Tagged: Game 163

Game of the Decade

It’s difficult to put the final regular season Metrodome game into words. After fighting in the final month and overcoming a seven-game deficit in the American League Central by ending the season on a 17-4 run, the Minnesota Twins made the playoffs with a victory in Game 163.

It wasn’t just an ordinary victory. It was a victory consisting of ups and downs and gut-wrenching moments inning after inning. The Twins fell behind, drew closer as the game progressed, took a lead, blew a lead, fell behind, tied the game, and then eventually won in the 12th inning.
Joe Nathan got an improbable double play, Bobby Keppel came up with a huge strikeout, and two players who didn’t even start, entered the game in the final innings to get the winning hit and score the winning run.
All of these things are why Sports Illustrated has dubbed Game 163 on October 6, 2009 at the Metrodome, the Greatest Regular Season Game of the past decade:

The beautiful thing about baseball is a great game doesn’t necessarily have to be a well-played game. The Twins-Tigers tiebreaker to decide the AL Central had blunders, errors, pickoffs and all sorts of confusion. But it was loaded with drama. The Tigers had a lead going into the bottom of the 10th inning. The Twins tied it up and had a chance to win, but Alexi Casilla was thrown out at the plate by Ryan Raburn. The Tigers had the bases loaded in the 12th but could not score. The Twins scored in the bottom of the 12th to win 6-5. Sometimes sloppy, sometimes brilliant, always exciting — that’s baseball at its best.