Just Another Late Inning Go-Ahead Run
Just Another Late Inning Go-Ahead Run
By Paul Ruta
Any Toronto Blue Jays fan will tell you about Joe Carter’s walk-off homer that clinched the 1993 World Series. They’ll tell you about José Bautista’s bat flip in Texas—it’s the GIF that keeps on giving. But the plays that really stick in the imagination of a true fan tend not to be the most historic or iconic.
For me, one of those is a spectacular play at the plate in a relatively meaningless interleague game by a player whose portrait will never hang in Cooperstown. My son and I watched it on a motel TV in Thunder Bay, Ontario, eating fried chicken on our beds while a storm outside shrink-wrapped our rented SUV in a quarter-inch of ice.
In spring 2017 my son had graduated from the University of British Columbia and the two of us were on a weeklong road trip back to Toronto in a Mazda filled with the usual college guy stuff: plastic bags of insufficiently laundered clothes, hockey equipment that has never been laundered, a hookah and a couple of books. April weather in Vancouver was typically balmy and the flowers and leaves were out. It stayed mostly sunny and dry for the four-day drive through the Rockies and across the Prairies as well. Smooth sailing, meteorologically speaking.
The minute we crossed the Manitoba border into Ontario, though, we entered some kind of alternative Twilight Zone reality where, no matter what time of year it is, it’s always a crappy day in February. It was freezing. There was snow. We assumed, as naive Torontonians, that this weather must be joking and would soon give it up. We stopped for lunch in the town of Kenora and learned that the weather wasn’t joking. In fact, we heard rumors of worse weather on the way—rumors that turned out to be all too true.
By the time we reached Thunder Bay, on the western edge of Lake Superior, rain was pelting in sideways and froze as it landed, coating everything, turning the entire city into a museum of glass. We were lucky to find a comfortable motel with a KFC around the corner. We made it back to the room with a bucket in time for the game.
The Blue Jays were playing the Cardinals in St. Louis. It was an uneventful game, heading into the seventh inning tied at two. There hadn’t been much action for commentators Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler to discuss except to mention the arrival of outfielder Chris Coghlan, who had signed with the Jays two weeks before. Coghlan had been National League Rookie of the Year in 2009 with the Marlins, then found himself with the Cubs when they won the 2016 World Series. Otherwise he was an unremarkable player with a career .258 batting average.
Unremarkable, that is, until the top of the seventh inning.
Coghlan reached on a walk before Kevin Pillar ripped a double (later scored a triple) off the right field wall. When St. Louis outfielder Stephen Piscotty misplayed the ball, the Jays saw their chance to score and waved home the runner.
Piscotty’s throw was weak and bounced several times, forcing catcher Yadier Molina to move away from the plate by a couple of steps towards third base.
By this time the sprinting Coghlan had rounded third base and was heading for a sure collision with Molina—and a sure out—when the most remarkable, most hitherto un-Coghlan-like thing happened: he went airborne. Vaulting clean over the crouching Molina in an acrobatic head-first dive, he touched the vacated home plate squarely with one hand, scoring the go-ahead run, rolled into a forward somersault, sprang to his feet in one smooth movement and trotted nonchalantly to the dugout.
The crowd in the stands went nuts.
From our motel room we could almost hear television sets across Canada exploding with excitement.
Yadier Molina never knew what didn’t hit him.
Bucky and Pat said that they’d never seen a run-scoring play quite like that before—and those guys have seen everything in baseball.
The Blue Jays went on to win in extra innings, not that anybody remembers that detail about the game. The sad coda to his highlight-reel performance is that Chris Coghlan was released by the Jays that August, after less than five months with the team, effectively ending his major league career.
In the morning, it took half an hour to chip off enough ice with a credit card to open the Mazda’s door. (Three guesses where the snow brush was.) That day we snaked along the slippery Trans-Canada Highway as far as Marathon, a gold-mining village not quite halfway around the top of Lake Superior. At midday we learned that the provincial police planned to close the highway because of unsafe driving conditions. We had no choice but to spend the night in Marathon.
Things seemed to have cleared up by morning and the roads reopened. However, once we were gassed up and back on the highway with a pair of large coffees and a box of donuts, the weather turned again. What we had hoped would be a scenic drive along the north shore of Lake Superior turned into a daylong white-knuckle express on the winding Trans-Canada Highway, following the taillights of 18-wheelers in near-whiteout conditions. We never so much as caught a glimpse of the lake the whole way to Sault Ste. Marie.
My son and I still reminisce about that trip. The majesty of Banff and Lake Louise; the modern architecture of Calgary; the wide-open Prairies and the sunshine and warmth of Winnipeg—and how we somehow navigated that improbable Northern Ontario ice storm without landing in a ditch.
And, of course, we’ll never forget Chris Coghlan’s giant leap into the hearts and minds of baseball fans across the country.
Paul Ruta is a Canadian living in Hong Kong with a Louisville Slugger signed by Cal Ripken, Jr., and his wife. He reads prose for No Contact magazine.
Elliot Lin is a college student who spends their free time musing about sports and how they shape or reflect identity. You can find their other baseball-related illustrations here, or on twitter @hxvphaestion and Tumblr.
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