"He’s not even the 25th man on the Tampa roster. He’s more like the 32nd or 33rd or 34th man." Coming up to bat at the bottom of 9th inning, with his Tampa Bay Rays down 7-6 on the season's finale, with Red Sox ahead at the time and the season on the line, Johnson was hitting an abysmal .108 in 83 at-bats, including zero hits in all of September. Johnson quickly got down in the counts with one ball and two strikes. But the next changeup from Yankees' Cory Wade traveled down the right-field line and over the wall. Suddenly, Rays have come back from a 7-0 deficit in the last two innings. They'd eventually win in extra inning with another homer. But it was the homer in the bottom of the 9th that tied the game and forced the extras, that first goes into the history book.
Meanwhile over at Baltimore, Boston Red Sox, looking to save its season from a historic collapse, held lead into the 9th inning. Closer Jonathan Papelbon, a 4-time All-Star, could not hold onto the one-run lead. The game's final play unfolded as Outfielder Carl Crawford, who had signed 7-year, $142-million contract with the Red Sox before the season, could not make the diving catch; the Orioles scored the winning run. They weren't able to close the game and save the season. But the little-known Dan Johnson was able to lift the Ray into the playoffs.
Indeed, this is one of the signature of sports. One just doesn't know who will be the hero at the end of the night.
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