new guidelines for his team that ensured a much tamer response to all subsequent walk-off victories. Three players have hit two walk-off grand slams in a season, Cy Williams in 1926, Jim Presley in 1986, and Steve Pearce in 2017. A grand slam is a home run hit with all three bases occupied by baserunners ("bases loaded"), thereby scoring four runs—the most possible in one play. A walk-off home run with the bases loaded is therefore known as a walk-off grand slam.
Although he had shown Boston his new-found power stroke during the summer and fall of this was really Ortiz’ first career-defining moment as the most clutch hitter in team history. With that hit Ortiz became the club’s 27th member and is just the third active player to have reached the milestone, joining Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols. This was a low-scoring affair between AL East foes Toronto and Baltimore that was tied at 2 after the fifth inning and remained that way into the 11th at Rogers Centre. In the bottom of that frame, with lights-out Orioles closer Zack Britton still languishing in the bullpen, Ubaldo Jiménez gave up back-to-back one-out singles to Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson, putting runners at the corners. Encarnación then crushed a ball into the left-field seats, and the celebration began north of the border as Toronto headed toward its second straight berth in the ALCS.
Big Papi racked up 23 walk-off hits during his career.
With one out in the bottom of the 10th, Pratt, a backup catcher who had hit three regular-season homers that year, strode to the plate. He knocked a pitch from Matt Mantei over the wall at Shea Stadium, and suddenly the Mets were headed to the NLCS. The Red Sox got out to a 3-0 lead in the second inning in Game 7, pushing it to 4-0 in the fourth. The Yankees narrowed the gap to 4-2 by the bottom of the seventh, but Ortiz hit a solo homer off David Wells to give Boston a three-run lead. Starter Pedro Martínez allowed three runs on a single and a double in the bottom of the eighth, and the game was tied. It headed to extras, and Tim Wakefield pitched a scoreless bottom of the 10th.
The official ruling was that because Ventura never advanced past first base, it was not a home run but a single, and thus only Cedeño's run counted, making the official final score 4–3. The Astros led 4-2 entering the ninth, but they found themselves in a tie game headed to the bottom of the inning after a DJ LeMahieu homer. Houston made two quick outs against Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman and it looked as if the game might be headed to extras, but then George Springer worked a five-pitch walk.
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Up next was Altuve, one of only two players in franchise history to win a regular-season MVP award. He sent the third pitch of the at-bat to left-center field, and with that, sent the Astros to the World Series. It was the 11th time in postseason history that a team clinched an LCS win and a trip to the World Series with a walk-off. The source for this frequently cited factoid is Madison McEntire's 2006 book, Big League Trivia; Facts, Figures, Oddities, and Coincidences from our National Pastime. "Unless stated otherwise, I used the year 1900 – the beginning of the modern baseball era – as the starting point for the items in this book."
YankeeNumbers.com – A list of all walk-off home runs in New York Yankee history...regular and post-season. The most recent walk-off grand slam was hit by Giancarlo Stanton of the New York Yankees on September 20, 2022, against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees also hit the previous walk-off grand slam just one month earlier, when Josh Donaldson hit a walk-off grand slam against the Tampa Bay Rays on August 17, 2022. Although the concept of a game-ending home run is as old as baseball, the adjective "walk-off" attained widespread use only in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The 2013 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox had the bearded band of brothers whose scruffy facial appearances were most prominently on display through Mike Napoli and Jonny Gomes.
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There are few plays in baseball more dramatic than a walk-off home run. Wilson scored the tying run but also kept the score tied with a defensive gem in the ninth. He gloved a ball scorched down the third-base line, collected himself and threw across the diamond for a key second out. Chance Mallory scored 11 of his game-high 28 points in the fourth quarter and in overtime as St. Anne's-Belfield earned its first win over Miller since 2013.
