NEW YORK — The baseball floated off Anthony Volpe’s bat and danced through the Bronx sky. This wasn’t happening. Was it?
Oh yes, it was. A lifelong Yankees fan hitting a World Series grand slam in Yankee Stadium? That’s a script you’d expect to see on the Hallmark Channel, not in real October life.
But it happened Tuesday night in that reawakened ballpark on 161st Street. And where that fairy-tale swing of Volpe’s bat takes this World Series remains to be seen. But there will be another game in the Bronx on Wednesday. And that might not have been possible without the perfect wave of a Jersey kid’s bat.
“It’s magical,” said his teammate, Nestor Cortes, after Volpe’s slam fueled the Yankees’ season-saving 11-4 win over the Dodgers. “I think, as a little kid in your backyard, you practice that scenario every single time. You know, it’s 3-2, bottom of the ninth in Yankee Stadium, and you’re hitting.”
Cortes smiled. It occurred to him that the dream needed a slight rewrite.
“But bottom of the third works, too,” he said, laughing.
When that baseball left Volpe’s bat in the bottom of the third Tuesday, the Yankees were trailing, 2-1, in this win-or-else Game 4. But when that baseball made its dramatic re-entry to Planet Earth, we had ourselves the first Yankees lead since Game 1 on Friday night in L.A. So that was cool.
But even cooler for the purposes of October Weird and Wild columns, we had a spectacular outbreak of World Series grand slam trivia to unearth. So what do you say we tell you all about it?
A FULL CIRCLE MOMENT FOR ANTHONY VOLPE!
GRAND SLAM. @YANKEES LEAD! #WORLDSERIES pic.twitter.com/X754vjoPGe
— MLB (@MLB) October 30, 2024
It’s a Bronx tale
Does it get any Weirder or Wilder than a World Series slam in Yankee Stadium — any version of Yankee Stadium? Let’s go with no on that.
“And when you grew up a fan of this team like Anthony,” said Yankees catcher Jose Trevino, “and you know the tradition that this team has because you grew up watching them, I think it means a lot more — for the kid.”
15 years ago, Anthony Volpe was at the 2009 World Series parade!
Today, he hit a grand slam in the Bronx 👏 pic.twitter.com/8pcAkSy5EM
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 30, 2024
True. But allow us to make this point. No matter how many Yankees games Volpe watched as a kid, we can guarantee he never watched someone do what he did Tuesday. That’s because there had been only two other World Series slams ever hit by a Yankee in Yankee Stadium. And Volpe wasn’t alive for either one of them:
Tino Martinez, Game 1, 1998 World Series
Bobby Richardson, Game 3, 1960 World Series
“Oh, wow,” said Trevino, after he asked us to run through that list. “What a great list to be on.”
But you should know it isn’t the only list Volpe would add his name to Tuesday, because this four-run blast also made him one of …
The Yankees’ leading men
All in all, the Yankees have now hit nine World Series grand slams. More on that coming right up. But this was only the third grand slam in Yankees history that did something way more meaningful than add an entry to their grand slam trivia files.
This one actually gave them a lead in a World Series game. And only two other October slams had ever done that for this team.
Tino Martinez, broke 5-5 tie, Game 1, 1998 World Series
Gil McDougald, broke 1-1 tie, Game 5, 1951 World Series
Ah, but only one slam in Yankees history has ever taken this team from trailing to leading. Anthony Volpe hit that slam. And hey, while we’re on that subject, how about this …
Great moments in lead-flipping slammage
Somehow or other, the Lead-Flipping Grand Slam has become the specialty of this World Series — because we’ve now seen two of them in the first four games.
There was Freddie Freeman, masher of the first lead-flipping walk-off slam in World Series history in Game 1. And now there’s Anthony Volpe, who went lead-flipping himself Tuesday.
So how could we not ask: Has there ever been another World Series with two lead-flipping grand slams? And that answer turned out to be Hahaha … of course not!
But even more noteworthy, there’s this:
You know how many lead-flipping grand slams were hit in the first 119 World Series combined? Exactly three!
• Ken Boyer, Game 4, 1964
• Jose Canseco, Game 1, 1988 (largely forgotten because Kirk Gibson happened)
• Paul Konerko, Game 2, 2005
So that’s three in 119 World Series … and now two in the last four games … because baseball is awesome.
Nine lives
Babe Ruth never hit a World Series grand slam for the Yankees. Neither did Lou Gehrig or Joe DiMaggio. But now Anthony Volpe has. And that’s amazing in itself.
He’s one of nine Yankees to hit one. And since you undoubtedly want to hear all these names, here they come: Volpe, Tino, Richardson and McDougald, plus Joe Pepitone (1964) … Yogi Berra (1956) … Bill Skowron (also 1956) … Mickey Mantle (1953) … and Tony Lazzeri (1936).
But that’s not even the Weird and Wild part. The Weird and Wild part goes like this:
The Yankees’ nine slams are the most by any team …
And no one else has hit more than two!
