Chris Coghlan etched his place in Toronto Blue Jays lore with his meme-tastic slide in Tuesday night’s win over the St. Louis Cardinals.
The acrobatic display provided perfect water cooler talk across the baseball world the next morning and got us thinking: Is it the most memorable slide in team history?
Here’s a brief look at some of its competition.
Mad Dash
This one should be fresh in the minds of Blue Jays fans. Josh Donaldson’s “Mad Dash” into home will live forever because it clinched a three-game sweep of the Texas Rangers in the 2016 American League Division Series.
Even sweeter for Toronto fans was that a bad throw by Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor (more on him later) provided Donaldson with the opportunity to score from second base in a play that was accentuated by his head-first dive.
Oh, and if we’re talking Donaldson, we can’t forget this beauty, which didn’t have as large of an overall impact, but was a more impressive technical slide:
Bloody Chin
If you own the VHS of the 1993 World Series, you’ll likely remember this slide as one of the funniest moments in the video. In Game 4, Blue Jays starting pitcher Todd Stottlemyre reached base and tried to go first-to-third on Roberto Alomar’s single up the middle.
What resulted was an epic visual: Stottlemyre, sporting an oversized early-90s team jacket, labouring into third base, looking back as if he’s being chased by a lion. The throw from Phillies centre-fielder Lenny Dykstra beats him to the bag, but Stottlemyre dives in, scraping his chin against the dirt before being called out.
Sure, it wasn’t successful, but the resulting image of the right-hander taking the mound the next inning with a red scab on his chin is still legendary.
The Troy Hop
What this slide lacked in overall relevance it makes up for with Troy Tulowitzki’s creativity. After a throwing error by Orioles second baseman Jonathan Schoop in the Sept. 4, 2015 contest, Tulowitzki turned left after crossing first base, before quickly realizing that he’d have nowhere to go.
Orioles catcher Matt Wieters raced toward the bag and flung his body forward trying to apply a tag, but Tulo deftly avoided him with a hopscotch jump. The best part is Tulo’s stoic, no-smile expression afterward, as if he does this kind of thing every day.
Home Theft
The steal of home plate is one of the most exciting plays in baseball. But doing it in the seventh inning of a 1-1 game against legendary New York Yankees battery mates Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada? That’s enough to bring the roof down and cause fans to wrap their arms around each other and jump with giddy glee (see the 0:10 mark of the video.)
Aaron Hill was the architect of that slide, on May 29, 2007. “I definitely felt my heart beating, that’s for sure,” Hill told MLB.com after the game. “I’ve never done that. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I just pictured the umpire calling me safe and hoped that’d give me a little extra boost.”
Slide That Sparked It All
Can’t avoid talking about this one. Rougned Odor’s haymaker on Jose Bautista made the rounds a million times, but do you actually remember the slide that set it up? Odor received a low throw to second base from Adrian Beltre and while he was turning a double play, Bautista came in with an aggressive slide that just missed his leg.
Bautista, who originally reached base after being hit by reliever Matt Bush in what was seen as retribution for his infamous bat-flip the previous October, offered these comments to Sports Illustrated about the slide.
“I could have hit him,” Bautista said. “I could have hurt him. I chose not to. My cleats were down. I slid through the bag. Was it late? Yes, a hundred percent. But what can I do after they hit me? Should I ask my manager to let me pitch, which he is never going to let me do? Like, what am I supposed to do? Just sit there and take it?”
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