1993 World Series: Walking Off on Wild Thing

The Teams
American League: Toronto Blue Jays (95-67) - Second World Series (Won in 1992)
National League: Philadelphia Phillies (97-65) - Fifth World Series (Won in 1980)

What Happened
After winning the World Series in 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays did the unthinkable: they added two future Hall of Famers to their already potent lineup. After adding Paul Molitor in the offseason and Rickey Henderson during a midseason trade, the Blue Jays surprised no one by getting back to the World Series.

What was surprising was their opponents. While both the Braves and Giants won more than 100 games in the National League in 1993, it was the Phillies who ended up in the World Series. Center fielder Lenny Dykstra led the offense with 143 runs scored - the most in the National League since 1932 - and led the team in tobacco stains, though it was a tough battle. Between the wads of tobacco, then endless mullets, and the surprising number of potbellies, the Phillies looked more like an over-40 slowpitch softball team than a National League pennant winner.

Fittingly, then, the 1993 series had a lot of games with scores that looked like softball scores. The first two games - an 8-5 Toronto win followed by a 6-4 Philadelphia triumph - were nothing compared to the manic games that took place in Philadelphia. Toronto won Game 3, scoring 10 runs despite having AL batting champ John Olerud on the bench because of the lack of a DH in NL parks.

And then came Game 4. Crazy, maniacal Game 4. With a steady drizzle falling throughout the night, the pitchers had no shot. Both starters were gone by the third, which ended with Toronto ahead 7-6. The Phillies then dominated the middle innings, taking a 14-9 lead into the eighth inning. Toronto started to chip away, in the eighth, with Molitor driving in a run to make it 14-10. Then, Phildelphia brought in closer Mitch Williams. Nicknamed "Wild Thing" in honor the character from Major League - and because of his off-balance follow-through and inconsistent inability to find the strike zone - Williams drove Phillie fans crazy all season long, making all 43 of his saves gut-wrenching. On this night, he was asked to get five outs. He got two, but not before the Blue Jays scored five more runs to take a 15-14 lead. After the chaotic top of the 8th, the teams surprisingly went scoreless there rest of the way, but Toronto's 15-14 victory still stands as the highest-scoring World Series game of all time.

With the Phillies facing elimination and their bullpen completely taxed, Curt Schilling took matters into his own hands, reminding America what good pitching looked like by shutting out the Blue Jays on five hits. Still, the Blue Jays weren't worried, as they were heading back to Toronto needing just one win to wrap up their second straight title.

It's possible that they weren't worried even after the Phillies scored five runs in the top of the seventh of Game 6, either. Because while the Phillies were ahead, they were also in a save situation, and that meant the Wild Thing was coming into the game. I can't be certain, but this might have been the first save situation in World Series history where the team with the lead was more worried than the trailing team.

Rickey Henderson, the man who made an art form out of the walk, drew the least surprising leadoff walk ever to open the bottom of the ninth. Williams fell off the mound on the fourth pitch, and as Henderson jogged to first, Schilling hid his head in a towel on the Philadelphia bench, while Joe Carter clapped his hands on the Toronto one. It's like they both knew. A flyout, and then Molitor lined a single to center. The two Hall of Famers, then, had just made their acquisitions worthwhile. They were on base when Carter came to the plate. He took a couple of pitches that were way out of the zone, fouled off a couple other pitches, waited. Then he got one that broke inside and down, but not far enough in or far enough down. He swung, pulling it on a line to deep left. Normally, a right handed batter hitting a ball like that ends up pulling it violently foul, but not this time. This time, Carter's line drive stayed just straight enough, staying just high enough.

After throwing the pitch, Williams almost immediately started walking off the mound toward his dugout. He knew. As he approached the steps, he took one last look over his shoulder, but nothing had changed. He was off the field before Carter got to second base, in the clubhouse before Carter had gotten to third. He was never seen again in a Philadelphia uniform.

As Carter's hit cleared the wall, he started bouncing up and down. Carter bounced/leaped/jogged around the bases, waiving his arms like he needed the momentum to get all the way there. He jumped on home plate and was carried off on his teammates' shoulders, the man of the hour.  It was only the second time a World Series had ended on a home run, but the first time the hitting team was trailing at the time.

MVP
Paul Molitor played in five postseason series in his career. His batting average in the first four, in order: .250, .316, .355, .391. Not bad, but nothing compared to what he did in the 1993 series, when he batted .500 with 8 runs batted in, and half of his 12 hits were extra-base hits. He even played two flawless games at third base after not having played the position in three years. An investment worth every penny.

Scores
(Home team shaded; winners in Bold)

Philadelphia	5	6	3	14	2	6
Toronto	8	4	10	15	0	8

The List
I'm ranking all the World Series, from worst to best. Here are the ones I've done so far:

18. 1993 - Toronto (A) def. Philadelphia (N) 4-2
19. 1956 - New York (A) def. Brooklyn (N) 4-3
Numbers 20-29
Numbers 30-39
Numbers 40-49
Numbers 50-59
Numbers 60-69
Numbers 70-79
Numbers 80-89
Numbers 90-99
Numbers 100-107

August 27, 1982: Catch him if you can

MILWAUKEE - The Oakland A's were terrible in 1979. Like 108 losses terrible. Five years removed from a a third straight World Series title, free agency and owner Charlie Finley's penny-pinching had destroyed the dynasty and nearly the franchise.

