There is an old saying from Tim Kurkjian that baseball is the greatest game there is, because “every night you go to the ballpark, you might see something you’ve never seen before.”
For the thousands of fans who piled into Citizens Bank Park on Monday night to see the Philadelphia Phillies take on the Boston Red Sox, that was certainly the case.
With the game knotted at 2-2 after nine innings, the game went to the tenth. The Phillies held the Red Sox scoreless in the top of the tenth, and came to bat in the bottom of the frame hoping to send the hometown fans happy.
They did, in most improbable fashion.
The inning began with Brandon Marsh as the automatic, “ghost runner” on second base. Boston reliever Jordan Hicks walked Otto Kemp, and then his first pitch to Max Kepler was a slider in the dirt that got by catcher Carlos Narvaez, allowing both Marsh and Kemp to advance.
Boston then chose to intentionally walk Kepler to load the bases for Edmundo Sosa, who had pinch-hit for Bryson Stott earlier in the game.
That’s when this happened:
Sosa looked to swing at a pitch off the plate, but immediately gestured to home plate umpire Quinn Wolcott, and then Narvaez. As you can see from the replays, Sosa’s bat caught Narvaez’s catcher’s mitt.
The play was reviewed, and the ruling came in: Catcher’s interference. That sent Sosa to first and advanced the runners, forcing Marsh home with the winning run.
As noted by MLB.com, it was the first walk-off catcher’s interference play since August 1, 1971, when the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Cincinnati Reds. In that game, Dodgers outfielder Willie Crawford drew an interference call against Johnny Bench to end the game.
But consider what else went into the play between the Phillies and the Red Sox. Not only did you have the automatic, “ghost” runner score the winning run — a rule that was instituted for the 2020 season — but the play was also determined via video review, which went into effect for the 2014 season.
So you have a walk-off catcher’s interference play that scored the automatic runner in extra innings, confirmed by video review.
Like Kurkjian wrote years ago, we’ve never seen that before.
