The Nationals began play on September 29, 2012, in St. Louis on the cusp of clinching their first N.L. East title. Yet what is most remembered about the game was a bizarre situation in the top of the first inning.
With one out, Cardinals starter Kyle Lohse loaded the base on a single by Bryce Harper, a double by Ryan Zimmerman and a walk to Adam LaRoche.
Michael Morse then smacked a low liner deep to right. The ball appeared to sneak over the fence, hit an ad sign and ricochet back onto the field. Yet first-base umpire Chris Guccione signaled that the ball was in play.
Harper scored. Zimmerman, who saw the ball clear the fence but not the umpire’s signal, kept running around third. LaRoche stopped between second and third, unsure what the call was. Morse had rounded first but stopped, thinking LaRoche would retreat to second. Cardinal second baseman Skip Schumaker took the relay from right field and tagged Morse before he could get back to first.
At that point, Zimmerman had made it back to third and LaRoche to second. Harper had scored the only run and Morse was credited with a single. The Nationals immediately began to argue that the ball went over the fence and asked that the umpires confer and review the call. After the umps retreated to the video room to take a look at the replay, the hit was ruled a home run.
Zimmerman and LaRoche started to complete their journey home until an ump told them that they had to go back to where they were when Morse hit the pitch. That was so the umpires could be sure they touched all the bases. Morse who has passed second, reversed field and ran back to first and then to home.
“I guess I didn’t have to do that,” Morse said after the game. “If I didn’t do it and they were like, ‘No, you’re out,’ I would never sleep again.”
Back at home plate, Morse’s teammates were yelling at him to take a fake swing rather than just restart his run around the bases. He said he hadn’t intended to do it, but Cards’ catcher Yadier Molina told him to go ahead. So, as Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post wrote, “Morse stood in the batter’s box and acted every kid’s dream. He swung at air with a fake bat. You could almost hear Morse’s 9-year-old self thinking out loud: Here’s the pitch . . . the swing . . . grand slam!”
“It was pretty cool…. I thought they were waiting for me to swing,” Morse told reporters. “Then everybody started running. It was such a crazy moment. Might as well have some fun with it.”
The four runs gave the Nats an early lead, but the Cardinals rallied to send the game into extra innings. Kurt Suzuki won it with a double in the 10th, although a win by Atlanta kept the Nationals from clinching for another day.
Still, Morse’s weird grand-slam replay was picked as the winner of MLB.com’s GIBBY Award for Oddity of the Year.
Morse, after his all-star caliber season in 2011, was already a fan favorite. He had missed much of 2012 with an injury, one of many that plagued him during his career. His walk-up song, “Take On Me” by A-ha, had become a seventh-inning staple (much as “Sweet Caroline” became in Boston) after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was played. “Take On Me” was reprised when Morse came back to D.C. with the teams he played for after being traded. Following his retirement, Morse was greeted by fans singing the song when he threw out the first pitch before Game 5 of the 2017 N.L. Division Series.
Here’s a link to the You Tube video.
Washington baseball history 