Daniel Hudson only was supposed to face the first two batters, or so went the plan.
The Nationals, leading 6-2 in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, were taking no chances. Hudson would get George Springer and José Altuve, the two right-handed hitters at the top of the Astros’ lineup. Sean Doolittle would replace him to maintain the platoon advantage against the left-handed-hitting Michael Brantley.
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“They had called down right when Huddy came into the game,” Doolittle says. “They said I was going to have Brantley. So I got up, and that was the first thing that went through my head: ‘Oh my gosh, I could get the last out in the World Series.'”
Through 115 Series, only 94 pitchers have claimed that achievement. Some were Hall of Famers who seemed destined for the moment — Mariano Rivera closed out four Series as a reliever, Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson two each as a starter. Others were journeymen such as Hudson, who inherited the role by chance, then refused to yield. The season-long churn of pitching staffs and the use of starters as relievers in October both factor into the path to the final out. The last nine pitchers to celebrate the achievement did not begin the season as their team’s closer.
This is a story about memories — memories that remain vivid months and years later, memories of the last 10 pitchers to finish a World Series. Not all Series end in a dogpile on the mound; nine of the 115 concluded on walk-off hits, with no pitcher recording a final out. Even for teams that celebrate with the traditional pitcher-catcher embrace, sometimes everything goes according to script, sometimes not.
The 2019 Nationals, improvisational until the end, fell into the latter category, surprising even Hudson, their makeshift closer.
Hudson, 33, needed only five pitches to pop up Springer and strike out Altuve, but still expected manager Davey Martinez to summon Doolittle for Brantley. “I thought he was coming in,” Hudson says. “I actually looked toward the dugout, and Davey pointed at me and told me I had it.”
The Nats were on the verge of bringing Washington, D.C., its first Series title since 1924, and Martinez was putting his trust in a two-time Tommy John surgery recipient working for his eighth major-league organization. Hudson had been released by the Angels in spring training before signing with the Blue Jays and getting traded to the Nationals. But Doolittle, turning to bullpen catcher Henry Blanco, could not disagree with the manager’s decision.
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“I looked at Henry and I said, ‘As much as I want to be out there, they’d be crazy to take him out,'” Doolittle recalls. “We were peeking into the dugout trying to see if there was any movement. There wasn’t. They called back and said, ‘Stay ready. You would have (Yordan) Álvarez if we get to that point.'”
For Álvarez to hit, Brantley, Alex Bregman and Yuli Gurriel would have needed to reach base. Doolittle decided to stop throwing during the Brantley at-bat, then resume playing catch if necessary. He would joke later that as Hudson pumped fastballs, he tried to signal to him telepathically to throw the same back-foot slider to Brantley he had used to strike out the Dodgers’ Corey Seager for the final out of Game 2 of the Division Series.
On 3-2, Hudson threw precisely that pitch. Brantley swung through it. Hudson flung his glove. Doolittle leaped into Blanco’s arms, then raced with his fellow relievers from the bullpen to the celebration on the mound.
“I wouldn’t change a thing about it,” Doolittle says. “That’s every reliever’s dream, every pitcher’s dream, to be on the World Series mound when you win the whole thing. But I was so happy for Huddy.”
Hudson, as he reflects on the sequence during spring training, speaks for every pitcher who has ever thrown the last pitch of a season.
“When you get a moment like that in your career, you’ve got to hold on to that memory, that experience, and just take it with you,” Hudson says.
The last nine pitchers to finish a World Series before him see it exactly the same way.
2018: Chris Sale, Red Sox. ‘Don’t trip on the way in.’
Sale was supposed to start the potential Game 5 clincher against the Dodgers, not finish it. But he had thrown just 17 innings in the final two months of the regular season and had not been particularly effective in the postseason. So, after the Red Sox won Game 4, manager Alex Cora called Sale and David Price into his office.
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The new plan: Price would start Game 5. Sale would be in the bullpen.
“We were like, ‘We’re in,'” Sale recalls. “Me and DP high-fived, hugged it out. I looked at him and said, ‘We’re going old-school tomorrow.'”
Old-school, by Sale’s definition, meant a return to his roots as a reliever, his role in his first two seasons with the White Sox. He already had pitched in relief once during the 2018 postseason, working a scoreless inning in front of closer Craig Kimbrel in the Division Series clincher over the Yankees.
Going into the potential World Series finale, Sale did not necessarily expect to be the closer, even though Kimbrel had endured a rocky postseason.