Before the 1980 season, the A's brought in Billy Martin, recently fired by New York, to manage. Martin looked around at the roster and couldn't have liked what he saw. It was filled with past flops and future failures. There was little reason for optimism.

Except in left field. There, Martin saw a young, brash, talented player, a player unlike any that had ever graced a Major League field. He was fast, he could hit, and he had such a pronounced crouch at the plate that pitchers couldn't help but walk him. Martin knew he had something in Rickey Henderson, and something was better than nothing.

So Martin came up with a plan. He pulled Henderson aside in spring training and laid it out for him in simple terms. The first seven innings of every game, Martin said, belonged to Henderson. He could do whatever he wanted at the plate - and, more importantly, on the basepaths - without looking for signals from the manager. Martin just asked that Henderson concede to him for the last two innings.

Given unprescedented latitude, Henderson ran wild, stealing 100 bases and scoring 111 runs. Martin coaxed the rest of the lineup to 83 wins, an improvement of 29 games, as the A's finished second. They made the playoffs the following year, and while the strike kept Henderson from repeating his numbers, he was a better player across the board.

In 1982, Billyball was played to its extreme. Henderson had virtually no talented teammates left around him; the young pitching staff that had carried the A's through the 80 and 81 seasons had broken down. Oakland plummeted back to 5th place. But Rickey kept running. He led the league in walks, mostly because he was the only dangerous hitter in the lineup, and he kept making opponents pay for walking him. By August, he was already at 100 stolen bases.

On August 27 against the eventual AL champion Brewers, Henderson's season reached its pinnacle. His steal of second in the third inning gave him 119 steals for the season, breaking the modern-day single-season record held by Lou Brock. Most impressively, he had broken the record despite the fact his stolen bases were literally his team's only offensive threat, and he did it with more than a month left in the season.

Henderson stole three more bases that game and ended up with 130 for the season, setting the modern stolen base mark at an impossibly high number. He'd eventually set the career stolen base record, among several other Major League records, on his way to the Hall of Fame.

Billyball came to an end in 1982, as Martin was let go after the season. Henderson followed him out the door two years later, returning in time to join a new A's dynasty in the late 80s. While Henderson played at an extraordinarily high level for most of his career, the days of Billyball were behind him. But nobody forgot the days where everybody knew he would walk, then steal second, but nobody could do anything about it.

May 1, 1991: Run, Rickey, Run

OAKLAND, Calif. - The runner takes a few steps away from the base as the pitcher looks back at him. The shortstop takes a couple steps towad second to try to draw the runner back. The pitcher looks toward home, and the runner inches closer to the line. The pitcher lifts his leg. The runner is off. The pitch, the catcher catching it and rising from his croutch, firing. The runner going toward third in a blur. The head-first slide, a pile of dust, ball and runner meeting at the bag.

Just as Babe Ruth and the home run, Rickey Henderson is synonymous with the stolen base. By his fourth season, 1982, when he stole a staggering and record-shattering 130 bases, it seemed like only a matter of time until he held the all-time record. Even Lou Brock, the record holder with 938, identified Henderson in 1981 as the man who would break his record. So when he slid safely into third in the fourth inning of the game on May 1, 1991, ahead of the throw from Yankees catcher Matt Nokes, Henderson lifted third base out from its peg in the field and held it aloft, celebrating the most inevetable record in major league history.

If Henderson had retired on the spot that day, safely with 939 stolen bases, he'd have been elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot and celebrated as the best leadoff hitter of all time. But Henderson kept playing, and kept playing, and kept playing. He broke Brock's record in his 12th season in the Majors (it took Brock 18 years to get to that number), then played 12 more. His final total of 1,406 steals was 50 percent higher than the previous record.

Henderson's accomplishment has to rank as the single most unbreakable hitting record in major league history. For perspective, he has more stolen bases than the top three leaders among active players combined. For good measure, he also set the all-time records for runs scored and walks, though Barry Bonds passed him in the latter category. So at retirement he had gotten on base more often, stolen more bases, and scored more runs than any player in history - in other words, the exact three things leadoff hitters are asked to do.

A scout once determined that it took Henderson 2.9 seconds to steal second base, and that no pitcher/catcher combination could get the ball to second in faster than 3.0 seconds. In other words, as long as he stayed true to his form, he could not be caught stealing. Or perhaps former teammate Mitchell Page said it best: "It wasn't until I saw Rickey that I understood what baseball was about. Rickey Henderson is a run, man. That's it. When you see Rickey Henderson, I don't care when, the score's already 1–0."

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HONORABLE MENTION:
May 1, 1991: ARLINGTON, Tex - It would take quite an achievement to overshadow Rickey Henderson's shining moment in 1991. Nolan Ryan obliged. At the age of 44, a shocking 25 years after his Major League debut, Ryan stole the attention from Henderson's record by notching his 7th no-hitter, leading the Rangers to a 3-0 victory over the Blue Jays. Ryan and Henderson are forever linked in baseball history, and not just because of their ability to play well deep into their 40s and for achieving career milestones on the same day. The year before, Henderson was Ryan's 5,000th strikeout victim. Henderson took the milestone in stride, saying afterwards, "If he ain't struck you out, you ain't nobody."