The (baseball) Minneapolis Miracle
Down 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth, with two away and nobody on, it looked like it for the Minnesota Twins in their matchup against Kansas City. Yet, after a hit by pitch, single and walk, Kody Clemens stepped up to the plate as the winning run against new pitched Matt Strahm. It didn’t start out the way the son of MLB icon Roger Clemens would have wanted it to, as he took a strike and hit a foul ball. Yet, on the third pitch, Clemens uncorked a walk-off grand slam into the right center field seats, winning the matchup for the Twins.
On that play, history was made and added to. The slam was the 34th Ultimate Grand Slam in MLB history, a rare walk-off grand slam hit when down by three runs. And in addition to joining that elite club, Clemens became the sixth player in history to do so down to his team’s last strike. The company he joins is formed by Roger Freed (1979), Dick Schofield (1986), Alan Trammell (1988), Chris Hoiles (1996), and David Bote (2018). But what separates Clemens from that group is that he became the FIRST player, in the HISTORY of Major League Baseball, to hit a two out, Ultimate Grand Slam on an 0-2 COUNT. Occurrences like this are what makes baseball fun to watch, and why we tune in every day each summer for more.
