Albert Pujols lingered near the batter’s box after connecting. Many LA players jumped the dugout rail. And lots of fans at Dodger Stadium raised …
Albert Pujols lingered near the batter’s box after connecting. Many LA players jumped the dugout rail. And lots of fans at Dodger Stadium raised their arms, all ready to celebrate. Mike Tauchman had other ideas. Tauchman remarkably reached over the left-field wall to rob Pujols of a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning and San Francisco broke through in the 10th to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in an 8-5 thriller Friday night. Dodgers pinch-hitter Austin Barnes provided a jolt when he hit a three-run homer with two outs in the ninth to make it 5-all. Pujols was up next and the recently signed slugger launched a long, high drive. «I mean just off the bat I thought obviously he hit it well,» Tauchman said. Tauchman angled back to the fence, jumped and made a sensational backhanded grab. He fell to the ground after knocking into the wall, raised his arm to show the ball and hobbled a bit on his way back to the dugout. «You can never really tell, but I think any time you’re going back, or after anything, you want to go hard at first to keep yourself from drifting. I got to the spot to time my jump,» Tauchman said. «Sometimes the ball goes in and sometimes it doesn’t. I happened to make a play for the boys.» The Giants got Tauchman in late April in a trade with the New York Yankees, who liked his defensive ability but had no room for him in an overcrowded outfield. Giants manager Gabe Kapler called the play «an excellent, very, very difficult major league catch up against a wall that’s not easy to scale.