“We’re all just kind of sitting down there, as locked in as you’ve ever been in a baseball game, paying attention to every pitch,” Sale says. “Just kind of counting down, trying to figure out where you might be slotted in.”
Sale started warming up in the eighth, but after watching Joe Kelly strike out the side in to preserve the Sox’s 5-1 lead, he sat back down.
Then came the call for him to work the ninth, and the need to warm up again.
“I remember running in from the bullpen,” Sale says. “The only two things going through my mind were, I have a four-run lead and I have three outs to get. Don’t trip on the way in.”
He proceeded to avoid any stumbles, requiring only 15 pitches to strike out Justin Turner, Kiké Hernandez and Manny Machado. Red Sox catcher Christian Vázquez raced to the mound after Machado’s final, feeble swing, and Sale remembers experiencing the oddest sensation, as if time stood still.
“It was like the chain didn’t catch. It happened so slow for me,” Sale says. “It was almost like strike three, OK, click-click, game’s over, click-click, holy s—, we’re world champions, we just won the World Series. It was like a delay for me. I got the third out. I took a couple of steps. Then boom, it hit me.
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“I literally have chills right now thinking about it.”
2017: Charlie Morton, Astros. ‘It was kind of a blur.’
The morning of Game 7 against the Dodgers, Morton spotted Lance McCullers and his wife, Kara, walking around Los Angeles.
“I was like, ‘Man, I wonder what it feels like to be the guy that is going to have to start Game 7 of the World Series,’ not even thinking about the fact that I might actually be ending it,” Morton says.
Morton was coming off two excellent starts — five scoreless innings in Game 7 of the ALCS against the Yankees, one run in 6 1/3 innings in Game 4 of the World Series. His only previous relief appearance had been in the final outing of his rookie season in 2008. But manager AJ Hinch had told him: Be ready.
For Morton, then 33, to assume such a position of responsibility was something of a baseball miracle, considering his history of inconsistency and injury.
A 4.81 ERA with the Pirates in 2015 led to a trade to the Phillies. A torn left hamstring in his fourth start with the Phils ended his 2016 season. Undaunted, the Astros signed him to a two-year, $14 million, free-agent contract. As Morton recalls, “You couldn’t find a person who said that was a good move.”
His 2017 season didn’t start off so well, either: Morton had a 4.06 ERA when he made his 10th career trip to the injured list with a strained right lat that sidelined him from May 28 to July 6.
“I don’t know where I was in their plans going forward,” Morton says. “But I can tell you, I didn’t feel great about it.”
Sensing he was pitching for a spot on the postseason roster, Morton returned to produce a 3.34 ERA in his final 15 regular-season starts. He then capped off his brilliant October by allowing one run in the final four innings of Game 7.
The Astros’ title since has been tainted by commissioner Rob Manfred’s findings that the team engaged in illegal sign-stealing during the 2017 season and postseason. But for Morton, now with the Rays, the accomplishment marked a career breakthrough. He asked catcher Brian McCann to autograph a photo of their celebration after the final out.
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McCann was the Braves’ second-round pick in 2002, Morton the third-round choice. They played in rookie ball together. And McCann had caught Morton’s major-league debut with the Braves on June 14, 2008.
The keepsake will serve as a reminder.
“It was kind of a blur,” Morton says of Game 7. “I don’t really remember too much.”
2016: Mike Montgomery, Cubs. ‘Something every kid dreams of.’
On July 25, 2016, the Cubs traded future All-Star Gleyber Torres and three others to the Yankees for essentially one reason: So Aroldis Chapman, the potential free agent they were acquiring, could close out their first World Series title since 1908.
What happened? Baseball happened. The Indians’ Rajai Davis stunned Chapman by hitting a two-run homer to tie the score in Game 7 with two outs in the eighth inning. After perhaps the most famous rain delay in baseball history, the game moved to the 10th inning, with Carl Edwards replacing Chapman.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon had acknowledged that Montgomery was gassed in his pregame meeting with the Fox broadcast team. But after Game 7 there would be no tomorrow for a franchise that already had been waiting 108 years.
Montgomery warmed up four times — in the third, fifth, ninth and 10th innings. He finally entered with two outs, Davis on first and the Cubs leading, 8-7. Two pitches later he ended the drama, retiring Michael Martinez on a groundout to third.
In his shock Montgomery failed to seek out his catcher, Miguel Montero, breaking instinctively toward third then moving in the general direction of third baseman Kris Bryant and first baseman Anthony Rizzo, who were running toward each other.
Montgomery — whom the Cubs had acquired from the Mariners five days before landing Chapman — has grown even more fond of the moment over time. His trade last July from the Cubs to his original team, the Royals, gave him new perspective on his place in history.
