Last at-bat heroics: every hitter's post-season dream

Baseball Digest, Oct, 2002 by George Vass

ONE OF BASEBALL'S PREVAILING and cherished myths is that "it ain't over till it's over," a romantic fallacy that nurtures hope when it should be all but gone.

Don't let anyone kid you, it ain't necessarily so and seldom has been. It's almost always over for all practical purposes well before the final pitch is thrown and the last bat is swung.

That's especially true of postseason play, whether World Series, division and league championship matchups, or tie-breaking playoffs for a pennant or a wild-card berth.

Sure, the Arizona Diamondbacks shocked the New York Yankees in last year's World Series by rallying for two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to overcome a 2-1 lead and capture the seventh game 3-2.

Luis Gonzalez's bloop single to left-center field scored Jay Bell from third base with the winning run as the Diamondbacks frustrated the Yankees and ace closer Mariano Rivera. What made the last-ditch rally all the more dramatic was that Rivera had converted 23 consecutive postseason save opportunities and appeared invulnerable.

Gonzalez's momentous hit earned him inclusion in the select tiny band of heroes who have driven in the winning run in the bottom half of the last inning of the final game of a championship series. It also added an appropriate crowning touch to what was one of the most fiercely contested of all World Series.

Even disappointed Yankees fans, among them New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, hailed the 2001 Series, in which the home team won every game for just the third time in history, as superb to the last pitch although they could have done without the final swing of Gonzalez's bat.

"That was the greatest Game 7 ever," said Giuliani admiringly. "As a Yankees fan, I wish it had turned out differently."

Whether it was truly the greatest seventh game is debatable, but there can be no question as to how unusual such a sensational conclusion to any postseason series has been, or is likely to be.

The odds against anything similarly memorable happening this year are enormous. Most postseason series, at whatever stage of advance, wind down tamely, more likely to conclude with a whimper rather than a bang.

There have been more than 200 postseason competitions between two teams since the Boston Red Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates met in the first World Series in 1903.

This year's World Series is the 98th (and would have been No; 100 except for omissions in 1904 and 1994). There also have been 64 American and National league championship series since they began in 1969 (again excepting 1994). In addition, there have been several dozen division title series as well as a handful of playoffs for league championships and wildcard berths.

Yet, despite this multitude of opportunities for "last-batter" heroics, only 23 of these 200-plus postseason series have ended with the winning team scoring the decisive run in the bottom half of the last inning of the final game.

In other words, the odds are about 10-1 against a team snatching victory out of the beak of defeat or breaking an agonizing tie in its final turn at bat in a postseason series. It seldom happens.

Not surprisingly, when it does occur it naturally leaves a huge impression in the game's history, and on fandom's collective memory of legendary achievements. That's especially so if the decisive blow is a soaring drive into the stands that ends any question about the outcome with one swing of the bat.

That's why it can be confidently stated, without a scintilla of doubt, that the two most celebrated finishes to any postseason series were provided by Bobby Thomson and Bill Mazeroski with their epic home runs.

Thomson's come-from-behind "Shot Heard `Round the World" in the bottom of the ninth inning of the final game of the best-of-three playoff series in 1951 won the National League pennant for the New York Giants who had trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers by 13 and a half games as late as August 11.

Even usually rational Hall of Fame sports columnist Red Smith was overcome by the improbability of Thomson's three-run homer off Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca to wipe out the 4-2 Dodgers lead with one out in the bosom of the ninth.

"The art of fiction is dead," Smith rhapsodized. "Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again."

Nine years later, Mazeroski led off the home half of the ninth in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series with a tie-breaking home run to carry the underdog Pittsburgh Pirates, 10-9, past the Yankees in a game in which they had trailed 7-4 as late as the eighth inning.

It was the first World Series ever to end on a home run, and what made it all the more notable was that the blow came off the bat of a future Hall of Fame second baseman far more noted for fielding skill than proficiency with a bat.

Few would dispute that the home runs by Thomson and Mazeroski--one to win a pennant, the other to gain a World Series title--rank 1-2 among the most celebrated individual feats by last batters in postseason competition.