QUEENS, NY — Twenty-five years before Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos lifted memorable grand slams to fuel the Mets’ October run to the NLCS, there was Robin Ventura’s “Grand Slam Single.”
Thursday marked exactly two-and-a-half decades since Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS in which Ventura hit the most recognizable home run that never was with the bases loaded. Trailing 3-2 entering the bottom of the 15th inning, Braves reliever Kevin McGlinchy walked Todd Pratt to force in the tying run and set the table for Ventura.
The third baseman — coming off his first season with the Mets after signing in free agency in which he hit 32 home runs — cranked one over the right-center-field fence, but he never saw second base.
Roger Cedeno hit the plate as the winning run while the other two men on base, along with the Mets dugout, mobbed Ventura as he rounded first. It went down in the scorebook as a single, and one of the more zany anomalies in baseball history.
“I got reminded of it a lot today, I will say that,” Ventura said before he threw out the ceremonial first pitch ahead of Game 4 of the NLCS between the Mets and Dodgers. “But it is weird that it’s been 25 years because, in some ways, it seems like it happened a few years ago. In some ways, it might’ve been 50 years, the way it goes now. It is weird, though.”
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His shot was the indelible moment of a 1999 season — and his name will always be at the forefront of a team that had its fair share of veteran stars, whether it be Mike Piazza, John Olerud, or Edgardo Alfonzo, who caught Ventura’s first pitch on Thursday night.
“We just had a lot of veteran guys, and we really enjoyed it,” Alfonzo said of that 1999 team. “What the team does to get to the playoffs or play better is unique. That ’99, 2000 team, we had that.”
Both club legends see “that” in these current Mets, whose accolades might push Ventura’s heroic night on Oct. 17, 1999 a bit further back into the memory banks of fans who lived through it. But that is not a bad concept by Ventura’s standards, as he is perfectly comfortable with his place in franchise history and grateful for the slow burn his Grand Slam Single has provided for the last 25 years.
“I think for them, when they’re doing it right now, I don’t think they realize it,” Ventura said. “That wasn’t what I was thinking. I was glad we won, but I wasn’t going back to the locker room saying, ‘I just hit a statement home run.’ You don’t know it’s going to stick with you for that long. For me, hopefully, somebody does something else. Franciso hits another one or Pete hits another one, [Mark] Vientos hits another one.
“You just hope that they keep having something like that. That it won’t be the one, there will be a better one. That would be my wish for them.”
For what it is worth, Ventura never wants the ruling to be changed to a home run, either.
“It gets more mileage for not being one,” he said. “Maybe if that would’ve been the only [grand slam] I ever hit, probably. But yeah, I think just the way it ended up was a better ending than if I would’ve ran around the bases.”
