Sometimes there is joy in Mudville
Is there anything more exciting than a baseball ‘walk-off’ win? The home team is either tied or behind in its last at-bat. The batter causes the winning run to be scored and the team walk-offs the field as a winner.
Ernest Thayer’s famous baseball poem, ‘Casey at the Bat’ describes the opportunity for a walk-off hit. It is the ninth inning and the Mudville team is down two runs.
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
Walk-offs are more common than you might think, occurring in about 8% of the games played. Teams average about seven per year.
Back to the poem. Casey is Mudville’s best hitter, but there are two outs, and two men in the lineup ahead of him – Flynn and Blake. They need to get on base to give Casey his chance for a walk-off. And they do:
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.
The most common walk-off hit is a single. The score is tied, there is a man on second or third, batter hits a single, runner scores, game over. The next most common is a homerun. Most dramatic when the team is losing, and the homerun converts a loss into a win. Take the recent ‘Field of Dreams’ game between our beloved White Sox and the hated Yankees. The Yanks scored 4 runs in the top of the 9th to take an 8 – 7 lead. But Tim Anderson hit a 2-run homer in the bottom of the 9th, giving the Sox a 9 – 8 walk-off win. (also known as the ‘stalk off’ since the ball landed in the cornfield).
Casey comes up to the plate. After taking strike one, the second pitch arrives:
With a smile of Christian charity great Casey’s visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the dun sphere flew;
But Casey still ignored it and the umpire said, “Strike two!”
Some walk-offs are bizarre. It’s the battle of Los Angeles, June 28, 2017 – Dodgers versus Angels. The game is tied 2-2 going into the bottom of the 9th. The Angels have a man on second following an error and passed ball. Cameron Maybin strikes out, but the ball gets by the catcher, who must throw to first to complete the out. And, sure enough, the catcher makes a wild throw into the outfield allowing the runner to score the game-winner from second. Thus, Maybin got a walk-off strikeout! How about the walk-off hit-by-pitch? Tie score, bases loaded, two outs on 8/31/2017 – the White Sox pitcher hit the Minnesota batter for a walk-off Twins win.
Casey wants to win the game for Mudville. With men on 2nd and 3rd, he could try for a game-tying single. Instead, Casey is going to swing as hard as he can to try for a game-winning walk-off 3-run home run.
The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip, his teeth are clenched in hate,
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate;
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.
As a kid, the heroic fantasy is to bat in the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two outs, 3 balls, 2 strikes count, tie score. And you imagine hitting that walk-off grand slam home run. It does happen. On 7/27/2017, Toronto is at home against Oakland. In the bottom of the tenth inning the score is tied. With the bases loaded, Steve Pearce, a journeyman player, comes up for Toronto. With a 3-ball, 2-strike full count, Pearce hits the grand slam walk-off. Three days later, Toronto is at home against the Angels and trailing 10–4 in the bottom of the ninth. Toronto rallies to close the deficit to 10–7 and loads the bases with Pearce coming up. He hits his second walk-off grand slam in three days. Pearce is one of only three players to have two walk-off grand slams in a career (the others are equally obscure players). This is known as the ultimate grand slam, a walk-off that erases a three-run deficit! Quite rare, although David Bote of Chicago’s northside minor league team hit one in August 2018 for a 4–3 win.
One of the beauties of baseball is the lack of a game clock. It is rare to get a walk-off winner in other sports because there usually will be some time left for the other team. The famous ‘Paxson for three’ that won the Bulls NBA championship in 1993 occurred with 3.9 seconds left on the clock; Phoenix still had a chance to win. There were 5.2 seconds left when Michael Jordan made his last shot as a Chicago Bull, the shot that won the championship against Utah in 1998. The clock did expire on Doug Flutie’s famous 1984 Hail Mary touchdown pass, making it a true walk-off football win.
Back to Casey, is he able to deliver the walk-off hit for the Mudville nine?
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.
And the answer is no.