It was the most dramatic end to a World Series game in half a decade, for everyone except the man who ended it.
In the moments before he walloped a drive into the right field stands that sent his Rangers teammates flying out of the dugout and the largest crowd in the short history of this ballpark into hysterics, that won Game 1 of the 119th World Series 6–5 over the Diamondbacks in 11 innings, that put the Rangers franchise three wins away from its first title, right fielder Adolis García told offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker that he would do just that.
Corey Seager had already homered with one on and one out in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game, and the bullpens had matched zeroes in the 10th and were on their way to doing the same in the 11th. Lefty Kyle Nelson got left fielder Evan Carter to fly to right for the first out of the inning, and then manager Torey Lovullo summoned righty Miguel Castro to face the Rangers’ most dangerous hitter. In García’s last outing, which happened to be Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, he went 4-for-5 with two home runs. He loves the big moments, and they don’t get much bigger than this.
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While they awaited the pitching change, Ecker cued up García’s only two encounters with Castro on the iPad: a swinging strikeout in 2022 when Castro was a Yankee, and a lineout from August. (That might not be quite the confidence-building hype video you’d expect, but Ecker says, “It was more the sequence” than the result.) Castro had thrown him seven pitches, five sinkers.
“What do you think?” García said.
“What do you think?” Ecker said. “I think sinker.”
García smiled. “Watch me.” Then he strode to the plate.
The idea was to pitch García inside, Lovullo says, because he is so dangerous on the outside part of the plate: “We talked about that for a couple of days, that being a favorable matchup for us if it came down to that, that he would be able to make pitches on him and try and prevent a little extension [of his arms].”
Castro’s first pitch was a slider that bounced behind the left-handed batter’s box. The next pitch was a changeup in the dirt for ball two. García swung through a low changeup, then took another one to run the count to 3–1.
“It was an interesting way for Castro to attack him, with so many changeups,” muses second baseman Marcus Semien. “And then he got behind and finally threw him a fastball, and Adolis stayed on it.”
The fastball was a sinker, as Ecker and García had predicted, and it caught the middle of the plate.
“They’re trying to look for chase there, look for weak contact,” Ecker says. “It was a good pitch. It was just a better swing.”
García thought it was gone off the bat, but he failed to run out a fly ball in Game 7 of the ALCS and settled for a long single, so he was a little more careful with this one.
“I felt that I hit it well,” he says through an interpreter, “But it was a ball that went [to the opposite field]. So when that happens I've just got to make sure that I run out of home plate and run the bases.”
It was García’s fifth straight game with a home run, tying the second longest streak in postseason history, and his seventh straight game with an RBI, also tying the second longest streak in postseason history. (He can tie both records with a dinger in Game 2.) It also gave García his 22nd RBI of the postseason, breaking the record David Freese set with the Cardinals in 2011.
García had already had an eventful game. He saved a run with a leaping, backhanded grab of a ninth-inning, two-out Corbin Carroll drive that must have given Rangers fans flashbacks to 2011, when right fielder Nelson Cruz misplayed a ninth-inning, two-out Freese drive into a game-tying triple. (Texas, of course, lost that game and then Game 7.)
And half an inning later, two batters after the Seager homer, Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald hit García in the left hand with an 0–2 four-seamer in the ninth. Trainers checked on García, and the coaches worried it might be serious, but evidently the wound didn’t have too much effect.
“It’s good,” García insists.
“He’s in pain,” Ecker says. “He’s got enough chemicals going through his body right now—his dopamine’s so high that he can’t feel a thing.”
García stole second and Sewald intentionally walked DH Mitch Garver to face light-hitting backup catcher Austin Hedges, who struck out on three pitches.
Perhaps no one was happier than Hedges two innings later when García ended it with him in the hole. Or perhaps not: As the Rangers deliriously celebrated García’s walk-off, Hedges found Ecker. He said, gravely, “I was going to do that!”