But there’s one more tidbit related to this grand slam that seems Weirder and Wilder than all of that. It has to do with …
The man who served up this slam
Dodgers reliever Daniel Hudson threw the hanging slider that Volpe sent hurtling into grand-slam history. And we bring that up because Hudson has been pitching in the big leagues for 15 years now …
And he’d given up only one grand slam in all those years …
And he allowed it back in 2011 (when Volpe was 10 years old) …
To a pitcher!
The Brewers’ Shaun Marcum hit that one, on the Fourth of July that year. But finally, all these years later, a position player finally went slamming against Hudson. And it happened in a World Series game in Yankee Stadium. Un-be-lievable.
In other grand slam news …
Did you know that …
The Dodgers have now allowed more World Series grand slams (six) than any other team in baseball? … Or that the only player ever to hit a grand slam in a game in which his team could have lost the World Series was (who else?) Anthony Volpe? … Or that only two shortstops have ever hit a World Series grand slam? One is Volpe, obviously. The other: the Cubs’ Addison Russell, in Game 6 of the 2016 World Series. And we bring that up because they were both teammates of a guy named … Anthony Rizzo.
“Addie!” Rizzo said Tuesday, when we asked if he remembered the other World Series slam by a shortstop, then he paused and said: “That was a big hit for us.”
Wait. Was he talking about Volpe’s slam or Russell’s slam?
“The one tonight,” Rizzo said. “But both of them, honestly.”
What Rizzo remembers about that Russell slam, of course, is that it helped power one of the most memorable comebacks in World Series history. After four games, the Cubs were in the same position the Yankees are in now — down three games to one.
But they won Game 5 at home, as the Yankees will try to do Wednesday. Then they hit the road for Games 6 and 7, trying to pull off a miracle … and did.
“You learned all about three-games-to-one comebacks a few years ago,” we said to Rizzo. “What do you know about the history of three-games-to-none comebacks?”
“Well,” he said, “I’ve heard Kevin Millar’s speech (during Boston’s 2004 comeback from 0-3) plenty of times: ‘Don’t let us win one,’ right? So now tomorrow, it’s just rallying to get us on a plane back to L.A.”
That Red Sox comeback is now the subject of a new documentary on Netflix. Does Rizzo have any aspirations to be on Netflix?
“I think I am already,” he said, “with (the Cubs’ epic) Game 7 (in 2016). I’d love to have another one.
“But that,” he said with a wink, “is a long ways away.”
It is indeed. But every historic comeback begins with one blast of baseball oxygen, one season-preserving win, and often one magical swing of someone’s bat. So maybe, just maybe, we’re talking about someone like Anthony Volpe.
Party of Three
Hey, don’t touch that mouse. Please stick around as our Weird and Wild Department presents a few more astounding tidbits you can use to amaze your friends.
• We had a lead change! We’ve been waiting to alert you to this since Friday, but after Freeman’s walk-off, it turned out to be a long wait for the next lead change in this Series. Well, we got one Tuesday, thanks to Volpe. So how about this:
With that Game 4 lead change, the fabulous 2024 postseason has now tied the full-season record for most lead changes over a single postseason, with 29.
The great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference researched this one for us last week. And it’s a little tricky, because the 2020 postseason actually had 30 lead changes. But that year had a different format, with 16 teams making the postseason. So there were more postseason games played that year than in any year in history.
But in “normal” postseasons, 2024 has now pulled even with the 2003 postseason, of “Bartman Game” fame, with a total of 29 lead changes. This doesn’t happen every October. So savor it, OK?
• Big Ben! In a game in which the Dodgers had a chance to win the World Series, their starting pitcher Tuesday was a guy making his first career start!
That was rookie right-hander Ben Casparius. And if you’re wondering how many pitchers in history have made their first career start in a potential World Series clincher, that answer would be … none! Until this game.
In fact, only one other pitcher had ever made his first career start in any game of a World Series. According to stats legend Sarah Langs of MLB.com, that was Dylan Lee, for the Braves, in Game 4 of the 2021 World Series.
But here comes what would have been the Weirdest and Wildest part, if the Dodgers had just found a way to win Tuesday:
Fewest career starts by a pitcher starting a World Series clincher
14 — Whitey Ford, 1950 Yankees
14 — Wilcy Moore, 1927 Yankees
(Source: STATS Perform)
So Casparius wouldn’t just have broken that record. He would have obliterated it. But … never mind!
• One more on Anthony Volpe! Could this be possible? On Tuesday, Volpe drove in four runs (which tends to happen when a guy hits a grand slam). He also stole two bases.
And by doing that, he became the answer to a trivia question I can’t even comprehend:
Name the only player in history to drive in four runs and steal at least two bases in a World Series game?
We don’t know how it’s possible that only one player has ever done that. But hey, there is one explanation. It’s …
Baseball!
(Top photo of Anthony Volpe: Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
