Skip to main content

Boston Bean Party

Belated congratulations to Houston Astros do-everything man, Craig Biggio, for surpassing Don Baylor as the modern record-holder for most times hit by a pitch. It is a mark that is painful to think about, but admirable because it takes a heck of a lot of courage to stand in at home plate and get plunked 268 times for the good of your team.

I have a feeling that Daryl Boston is aware of that because he is the holder of a significant Mets distinction. To this point, he is the only player in team history to win a game via a walk-off hit-by pitch.

It took Boston more than 500 big league games and 1500 plate appearances before he was tagged for the first time, in the second game of a Mets doubleheader with the Cubs, on June 13, 1990, by pitcher Mike Harkey. Boston made up for years of lost time by getting drilled again, two days later, against the Pirates. Those are not the HBPs of which we speak.

Boston would not get zinged again until nearly two years later (April 17, 1992) and it is the one that followed that one, on April 23 that is relevant to our cause, because it got the Mets a 1-0 13-inning victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. This was the result of a pretty good pitchers duel between Bret Saberhagen, Donovan Osborne, and the relievers that followed. The last hurler to the hill was Cardinals southpaw Juan Agosto in the unlucky 13th.

The key to the rally was a pair of one out singles by Dave Magadan and Junior Noboa, and a subsequent steal of third by Mr. Perfect Walk-Off Met, Rodney McCray. Fearful for some reason of pitching to Charlie O'Brien, Cardinals manager Joe Torre requested an intentional walk, to get a lefty-lefty matchup of Agosto vs Boston. The strategy failed, when on a 1-2 pitch, Agosto's pitch came too far inside, clipped Boston's jersey and somehow rolled down the inside of his shirt, to give the Mets their seventh win in their last eight games.

The moment was a hit (pun intended) with his teammates, as Saberhagen told reporters after the game that it was the funniest HBP he'd ever seen. It gave Boston four career HBP's, half of his final total of eight, and at the time, he only had seven fewer HBP's than Biggio did. Incidentally, the 1992 season was the last time that Biggio was hit fewer than eight times in a season (he was plunked seven times).


True Metstaceans Know... Three good pieces of trivia on this subject ...
1)Boston had only been hit once by a lefthanded pitcher prior to this walk-off HBP. The pitcher was former Met Doug Simons (no relation) , who was then with the Expos.
2)Craig Biggio has never been hit by a pitch in a Mets walk-off win, and
3) The Mets have as many walk-off HBPs as they do walk-off triples. Think about the difficulty of getting a walk-off triple and that should make sense to you.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Best Games I Know: Phillies (Updated)

  The best wins against the Phillies in Mets history …   May 5, 2022 – Mets 8, Phillies 7 The Mets score 7 runs in the 9 th inning to overcome a 7-1 deficit and win in Philadelphia.   April 29, 2022 – Mets 3, Phillies 0 Tylor Megill and 4 Mets relievers combine on the second no-hitter in franchise history.   September 22, 2016 – Mets 9, Phillies 8 (11) The Mets tie it in the 9 th on a Jose Reyes home run and win it in the 11 th on a 3-run home run by Asdrubal Cabrera.   July 17, 2016 - Mets 5, Phillies 0 Jacob deGrom pitches a one-hitter. Only hit is a single by Zach Eflin in the 5 th inning.   August 24, 2015 – Mets 16, Phillies 7 David Wright homers in his first at-bat in more than 4 months. The Mets hit a team-record 8 home runs.   July 5, 2012 – Mets 6, Phillies 5 The Mets score 2 runs with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9 th to beat Jonathan Papelbon. The winning run scores on David Wright’s bloop down the right field line.   August 13

The best Mets ejections I know

When you think of the Mets and famous ejections, I'm guessing you first think of the famous Bobby Valentine mustache game, when after Valentine got tossed, he returned to the dugout in disguise. You know it. You love it. I remember being amused when I asked Bobby V about it while we were working on Baseball Tonight, how he simply said "It worked. We won the game." (true) But the Bobby V mustache game of June 9, 1999 is one of many, many memorable Mets ejection stories. And now thanks to Retrosheet and the magic of Newspapers.com , we have a convenient means for being able to share them. Ever since Retrosheet's David Smith recently announced that the Retrosheet ejection database was posted online , I've been a kid in a candy store. I've organized the data and done some lookups of media coverage around the games that interested me post. Those newspaper accounts fill in a lot of blanks. Without further ado (and with more work to do), here are some of my findings

Walk-Offs in Movies, TV, and Other Places

Note: I'm leaving this post up through the end of the week, a) because I don't have time to pump out something new and b)because I was hoping to build a really good list of entertainment industry walk-offs...so if you're looking for something new, check back on Monday or so... Of course, if there's a major trade or move, I'll adjust and try to post something... In the meantime, click on the "Table of Contents" link as well. It has been updated. SPOILER ALERT: Read at your own risk Caught the ending of "A League of Their Own" on one of the movie channels the other day and it got me to thinking that it would be fun to compile a list of walk-offs from movies, television, and other forms of entertainment. Here's the start, and only the start, as I spent about 30 minutes or so thinking it over Help me fill in the blanks by filling out the comments section. "A League of Their Own"-- Racine beats Rockford for the All-American Girls Profess