PHILADELPHIA — Edmundo Sosa was swarmed by his Philadelphia Phillies teammates beyond first base following their 3-2 walk-off victory against the Boston Red Sox on Monday night.
In the moment, it didn’t matter to him that he’d gotten there thanks to a call of catcher’s interference.
“Honestly, this feels just like hitting a home run,” Sosa said via a translator. “The key thing is that we secured the win, and that’s exactly what we set out to achieve.”
Sosa clinched the game when, with the bases loaded and no outs in the 10th inning, his check swing on a 2-2 pitch made contact with the glove of catcher Carlos Narvaez. The Phillies bench appealed for a review, which confirmed the contact, allowing Sosa to walk to first and automatic runner Brandon Marsh to cross the plate for the winning run.
“I felt my barrel was a little late on the pitch,” said Sosa, who entered as a pinch-hitter in the eighth and singled. “And as I go through my swing path, I feel like I hit the catcher’s glove. And I told the ump that I think I felt something, and I started signaling in the dugout.”
It’s the first instance of a walk-off catcher’s interference in a major league game since Aug. 1, 1971, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won on a call against Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench. Willie Crawford was the batter, Joe Gibbon the pitcher.
The play went down as an error for Narvaez, his sixth of the season, second-most among catchers in the majors. Narvaez also had a passed ball, his fifth, in the fourth inning that moved Nick Castellanos into scoring position after he drove in the Phillies’ first run. Castellanos scored on J.T. Realmuto’s single.
“I don’t feel I was that close to the hitter,” Narvaez said. “Everything went so quick. Really tough for that to happen in that moment to cost us the game. I take accountability. I’ve got to be better. That cannot happen.”
It’s the Phillies’ third walk-off win of the season. The first, against Washington on April 29, came on a wild pitch that allowed Bryson Stott to score. A walk-off on June 6 over the Chicago Cubs came via a Marsh single in the 11th.
The Phillies lost a game in San Francisco on July 8 when Patrick Bailey hit a three-run, walk-off, inside-the-park home run.
“There’s two things this year that I’ve never seen before in 40 years,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “One is a walk-off inside-the-park home run, and one is a walk-off catcher’s interference.”
The Phillies won without putting a ball in play in the 10th. Marsh started the inning at second base. Otto Kemp, trying to bunt him to third, was walked by Boston reliever Jordan Hicks.
Hicks’ first delivery to Max Kepler was a wild pitch that moved the runners to second and third. The Red Sox intentionally walked Kepler. Sosa went down 0-2, fouled a pitch off, then offered at an 86 mph slider, hitting only the thumb of Narvaez’s glove to decide the game.
“It’s strange,” Phillies starting pitcher Zack Wheeler said. “People always say, I’ve never seen that before on a baseball field. It’s just another one. I’m wondering how many more times you can say that.”
