Last Man Standing (One Sixty-Two: Day 96)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Ninety-Six: Ramon Santiago, Detroit Tigers

Wade Boggs has 3,010 career base hits, but the most famous at-bat of his career involves none of those hits. Boggs’ most-viewed at-bat shows him waving helplessly at a biting slider on a July 4th afternoon in Yankee Stadium. The pitcher, Dave Righetti, responds to this miss by hugging his catcher, Butch Wynegar. The Yankees storm the field.

Righetti has thrown a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox on this day in 1983, and Boggs is the final out. And 27 years later, even though Wade Boggs has a plaque in Cooperstown and Dave Righetti does not, our visual history always shows Righetti as the better player. Thousands of people each year see that clip of Righetti dominating Boggs, while far fewer see any of the opposite-field singles that led Boggs to five batting titles and 12 All-Star Game appearances. That’s what happens when you’re the final out of a no-hitter – you live in infamy, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Ramon Santiago is no Wade Boggs, but he’s certainly had his share of hits in a nine-year career spent mostly with the Detroit Tigers. Yesterday, though, Santiago was called to the plate to pinch-hit against a man who had retired 26 batters without allowing a hit. As Tropicana Field reverberated with a roar not often heard in that building, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Matt Garza had one more out to go in his quest for the first no-hitter in Rays’ history. Instead of sending starting shortstop Danny Worth to the plate for the third time, the Tigers sent up Santiago.

And so here it was – Santiago would either break up the no-no, and avoid falling on the wrong side of history, or he would succumb to Garza and see himself, decades from now, making that final out again and again.

He swung hard – let’s give him that. But Santiago got under a Garza fastball, and lifted a lazy fly ball to right field. Ben Zobrist, who had saved the no-hitter with a leaping grab earlier in the game, had no problem with Santiago’s pop-up. Garza had his no-hitter – the fifth of the year in Major League Baseball, with more than two months still remaining in the season. The Rays jumped all over Garza, reporters interviewed him on the field, and a teammate gave him the obligatory pie in the face.

As for Ramon Santiago, he went back to the dugout, surely hoping that his team would play a better game the next day. And assuming they don’t get no-hit again this evening, the Tigers can only improve. But even if he leads his team to victory with three home runs today, Santiago can rest assured that those homers will be contained within a 24-hour news cycle. After that, they’ll be forgotten.

His final out against Garza, however, lives forever. Someone has to make that final out, and yesterday it was Santiago. He can take solace in the fact that his final swing was much more impressive than that of Wade Boggs some 27 years ago. He did make contact, at least. But the ball didn’t drop for a hit; it was caught. And so, Mr. Santiago, we welcome you to the 27th Out Club. It's a lifetime membership. Mr. Boggs will be here to greet you shortly.