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Monday, August 18, 2008 --- 93 days ago http://feeds.nydailynews.com/~r/nydnrss/blogs/touchingbase/~3/367772604/walk-thi
| Something interesting just happened in the last baseball game of the weekend, and it bears mentioning: Ahead 7-3 with the bases loaded, the Tampa Bay Rays elected to intentionally walk Josh Hamilton, bringing home a run and putting the tying run on base. Rays manager Joe Maddon’s unorthodox strategy paid off, as Dan Wheeler struck out Marlon Byrd to end the game, a 7-4 Tampa Bay win. Of course, if you’re like me, you immediately wonder: when was the last time there was an intentional walk with the bases loaded? Well, I can tell you: I actually remembered that it was Buck Showalter who made the decision to intentionally walk Barry Bonds with the bases loaded. But I did not remember, and had to look up on Baseball-Reference’s invaluable Play Index, that it was May 28, 1999, that Gregg Olson was the Arizona pitcher or that Brent Mayne made the last out. In this case, Bonds represented the winning run at the plate, but the Diamondbacks beat the Giants, 8-6. Before that? The Play Index, which goes back to 1956, didn’t list another intentional walk with the bases loaded, though it did list one particularly interesting intentional walk - on June 3, 2002, at Yankee Stadium, Roger Clemens issued an intentional walk to Gary Matthews Jr. on which the fourth ball was a wild pitch, bringing home Jay Gibbons with the first run of the game in the second inning. That’s an all-Mitchell Report play, by the way, with Clemens, Matthews and Gibbons. T ... |
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