– As Wednesday’s National League Wild Card Game prolonged and the score remained knotted, a singular thought began to gain momentum in the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ dugout — in the bottom of the ninth, with the St. Louis Cardinals on the other side.
Chris Taylor admittedly thought the same thing. But then he saw Pujols and Steven Souza Jr. line out, and Cody Bellinger work a walk, and Cardinals reliever Alex Reyes hang a slider out over the plate. Taylor clobbered the pitch for a two-out, two-run walk-off homer, propelling the Dodgers to a 3-1 victory over St. Louis and pushing them into a highly anticipated NL Division Series showdown against the division-rival San Francisco Giants.
Taylor was an All-Star for the first time this year, but he batted only .121/.212/.190 over his last 22 regular-season games, sustained a neck injury toward the tail end of that stretch and wasn’t even in the lineup when his team lacked a premier bat in a win-or-go-home game. Instead, Taylor entered for defense in the seventh inning, made a sliding grab in left field with a runner on in the eighth and came through in the ninth, sending a raucous Dodger Stadium crowd of 53,193 into a frenzy.
Taylor became the first player to hit a postseason walk-off home run in a game he started on the bench since Jose Lobaton did it with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2013.
“The game honors you,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He wanted to be in there tonight, but he was ready when called upon.”