A History Of The Bizarre Intentional Walk

There’s a video doing the rounds today of a pitcher really struggling to throw an intentional walk in a minor-league game - he has no idea where the pitches are going, and the runner on third eventually scores on a walk-off wild pitch. It’s kinda amusing, though it seems the game from which it came actually took place three years ago, so this hardly counts as news.

Still, it did get me thinking about some other unusual intentional walks. The one which comes to mind first is Miguel Cabrera’s intentional walk RBI in a June 2006 interleague game between the Marlins and Orioles, in the 10th inning of a tied game. “I looked at it and saw it was too close to the plate. And decided I would swing at it,” he said. “It wasn’t planned. They gave me time to wait and get ready to hit it. I’ve never done that before.”

But Preston Olson of Taylorsville, Utah sneers at mere RBI singles, however. In the 2008 American Legion state championship finals, Olson didn’t just swing at or connect with an intentional ball. He drove it out of the park for a walk-off, three-run homer. Oh, and he was also the winning pitcher in the title contest - no surprise that he ended up as the tournament MVP.

On the other hand, there have been cases where the pitcher has come out on top. This usually happens on a full-count - the catcher sets up for an intentional ball, but the pitcher then throws it down the middle for strike three. The most famous case was in the 1972 World Series, when Rollie Fingers duped Johnnie Bench in the eighth inning of Game 3. Fingers later called the pitch “the best slider I’ve ever thrown.”

There’s also the intentional walk with the bases loaded, which has happened just twice in the majors since the end of World War II, to Barry Bonds in 1998 and Josh Hamilton, a decade later. Both cases were late in games with the pitching team ahead by two and four runs respectively. And it worked out in both examples, with the next batter up making the final out of the game.

Of course, the all-time finest intentional walk in baseball history was the one attempted to Kelly Leak against the Yankees in 1976, where the batter, much like Cabrera and Olson, swung at an intentional ball - in this case, ball four. Leak did succeed in lining it into the right-center gap, but were nailed at home-plate trying to stretch out a triple into the winning run, instead ending the game. Someone should make a movie about that.