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One day during spring training, Montgomery called a car dealership for an appointment to get his car serviced. The attendant asked if he was the guy who had thrown the last pitch of the ’16 Series.
“Yeah,” Montgomery said. “That’s me.”
Upon rejoining the Royals, his former minor-league teammate, Danny Duffy, wanted to hear all about the experience.
“He was like, ‘Dude, you got to do something that every kid dreams of,'” Montgomery recalls. “And I was like, ‘You’re right.’
“I hadn’t even talked about it for probably a year. It’s almost like you forget, especially when you’re in the grind of a season. The mental side is, ‘Don’t live in the past. Don’t live in the past.’ That’s true, but you also have to appreciate the past. You’ve got to appreciate the fact I was in the middle of some of the coolest moments in baseball history.”
2015: Wade Davis, Royals. ‘It was already over.’
By the time Davis took the mound for the 12th inning of Game 5 against the Mets, Citi Field was no longer rollicking the way it had been earlier in the night, when Matt Harvey was in peak Dark Knight form.
Harvey took a 2-0 lead into the ninth. The Mets seemed poised to return to Kansas City, trailing three games to two. But the Royals rallied against Harvey and Jeurys Familia to tie the score, then put up five runs in the 12th, leaving Davis to close out the Series in the oddest of scenes.
“The thing that stood out most is when I was running in, watching the Mets fans pour out of the stadium, and then have this eerie feeling, like it was already over,” Davis recalls. ‘The whole stadium was empty. There were a couple of thousand fans left, plus some of ours. It didn’t feel like there was any pressure anymore.”
“I’m expecting it to be this pressure moment: ‘This is it. Don’t blow it.’ Then you get out there and you’re like, ‘These guys think I’ve already it got it in the bag.’ And I started to believe it.”
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His teammates believed it, too. As the Royals rallied in the 12th, catcher Drew Butera sat on the bat rack next to pitching coach Dave Eiland, preparing to enter the game as the replacement for Salvador Pérez, who had been removed for pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson.
“Game’s over,” Butera said.
“No, no, no, don’t say that,” Eiland replied.
“Game’s over, Wade’s coming in,” Butera repeated. “They’ve got no shot.”
Butera proved correct. Davis —who had become the Royals’ full-time closer only after the team shut down Greg Holland in late September with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery — struck out Lucas Duda and Travis d’Arnaud, then allowed a single to Michael Conforto before striking out Wilmer Flores to secure the Royals’ first series title in 30 years.
Davis, now with the Rockies, says he has a replica of the World Series trophy and some photographs commemorating the title at his home. The Hall of Fame asked for his cap and other mementos.
“You’re sitting there and they’re saying, ‘Hey, can we have this?'” Davis recalls, chuckling. “Before you know it, half your stuff’s gone.”
2014: Madison Bumgarner, Giants. ‘You’re not trying to hold back.’
He already had thrown 254 innings on the season, including a complete-game shutout of the Royals in Game 5 of the Series. But Bumgarner was not worried about being too tired to pitch in relief in Game 7. He told his wife, Ali, and his manager, Bruce Bochy, that he felt good enough to start.
Bochy went with Tim Hudson, and Bumgarner endorsed the decision, saying, “I thought Huddy was going to have an unbelievable game.” Alas, Hudson lasted only 1 2/3 innings. Jeremy Affeldt held the Royals scoreless for the next 2 1/3. Bumgarner entered in the top of the fifth, with the Giants leading, 3-2.
No other pitcher would be needed.
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“That’s how good I felt physically, delivery, stuff,” Bumgarner says. “I know it was an unknown because you had to do it. But that’s as confident as I could be going into that situation. I felt 100 percent if I get in, I might finish.”
Bumgarner made only one request of Bochy before the game: Give me more time, twice as much time as you give a regular reliever. Allow me to go through my usual warmup, my usual routine.
“He did not. He gave me about three minutes,” Bumgarner recalls. “But we worked through it.”
He wound up pitching five scoreless innings, allowing just two hits and zero walks. But with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, trouble arose.
Alex Gordon’s single on an 0-1, 87-mph slider eluded center fielder Gregor Blanco, who got caught in between and was unable to handle the short hop. The ball rolled to the wall, where left fielder Juan Perez kicked it. Gordon raced to third, and a debate raged that entire offseason about whether he could have scored.
“The only thing I was nervous about was I wanted someone to pick the ball up,” Bumgarner says. “I didn’t care if he got a single, double, triple or whatever, just so long as we keep him from scoring.
