The advent of the ghost runner made it possible to score a run in baseball without ever getting on base: In extra innings now, a bunt and a sac fly will do the trick. To truncate years-old discourse, this is a clear affront to the principles of baseball. What the Philadelphia Phillies did to the Boston Red Sox in the bottom of the 10th inning of Monday night’s game is more old-fashioned than that.
It has always been possible to score a run in baseball without ever hitting the ball into play, though it requires so many walks—or so many wild pitches—within an inning that its accomplishment could hardly be credited to the hitting team. To do it requires the full cooperation, intentional or not, of the opposing pitcher. It would be more accurate to place the bulk of the responsibility for what fans had to witness on Monday night not on the Phillies, who were attempting to commit one atrocity and instead committed another, or the ghost runner, though it lowered the difficulty by one walk, but on the Red Sox and relief pitcher Jordan Hicks.
People will naturally fixate on the walk-off catcher’s interference that won the Phillies the game, but one mustn’t overlook the events that preceded it. With the game tied 2-2 going into the bottom of the 10th, Otto Kemp led off the inning for the Phillies, with the speedy ghost/zombie/what-have-you of Brandon Marsh on second. Kemp showed a bunt; the Phillies were attempting the bunt–sac fly tactic. But Hicks rejected Kemp’s attempted sacrifice by throwing four consecutive noncompetitive balls. Kemp gladly took the walk, bringing Max Kepler to the plate.
Hicks immediately followed this walk with a pitch so wild that it nearly clipped Kepler’s back foot; the runners advanced to third and second, respectively. With first base open, the Red Sox chose to intentionally walk Kepler, leaving the bases loaded with no outs.
Having opened the inning with five straight balls, Hicks now began to settle down. He managed an 0-2 count on pinch-hitter Edmundo Sosa, then threw a 100-mph fastball over the top of the strike zone to make it 1-2. He threw another fastball in the same spot that Sosa fouled off; this would be the only time the entire inning that a Phillies batter would actually make contact with a baseball.
The fifth pitch of the at-bat was an 87-mph slider that Hicks threw well off the plate. Sosa checked his swing, and home-plate umpire Quinn Wolcott called the pitch a ball, but video review confirmed that Sosa’s bat had made contact with catcher Carlos Narváez’s glove during the aborted swing. That Sosa had not actually swung at the pitch was irrelevant, and he walked off the Red Sox via catcher’s interference.
“To be honest, this feels exactly like a home run,” Sosa said. “The most important thing about it is that we end up winning the game, and that’s what we went out to do.”
Feelings aside, and adopting the strictest possible definition of the word “special,” Sosa’s walk-off is more special than a home run. Here is a condensed summary of the inning: a four-pitch walk to a player showing bunt, a wild pitch, an intentional walk, and then a walk-off catcher’s interference on a pitch that the batter didn’t even swing at. The Phillies won the game 3-2. This was the first walk-off catcher’s interference since 1971, when the Dodgers walked off the Reds after Johnny Bench interfered with Willie Crawford. We have all been blessed to witness history this day.
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