The Oakland A’s Walk-off Home Run Index
The walk-off home run. Baseball’s version of sudden death. Few moments in sports are as dramatic. Dennis Eckersley coined the term in the late 80s, describing how the defense would walk off the field following the game-ending hit. Since then, it’s become more suited to describing how the batter can walk around the bases to join his teammates celebrating at home plate.
In the history of the Oakland A’s, there have been 91 walk-off homers, or about 2.3 per season since 1968. In 2004, a high of six was set, while in 1969, 1974, 1979, 1983 and 1989, none were hit.
Four walk-off grand slams have been recorded. Two by Mark McGwire, one by Tony Armas, and one by Gene Tenace. The most dramatic had to be Big Mac’s shot on June 30, 1995. Down by a run to the Angels, McGwire came to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded — facing Lee Smith. On an 0-1 count, McGwire deposited a pitch into deep left field for the rare walk-off grand slam.
Here’s the complete list:
You can view the spreadsheet at Google Docs, too.
I’m going to be going into these home runs in more depth later on at Catfish Stew.