Day Thirty Three: Luis Sojo
Luis Sojo the Mariner is one play. He is a dribbler down the first base line that JT Snow just can't quite get. And then the damn ball roles under the bullpen bench but is somehow still in play? And Luis Sojo rumbles (hard to believe he played shortstop really) around the bases and is called safe at home (highly dubious), slipping under the tag of pitcher Mark Langston, and giving the Mariners an insurmountable lead of 5 to nothing. And that is it. There isn't much more in the way of significance for the man. He played some innings and filled in at various spots and pinch hit a lot. Lou gave him the start in game 163 and it was a good call! Because it was his hit that drove the Mariners forward towards their eventual (it feels like a World Series victory for us doesn't it) vanquishing of the Yankees on Edgar's Cooperstown double. So since there is really only that play to talk about, let's really discuss it. And my opinions regarding this play are probably going to be controversial (if anyone cares lol), so here we go!
Sojo comes up with the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh. Angels starter Mark Langston has pitched brilliantly allowing only 1 run on a single from Vince Coleman in the 5th. He had taken care of business getting Griffey, Edgar, and Buhner 1,2,3 in the sixth. Probably, or perhaps definitely, Marcel Lachemann should have lifted Langston after 6, but you have to remember that in those days you let your ace go as far as you could (Randy threw a CG that day), and when Sojo stepped into the box in that seventh inning there were two down. Langston was very, very close to getting out of the jam. So Langston throws his pitch and Sojo gets weak contact and breaks his bat. The ball chops along the uneven Kingdome floor towards gold glove firstbaseman JT Snow. He just misses the ball. So there is part one of the play. Sojo gets jammed and goes the other way, breaking his bat and getting a run scoring hit just out of the reach of JT Snow. If you were a Mariners fan in that moment you were thanking the baseball gods for this once in a lifetime bit of luck. I was allowed to stay home from school to watch that game (it was a day game) and sat in the living room losing my mind watching the ball sneak past Snow. It was insane. But the next step of the play is the one that was became very confusing.
After the ball passes Snow, it goes into the Angels' bullpen and gets lost under the bench that ran along the stands there (man that was an ugly set-up). This is where the play should have died. When a ball went "out of play" in this way in the Kingdome it should have been ruled a ground rule double and ended right there. I remember sitting there (and in those days I was way more tuned into actual baseball plays, considering myself to be something of a player) and wondering why they hadn't ruled the play dead. I think a lot of California Angels felt similarly as you watch the replay. But to the Mariners credit, they all kept running. Cora scored, and then you see Sojo come into the frame just basically about to collapse stumbling towards home plate. As it was mentioned in the last essay about Mark Langston, he was an excellent fielding pitcher. He won the gold glove seven times in his career and ironically would win it for the fifth time in a row in 1995. The irony being that this is the one play where he needed to be golden and he wasn't. He probably should have taken the plate away from Sojo who appears to slide in as the tag is applied. It is really hard to tell though. It looked like he was out in real time back in 95 and the clip that I have been watching on Youtube doesn't really give a conclusive view one way or the other. Langston gets knocked over and Sojo leaps to his feet in ecstasy. The game is over.
Certainly 5 to 0 isn't everything, but Randy was insane in those days. It was done. Everything hinged on that one play. And it was an amazing feeling for a young Mariners fan. But I also knew, as I sat there watching this furious action by myself on a weekday, that we had gotten away with one. In basketball and football teams are constantly being brutally destroyed by the decisions of the officials. The game is rarely decided by the players (that's just like, your opinion man), but in baseball, outside of the balls and strikes, everything is outside of the umps hands. Or it should be. The Luis Sojo double is one of those moments where things get confused and weird and the team that I like benefits, but it could have easily gone the other way. There is always a sense of the other shoe waiting to drop for me in those moments. And watching The Kingfish out there in right in the ESPN replay shows that bafflement perfectly (that's Tim Salmon for those unfamiliar with his amazing nickname). He made a perfect relay after grabbing the ball from under the bench, but it's just not enough. And then Randy strikes him out looking to end the game. And the Angels, who in late August looked sure to win the division, where defeated. I remember thinking, you guys better make this shit count.
And they did. That victory over the Yankees was no fluke. It was the real deal. And it's still the best sports moment of my life. And Tim Salmon was a world series champ in 2002, and seeing him win erased my feeling of concern for him that had popped into my mind way back in early October of 1995. Because for me baseball is full of stuff like that. Moments where I am rooting for a guy, although he may not be on my team, in fact, he may be the best position player on the opposition, but I just feel for him. And I carried that feeling for Tim Salmon for seven years. So it didn't hurt as bad watching my dad's childhood team, the hapless (adjective later revised) San Francisco Giants, lose in an awful way in the World Series. But it still hurt. That's a story for another day though. But what of Luis Sojo?
The other shoe dropped. Sojo left the Mariners and with Tino Martinez became a constant sore spot in the shifting of power back to the Capitol of Baseball. Sojo is legendary for his ridiculous hit for the Mariners, but he is mythical for his series clinching single (another shitty fake hit) for the Yankees in 00 to secure the threepeat against the intensely overmatched New York Mets. I watched that hit. And as it slid through the infield I thought, Goddamnit. There it is. But this time it's all of us who lose. Thanks Luis Sojo, for creating joy for a doomed franchise in the Pacific Northwest and for crushing our souls as a member of the most inevitable dynasty (that kept the Mariners out of the damn World Series two years in a row) that I have seen in my baseball lifetime. Huzzah!
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