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In-Spiers-Rational

Well, kudos to commenter JB from Long Island. He remembered that Bill Spiers once won a game with a walk-off bunt, one of a slightly more daring variety, on August 18, 1995.

The scenario was that the Mets and Dodgers were tied, 2-2, in the bottom of the ninth inning, with Ryan Thompson on third base and one out. The manager, Dallas Green, was a slightly more daring skipper than Willie Randolph and elected to gamble to try to win the game. It was a particularly fitting maneuver that he planned to execute considering that the Mets had just traded their best bunter, Brett Butler, who was in the Dodgers lineup that day.

Green sent up Spiers, who was in a David Wright-esque 0-15 slump but an ideal candidate for a suicide squeeze. With Thompson charging from third base on the first pitch, Spiers bunted past Dodgers moundsman Mark Guthrie, and Thompson scored the winning run.

"Finessed to perfection" as New York Times writer George Willis described it and I think that description accurately suits Tuesday night's win as well.

The Truly Metspirational know...In honor of JB from Long Island, we can tell you that 3 JB's have had walk-off hits for the Mets: Jerry Buchek, Jeromy Burnitz, and Jim Beauchamp.

Comments

Metstradamus said…
And guess what the trivia question was during the game today? I thought that Ron Darling was going to mention you, because he knew the answer, and said that he knew it because he was on the computer. But somebody else had sent it to him.
3:01 PM
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