Several years ago when I was coaching a youth-league team in Mukilteo, we had a baserunner tagged out on a bases-loaded walk. Honest.
Here’s how it happened:
We had a runner on every base when the opposing pitcher walked our hitter. I was coaching third base and watched our runne
r trot toward home plate. I then turned my attention to the kid we were warming up to pitch the next inning when I heard the umpire shout, “He’s out!”
I looked up to see our baserunner, the one who’d been on third base, standing between home plate and the dugout with a
n absolutely bewildered look on his face (not as bewildered as mine, of course) and the opposing catcher celebrating the third out of the inning with the baseball in his hand.
I approached the umpire and said a few things, including “How in the world is this possible? Did you not realize the bases were loaded?” before he settled me down and explained.
Our baserunner was trotting toward home plate when our on-deck hitter said, “Hey Billy (I changed the name here), I need your helmet.”
We had only four helmets, so Billy obliged and handed his helmet to our next hitter, and then he turned toward our dugout – without making it all the way toward home plate. The opposing catcher walked over with the ball and tagged Billy, and the ump called him out.
The ump explained that Billy had abandoned the base that he had been awarded, and therefore was fair game to be tagged out. I threw out a lot of “Come on!” and “Let’s be serious!” and “You’ve got to be kidding!” and probably raised my arms a lot like Lou Piniella.
But it wasn’t going to change the fact that our baserunner was tagged out on a bases-loaded walk.
That’s a long way of saying that what I witnessed tonight at Safeco Field wasn’t the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen on a baseball field. But what happened tonight was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in a major league game (well, maybe not as strange as John Olerud being locked in the video room while he was due to bat, but stay with me here).
The Mariners scored the go-ahead run in the top of the 10th inning tonight (yes, the TOP of the inning) when Marlins reliever Steve Cishek threw a wild pitch while attempting an intentional walk. The Mariners’ Dustin Ackley scored from third base and, after Brandon League recorded his 21st save in the bottom of the 10th, the Mariners won 2-1.
“I have never had it happen to me in 60 years,” said Jack McKeon, the Marlins’ 80-year-old manager. “I’ve seen it on television, but never had it against me or for me.”
It was perhaps a fitting end to one of the strangest three-game series the Mariners have ever played. They were the visiting team in every game (because of a stadium conflict in Florida that moved the games to Seattle) and there was no DH.
Of course, the lack of a DH may have been a key to the Mariners’ victory tonight. Pitcher Doug Fister’s one-out double in the fifth inning led to Brendan Ryan’s RBI single for the Mariners’ first run.
Problem was, when the Marlins finally cracked Fister with a run in the eighth, the Mariners needed a second run. That’s been a chore for a Mariners team that has scored two runs or less in six of their past eight games.
Ackley started the top of the 10th (yes, the TOP) with a double and he smartly tagged and reached third on Miguel Olivo’s fly out to left center. Besides Ackley’s hitting (he went 3-for-5 and now is batting .300), he showed some speed tonight. On his fourth-inning triple to center field, Ackley shifted into an extra gear going from second to third. That was impressive, and it’s why Mariners minor league coaches have worked so hard with him the past year on his base-stealing.
Still, speed alone wasn’t going to get Ackley from third to home with the go-ahead run in the 10th. The Mariners hadn’t been so good at those last 90 feet tonight — Ichiro Suzuki was stranded at third twice, along with Ackely after his triple.
With Carlos Peguero stepping to the plate, the Marlins decided to intentionally walk him and hope Cishek could get Franklin Gutierrez to hit into a double play. All Cishek needed were four wide ones, except that the third pitch to Peguero was the widest of them all. It sailed to the backstop and Ackley scored, although it was a close play that wasn’t certain until the baseball squirted away from Cishek as Ackley slid into the plate.
League pitched around a one-out hit to finish a game that was decided by the strangest play I’ve seen.
Well, outside that bases-loaded, inning-ending walk several years ago in Mukilteo.
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