Joe Blanton tried to make history repeat itself, but it didn't work
CHICAGO — Joe Blanton took his spot against a net-covered wall in the bowels of Wrigley Field that’s normally used for visiting players hitting off a tee. A crowd of cameras surged in. Their lights turned on. The pitcher’s eyes went wide, adjusted themselves and then Blanton went about owning the awkward situation.
This was the sober side of the Saturday night party in Wrigleyville that started about a half-hour earlier when Miguel Montero took the third slider he was offered by Blanton and blasted it into the right-field bleachers for a grand slam that broke the tie game wide open.
It was the first go-ahead pinch-hit grand slam in the long history of baseball’s postseason and Blanton had served it up like a perfect pour at the Cubby Bear.
“If I execute, I’m not standing here and talking about this,” the veteran Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher said after the Cubs’ 8-4 victory in Game 1 of the NLCS. “This is what happens if you don’t.”
As a reliever, Blanton pledged to put the performance behind him in time for Sunday’s Game 2, a pivotal game with Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw taking the mound before the series shifts to Los Angeles.
Still, Blanton couldn’t shake the results of his showdown with Montero, an at-bat that began with the Dodgers pitcher recalling the last time he had faced the Cubs catcher this year. It was Aug. 26 at Dodger Stadium and Blanton remembered he had thrown Montero three straight sliders to strike him out on three pitches.
“I faced him earlier in the year and kinda did the same thing and had success,” he said.
Blanton made the decision. He was going to throw three straight sliders in the dirt to Montero’s back foot in an attempt to strike the batter — a risky move in itself considering the go-ahead run had been moved to third when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts ordered Blanton to intentionally walk Chris Coghlan so the Cubs would be forced to pinch hit for closer Aroldis Chapman.
The at-bat started well. Montero checked his swing on the first slider and the ball caught it for strike one.
The second slider wasn’t great. The pitch stayed up, but Montero swung through it for an 0-2 count. Blanton later admitted he had been lucky to get away with it.
In the moment, Montero cringed at himself inwardly.
“In my mind, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I missed that,” Montero said. “That was a perfect pitch to hit.”
After getting the ball back, Blanton didn’t think much about what he’d do again. Neither did anyone else at Wrigley. Since reinventing himself as a reliever with the Pirates in 2015 (after not pitching at all in 2014), Blanton has leaned heavily on his slider. It’s what earned him $4 million to come to the Dodgers this season and post a 2.48 ERA over 80 innings while throwing 542 sliders, a total he threw more than twice any other pitch.
It’s the pitch that will earn him another good deal this winter.
Sixty feet and six inches away, Montero hoped Blanton would make the same mistake.
“In the back of my head, I’m like ‘I want that slider back,’ because it was such a good pitch to hit,” Montero said. “I guess he heard me because he threw it back.”
Said Blanton: “If it happens on 0-1, it happens. It can’t happen 0-2. I don’t hang a lot of sliders, but I hung one there.”
The ball didn’t hang long. The 102-year-old ballpark was literally shaking by the time Montero’s grand slam landed into the outstretched hands of countless bleacher bums who will always insist they were thisclose to reeling it in. A few hundred feet away, Blanton wiped his face with his hand. He’d also give up a home run to the next batter, Dexter Fowler, in the blur of it all.
Back in 2008, Blanton actually hit a postseason home run that the Phillies fanbase will always cherish, a solo shot in Game 4 of the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Now he’d given up a grand slam that will always be part of Cubs lore, one that softened the sting of the grand slam that James Loney hit for the Dodgers here in Game 1 of the 2008 NLCS.
Down the hallway and around a few corners in the postgame press conference room, Blanton’s manager was facing the same kind of heat. Why had he left the righthanded Blanton in to face the lefthanded Montero?
Roberts pointed out the obvious. Had he gone to a lefthander, Cubs manager Joe Maddon would have simply pinch-hit with the right-handed Willson Contreras instead.
“So, right there there’s really no matchup advantage,” Roberts said “It’s more of I trust Joe, I’ve trusted him all year long, he’s been great for us, and he got ahead 0-2 and left a pitch up.”
As for why he ordered the walk against Coghlan, Roberts’ reasoning was simple. He wanted the lefthanded Chapman and his 100 MPH out of the game with the Dodgers’ bottom of the order coming up.
Blanton allowed himself to wonder what might have happened had his pitch caught the dirt and Montero swung through. The game would have been 3-3 headed into the ninth inning. Chapman had been chased from the game. The Cubs had already used five relievers. Wrigley Field would be deflated after the Cubs loaded the bases and managed nothing.
One more good inning and the Dodgers could have stolen Game 1 against the favored Cubs with Kershaw taking the mound for Game 2.
Just after one more good slider, of course.
But even as Blanton moved down those situations that disappeared into the night with the ball that Montero hit, the reality crept back in. He threw three successful sliders to Montero in August and then another two on an unseasonably warm mid-October night in Chicago.
History just refused to repeat itself for a sixth straight pitch.
“I gotta move on, it’s over,” Blanton said. “I’m not sure what else to say.”
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Kevin Kaduk is a writer for Yahoo Sports.. Have a tip? Email him at kevinkaduk@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