“As a matter of fact, I was backing up home. And I was in (catcher) Buster (Posey)’s ear, talking about what we going to do to (Salvador) Pérez while the play was going on.”
Bumgarner would have preferred to win the left-left matchup with Gordon rather than face the right-handed hitting Pérez. But Pérez popped up on a 2-2 count — Bumgarner’s 68th pitch of the game, 291st of the Series and 702nd of the postseason.
“At that time of year,” Bumgarner says, “you’re not trying to hold back.”
2013: Koji Uehara, Red Sox. ‘I didn’t need to throw anymore.’
During the 2013 regular season, Uehara produced a 1.09 ERA, 101 strikeouts to nine walks and a 0.565 WHIP that remains a major-league record for a pitcher with at least 70 innings. He continued his excellence in the playoffs, allowing just one run in 13 2/3 innings and earning MVP of the American League Championship Series.
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Not bad, considering the Japanese right-hander only had become the Red Sox’s closer in July after two other relievers, Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey, struggled and then underwent season-ending surgeries.
His final appearance, against the Cardinals in Game 6 of the World Series, lacked competitive drama, coming with a 6-1 lead. But the moment was nonetheless electric, with the Fenway Faithful chanting Uehara’s first name as they counted down to the Red Sox clinching their first Series title at home in 95 years.
Uehara’s first reaction after striking out Matt Carpenter for the final out was also anything but ordinary.
“I realized that I didn’t need to throw anymore,” he says.
Uehara, then 38, took over as the Red Sox’s closer after season-ending injuries to Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey, then pitched a combined 88 innings between the regular season and postseason, by far the highest total of his major-league career (he was a starter his first seven seasons in Japan).
His statement, as relayed by Mikio Yoshimura, a Red Sox official who interpreted for Uehara, does not stem from the pitcher’s relief that the season was over. Rather, it reflects deeper happiness over what Uehara and the team had accomplished.
Yoshimura, who works as an Asian Business Development Specialist in the Red Sox’s corporate sponsorships and client services department, says he heard Uehara make the same comment many times previously to Japanese reporters. Usually the remark elicited laughter, making Yoshimura think the pitcher was half-joking.
But no, Uehara was serious.
“It came purely from my complete satisfaction … how fulfilled I was,” he says.
He pitched 10 seasons in Japan and nine more in the majors, and considers his strikeout of Carpenter the pinnacle of his career.
“I can still feel the ultimate happiness when I look back at that moment,” Uehara says.
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2012: Sergio Romo, Giants. ‘This is what I fought for.’
The first person Romo called after the final out was Ariel Gariano, a 14-year-old cancer patient who had become his inspiration. The second person he called was his father, Francisco.
“I told you,” Romo said. “I told you I was going to do this one day.”
Romo, then 28, wasn’t trying to agitate his father. He was merely recalling his days growing up in Brawley, Ca., playing catch with Francisco in the family’s backyard, telling him, “Hey dad, I want to make it to the big leagues.”
Accomplishing that goal did not come easily for Romo, the Giants’ 28th-round draft pick in 2005. He became the team’s closer in ’12 only after Brian Wilson underwent Tommy John surgery the first week of the season and Santiago Casilla struggled. But in completing the Giants’ World Series sweep of the Tigers at Detroit’s Comerica Park, Romo demonstrated the moxie that was as integral to his success as his wipeout slider.
The Giants led Game 4, 4-3. Romo had struck out Austin Jackson and Don Kelly for the first two outs of the ninth inning. Into the box stepped Miguel Cabrera, who was coming off the first Triple Crown season by a hitter since 1967, an achievement that would result in the first of his back-to-back MVP awards.
Before Game 1, Cabrera told Romo, “I’m ready for your slider.” Romo earned saves in Games 2 and 3 without facing the Tigers’ slugger. When their showdown finally occurred in Game 4, Romo opened with five straight sliders, refusing to blink.
Then, with the count 2-2, Romo threw one of the gutsier pitches in recent Series history — an 89-mph fastball that Cabrera took for strike three.
“To this day, it’s kind of surreal to think that was me, that I was able to do that,” says Romo, who remained with the Giants through 2016, and has since pitched for the Dodgers, Rays, Marlins and Twins.
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“But the sweetest part about it was, it had nothing to do with me. It was teammates pushing me forward. It was the promise I made to my dad. I thought, ‘This is what I fought for, moments like this.’
