SAN DIEGO — With four World Series rings to his credit, Bruce Bochy doesn’t need to boast. But, really, some things are worth crowing about.
Bochy is in rare company indeed as one of six managers to win four World Series championships. But he’s one of one when it comes his shining moment as a player.
He’s the only player to hit a walk-off home run off Nolan Ryan.
That came 40 years ago this week. The baseball fates being the impish sort, Bochy finds himself back in the very city where he hit that memorable homer, the city where he had his best seasons as a player and where he established himself as a top manager. He’s guiding the Rangers in a three-game series against the Padres at Petco Park but took a moment Saturday to discuss his matchup with Ryan across town all those years ago.
“You probably should reflect on the good time more,” Bochy said. “But you don’t, except when it’s brought up. But, yeah, that was a great night. I was a role player, too. So that was a huge night for me.”
The situation
Date: July 1, 1985
Matchup: Astros (38-37) vs. Padres (44-31) at Jack Murphy Stadium
Stakes: The Padres, coming off their first World Series visit in 1984, were up by 3 1/2 games in their bid to repeat as NL West champions. The Astros, still in that division, were six games back.
Recap: The Astros staked Ryan to a 4-0 lead through the top of the second inning, but the Padres countered with three runs in the second and forced extras by scoring one run in the eighth and ninth innings to tie it, 5-5. Bochy was on the bench for eight innings but was called on in the ninth after Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams lifted starting catcher Terry Kennedy for a pinch-runner.
The 10th inning
After Hall of Fame closer Goose Gossage pitched a 1-2-3 top of the 10th, Astros manager Bob Lillis eschewed tabbing his closer, Dave Smith, who had a 1.76 ERA but had pitched two of the previous three games. Ryan went out for the 10th, the first time he pitched into extras as a member of the Astros, though he did so many times with the Angels in the 1970s.
“It never crossed my mind to go to the bullpen,” Lillis told reporters postgame. “Ryan is one of the best. He deserved the chance to win or lose his own game.”
Echoed Ryan that night: “I felt good. I felt I was throwing good. But I made some bad pitches.”
Ryan made Lillis look good for two batters. All-Star Steve Garvey grounded out. Bobby Brown, the man who earlier pinch-ran for Kennedy, became Ryan’s seventh strikeout victim of the night (and 3,990th in his career). Up stepped Bochy.
The moment
Though he was taking his first swings of the night against probably the most intimidating pitcher in the game, Bochy had a couple things going his way. For one, he was familiar with Ryan, having been his teammate in Houston in 1980. Bochy never caught Ryan in a regular-season game, but he had his fair share of time behind the plate in bullpen sessions and during Spring Training.
Then there was the game awareness and strategic thinking that has served Bochy so well as a manager. There were no other catchers on the Padres’ roster, so Bochy was staying in if he reached base. His mind was quick, but his legs were not. He knew what to do.
“In that situation, I’m looking to hit a home run,” Bochy told reporters in the afterglow. “The way I run, there is no reason to try to dink something in for a base hit because it would take two more base hits to score me. I was looking for something to pull. I wanted to get the head of the bat out.”
Bochy went up looking fastball, and the Ryan Express delivered. Official pitch tracking didn’t exist then, but news reports said it was Ryan’s 124th pitch of the game. Bochy, a right-handed hitter, pulled it into the left-field bleachers. It was his first walk-off homer, Ryan’s first and last.
The epilogue
Bochy got the hero’s treatment. His future third-base coach, Tim Flannery, laid down bats to make a pathway to Bochy’s locker, in lieu of a red carpet. Graig Nettles turned Bochy’s size 8 1/2 helmet into a beer bucket, filling it with ice and a six-pack of Miller Lite beers (the brand endorsed by Williams, of course.)
Bochy and Ryan next encountered each other two days later. Bochy’s homer came in the first game of the series, so the Astros were still in San Diego when Ryan took his bullpen session between starts. The visitor’s bullpen was in foul ground down the right-field line, and Bochy was shagging in the outfield while Ryan threw.
“Boch! I’ve got something for you,” Ryan shouted to his former teammate.
He then dropped sidearm and fired a 100 mph heater off the concrete wall behind the ‘pen.
The homer was no one-off, other than the circumstances. Bochy played nine seasons as a backup but was at his best from 1985-86. He hit two walk-off pinch-hit homers in ’86, including one on July 4 against the Cubs (shown in the video above). During those two seasons, he homered once every 17.07 at-bats, the 12th-best rate in the game for players with at least 200 at-bats. Ranked behind him were such names as Kirk Gibson, Dave Kingman, Fred Lynn, Reggie Jackson, Gary Carter and Dave Parker.
Bochy said he blossomed as a hitter because of a change that was years in the making. Coming up with the Astros, he was taught to hit to the opposite field because the Astrodome dampened power. Longtime MLB manager Davey Johnson, working as a Mets roving instructor at the time, put a stop to that in 1982 when he saw Bochy taking that approach in Triple-A.
“You’re 6-foot-4, and you can’t run,” Johnson told Bochy. “Pull the ball.”
Said Bochy: “Davey Johnson turned my career around.”
Bochy remained in the Padres’ organization through 2006, first transitioning to Minor League coaching before serving as big league manager for 12 seasons. Then came three titles with the Giants, a three-year retirement and a return to the dugout with the Rangers in 2023, when he won his fourth ring.
Because Bochy and Ryan both have ties to the Astros and Rangers, they have crossed paths many times since their shared walk-off.
“Nolan came in one day, and someone brought it up,” Bochy said. “He said, ‘I don’t remember that.’ So I said, ‘The heck you don’t!’”
Ryan surely was playing coy. Bochy, meanwhile, remembers as if were yesterday.
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