May 25, 2012
Now Available for 2012 THT Essentials: Now Available The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012, an annual "must buy" for all baseball fans, is now shipping. Read this article to learn more about it.
THT's latest e-book Most Recent Comments
And That Happened (1)
10th anniversary: Shawn Green’s big day (1) 10th anniversary: Giambi-Mabry trade (4) And That Happened (4) 20th anniversary: Angels bus crash (4)  
Lucas Apostoleris
Rich Barbieri John Barten Brian Borawski Vince Caramela Chris Jaffe Brad Johnson Mat Kovach Kevin Lai Myron Logan Chris Lund Bruce Markusen Jeff Moore Troy Patterson Harry Pavlidis Dave Studeman Steve Treder David Wade And here's the full roster. Dish TV Packages options for all televised baseball games.
Or you can search by:
 All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Part of the USA Today Sports Media Group |
Wednesday, February 22, 201210,000 days since the Steve Garvey game10,000 days ago was one of the most dramatic and heart-pounding games in baseball postseason history, and it featured one of the greatest clutch performances any player ever had in one game. It truly was one of the greatest games of the 1980s. Unless you’re a Cubs fans. Then it just plain sucked, and sucked, and sucked some more. It was Oct. 6, 1984, and the Cubs and Padres squared off in Game Four of the best-of-five NLCS. The Cubs had already won two games, so a victory in this contest would give them the franchise its first pennant since 1945. Early on, it looked like San Diego would be able to frustrate Chicago’s hopes. In the bottom of the third inning, the Padres drew first blood with a pair of runs scoring on a Tony Gwynn sacrifice fly and a Steve Garvey RBI double. That early lead wouldn’t last long as back-to-back home runs by Jody Davis and Leon Durham in the top of the fourth gave the Cubs a 3-2 lead and put them just 18 outs from the pennant. Chicago kept that slender lead until the fifth, when Garvey hit a two-out RBI single to even the game, 3-3. Two innings later, San Diego went ahead on another RBI single by—who else?—Garvey. In three straight at-bats, he’d bedeviled the Cubs with three straight run-scoring hits. His single also sent another runner to third, who scored shortly after on a passed ball. With just two innings left to play, the Padres led, 5-3. Ah, but the Cubs weren’t done yet. In the eighth, two singles and a double turned into a pair of runs, and re-tied the game at five runs apiece. That’s where it stood entering the bottom of the ninth. Cub relief ace Lee Smith, who’d pitched the eighth for the Cubs, came out again to try his hand in the ninth. He fanned Alan Wiggins and then walked Gwynn. So the tying run was on, but extra innings were just two outs away. Under normal circumstances, you had to like Chicago’s odds to force overtime in this game. But this wasn’t normal circumstance. After Gwynn walked, the worst thing that could happen to the Cubs on the day happened: It was Garvey’s turn to bat. He already had three hits and three RBIs and had played a role in every Padre rally so far. This didn’t look good for Chicago, not at all. After taking Smith’s first pitch for ball one, Garvey liked the second served offered to him. That pitch, the 30th by Smith on the day, was right in Garvey’s wheelhouse, and he blasted it over the fence for a walk-off home run. The Padres were ecstatic. San Diego manager Dick Williams was especially thrilled. In his playing days, he’d been a part of the 1951 Dodgers who lost the pennant to the Giants on Bobby Thomson’s famous walk-off home run. In his autobiography, Williams would say that when Garvey’s homer left the yard, he finally knew how those Giants felt back in 1951. The series was now all tied up, and the Padres were in far higher spirits. It came as little surprise to anyone that San Diego won the next game and clinched its first pennant. The Cubs lost their chance back then, and still haven’t won a pennant in the 10,000 days since then. Aside from that “day-versary,” many other baseball events have their day-versary or anniversary today. Here they are, with the better ones in bold if you’d prefer to just skim the list. Click for more... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||