The fourth point above was not a rule prior to 1920; instead, the game ended at the moment the winning run scored. This rule affected the scoring of 40 hits, from 1884 to 1918, that would now be scored as game-winning home runs. Mazeroski had homered just 11 times over the regular season, and 138 times over his 17-year career, but he drove Terry’s 1-0 pitch over the left-field wall at Forbes Field to deliver an improbable championship for the Pirates over the mighty Yankees. Maz’s homer was the first to end a World Series, and it would be 33 years before anyone else joined him on that list. Before Altuve’s home run in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS, this was the only postseason series-clinching home run in Astros history. Burke’s line drive into the Crawford Boxes ended an 18-inning marathon against the Braves at Minute Maid Park.
Through the last dozen seasons, the player with perhaps the most critical role in bringing the recent trio of championships to Boston has been none other than “Big Papi,” David Ortiz. Glover struck out the side in the top of the 10th, and Ortiz hit a 2-2 curveball for the walk-off home run against Arizona closer Vince Vanelle, who entered with a 1.96 ERA. "You really have to appreciate the job that our bullpen did. Connor Markl did a great job. Frankie Scalzo, Keaton Glover, Coen Wynne, Nick Hull. They all did what we needed them to do in a night like this. That was pretty cool."
The hit however, represents Papi’s greatest individual milestone to this point of a stellar career. Membership to the 500-home run club symbolizes a player’s longevity, consistency and elite power stroke. Gonzalez became the fourth rookie in postseason history to hit a walk-off homer, joining Kolten Wong , Chris Burke and Alfonso Soriano , and the second after Burke to hit a series-clinching walk-off.
The senior came to the plate in the bottom of the 10th inning with one out and nobody on base. Ortiz had only pitched two innings all season due to a shoulder injury, but he got the start in the deciding game of the Columbia Regional. Ortiz struck out six while allowing just one hit and two walks, and his eighth home run of the season ended in a Gatorade shower at home plate. Bud Norris of the Los Angeles Angels, in 2017, to Edwin Encarnación of the Cleveland Indians, on July 25, and Steve Pearce of the Toronto Blue Jays on July 30. Norris surrendered both in the same week, and it was the second game-winning walk-off grand slam by Pearce in the same week.
The Cavaliers, the No. 3 seed in Columbia, become the fourth team since 1999 to be seeded third or fourth in a regional, lose their first regional game and still advance to a Super Regional. LSU, led by Brian O’Connor’s mentor, Paul Mainieri, accomplished the same feat Monday night. That was Blue Jays announcer Tom Cheek’s call for Carter’s title-clinching homer off Phillies reliever Mitch Williams -- still an iconic moment north of the border. Toronto trailed Philadelphia, 6-5, in the bottom of the ninth and appeared to be heading toward a winner-take-all Game 7 before Carter joined Bill Mazeroski as the second player to end a World Series with a dinger. The career of David Ortiz is over, but The Legend of Big Papi will continue to loom large in Boston and beyond. The recently retired Red Sox slugger may not have added the phrase “walk-off” to the baseball vernacular, but his bat gave people plenty of reason to use the term throughout a 20-year career.
Teel played an important role in the bottom of the eighth, when the Wahoos tied the game. Two wild pitches from reliever Noah Dean later, and UVa tied the game at 3. Interestingly, the plan to use Ortiz on the mound had been in the works for weeks.
Crenshaw trotted home on senior catcher David Avitia'ssacrifice fly to push the Lopes ahead 3-2. Sunday night at the team dinner, Teel told O’Connor he could pitch in the final game of the regional if need be. O’Connor didn’t give the utility player a shot on the mound, but Teel showed off his arm in Tuesday’s win. Virginia baseball players celebrate during their win over Old Dominion in the Columbia Regional championship game on Monday in Columbia, S.C. For a home run to end the game, it must be hit in the bottom of the final inning of the game and generate enough runs to exceed the opponent's score. Because the opponent will not have an opportunity to score any more runs, there is no need to finish the inning and the teams can walk off the field immediately.
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