5 and walked through the center field gate at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh at 12:52 p.m. Rooker and a friend took their first steps from Philadelphia on Oct. The event was dubbed "Rook's Unintentional Walk," with a sporting goods company donating hiking gear and four corporate sponsors underwriting the trip. Rather than brushing off his pledge to walk back to Pittsburgh as merely a throwaway line played for laughs, Rooker, 46 at the time, stayed true to his word, even making some public good out of it by turning the trek into a walk for charity. It was the Pirates' seventh straight loss. From there, Jeltz hit his second homer, there were more hits, there was a run-scoring wild pitch and yada, yada, yada, the Phillies took the lead and eventually won 15-11. "When you're a manager, your gut usually tells you that something's not right. It's a freaky thing. "I could've told you then that there was a good chance we were going to lose that game," then-Pirates manager Jim Leyland said later. After Jeltz barreled that homer, the game itself seemed to be barreling toward an inevitable conclusion. Jeltz's first homer, a two-run shot, made it a 10-6 game. "They said, 'You finally got a lead in one game.' And I said, 'Yeah, but, you know, it's not over yet.'"Īfter the Pirates dropped 10 in the top of the first, the Phillies outscored them 15-1 the rest of the game. If you want more evidence of baseball's sense of humor, the normally light-hitting Steve Jeltz, who didn't even start the game and had two career homers at that point, belted two dingers that night - which ended up accounting for half his homers on the season. "I looked at the umpires and I said, 'Yeah, we finally got a lead,'" the Pirates' Bobby Bonilla recalled later that season. Especially when a team has lost six straight.
BASEBALL COMMENTATOR PLUS
Well, despite Rooker's 13 years as a big league pitcher, plus another nine years as a broadcaster to that point, he apparently forgot that baseball has a weird, sick sense of humor. MORE: That time an MLB player got a hit for two teams, in two cities, on the same day "If we lose this game, I'll walk back to Pittsburgh," Rooker told partner John Sanders - and everyone listening on the radio. It's a lesson he learned on Jthe day the former Pirates broadcaster made a seemingly innocent (and safe) statement after the Buccos scored 10 runs in the top of the first against the Phillies in Philadelphia.
Jim Rooker can tell you a fun story about that. Think before you speak, especially when you speak to hundreds of thousands of people for a living. Think before you speak, even in baseball, and even when something seems, well, unthinkable.