“To be able to answer the call, let alone just get it done, that’s everlasting. To rise to that challenge, especially when my team needed me to, I can’t be any prouder of myself for that.”
2011: Jason Motte, Cardinals. ‘Come get some, baby!’
The look is what Motte remembers — the look on catcher Yadier Molina’s face.
As soon as Motte saw left fielder Allen Craig catch the flyball that completed the Cardinals’ 6-2 victory over the Rangers in Game 7, the reliever spun quickly toward home plate to catch a glance of Molina.
“At that point, he was still kind of on his knees with his hands on his head,” Motte says. “As I look at him, he takes his mask off and we kind of lock eyes. He kind of gets up and starts running out to me. The image that I see, that I replay, honestly in my mind, is his beautiful, smiling face running out at me.”
Game 7 was devoid of late-inning drama — the Cardinals gradually built their lead after responding to the Rangers’ two-run first with two of their own that same inning. But then, almost nothing could compare to the theatrics of the previous night at Busch Stadium.
Game 6, capped off by David Freese’s walk-off homer in the 11th, had been one of the best, most emotional games in Series history. Among the numerous twists: a two-run, go-ahead homer Motte allowed to Josh Hamilton in the 10th inning.
Motte had not earned his first save until Aug. 28, shortly before the Cardinals removed Fernando Salas as their closer. But he had no difficulties in Game 7, needing only 11 pitches to finish the Rangers and trigger the Cardinals’ celebration.
“Come get some, baby!” Motte shouted as Molina raced toward the mound.
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Alas, Motte did not account for the rest of the team wanting some, too.
“As he jumped up, I completely forgot there were 20-something people coming from my left side. I got pretty much completely blind-sided and ended up on the bottom of a dogpile,” Motte says.
“The way I went down, my right arm went around Yadi. And the way I got hit from the side, I went down kind of awkwardly. I felt my arm pretty much on my thumb. I just remember being at the bottom of the pile, everyone screaming, yelling.”
The noise included Motte hollering in pain to Molina, trying to grab the catcher’s attention.
“What’s up?” Molina asked.
“I think I just broke my thumb,” Motte said.
“It’s OK, Papi,” Molina replied. “You’ve got three months to get better.”
2010: Brian Wilson, Giants. ‘Some other force was happening.’
Game 5, a glorious pitcher’s duel between the Giants’ Tim Lincecum and Rangers’ Cliff Lee, was tied 0-0 after six innings. Then, with two outs in the seventh, Edgar Renteria hit a three-run homer to put the Giants ahead.
Wilson had led the majors with 48 saves during the regular season, but Lincecum retired the Rangers in order in the eighth, finishing the inning with 101 pitches and a 3-1 lead. But the call Wilson expected — Wilson, you’ve got the ninth — initially did not come.
“A certain amount of time had passed where I knew, ‘OK, Lincecum is going to finish this,'” Wilson says. “So I had to mentally prepare how fast I was going to run onto the field to dogpile, who I was going to hit first, was I going to be winded, what was I going to do.
“As I mentally prepared to not pitch, the phone then rings. And they said I had it. I had another chemical reaction of adrenaline just spiking through.”
The Giants were trying to win their first World Series in 56 years, and their first since moving from New York to San Francisco. But the Rangers were sending up their top sluggers — Josh Hamilton, Vladimir Guerrero and Nelson Cruz.
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Wilson recalls making a mistake to Hamilton, throwing a fastball down the middle on 0-2 rather than the intended spot up in the zone.
“Oh God, that’s not going to land,” Wilson thought.
But for some reason, Hamilton did not swing, taking the pitch for strike three. Wilson then caught another break when Guerrero swung at the first pitch and grounded to short.
“Now I’ve got two outs in a matter of seconds. And I was planning on being out there for at least a cool 15 minutes,” Wilson says, joking about his propensity to occasionally prolong innings.
The Cruz at-bat was more typical for Wilson, the count running to 3-2. Catcher Buster Posey called for a cutter. Wilson thought to himself: Throw this pitch down the middle. Don’t even attempt to walk him.
“I saw the dugout. Everyone’s eyes were just extremely wide,” Wilson says. “And I kind of just went back to a memory of myself being in Little League, pretending it was the bottom of the ninth and it was the World Series. I kind of just had flashbacks throughout my baseball career.”
The cutter did not move the way Wilson intended, almost rising in the zone. To this day, Wilson cannot understand how Cruz swung and missed, making the Giants champions. His only conclusion: “Some other force was happening to make the pitch do that.”
The final out, like everything else in baseball, has a way of surprising you.
(Top photo of Hudson: Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)
