MLB Hoosiers: Indiana Native Mike Brosseau Leads Tampa Bay Past Yankees in Epic Thriller
Aaron Slegers said that "Hollywood couldn't write it,'' and the Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher is probably right.
The box score simply says that the Rays beat the mighty New York Yankees 2-1 Friday in the fifth and final deciding game of their American League Divisional series. But if a picture can tell a thousand words, on those extremely rare shooting-star kind of nights in sports, a box score can tell a million words.
This one does.
It was one of the greatest games in postseason baseball history mostly because there were SO MANY storylines involved, and they all intersected at the very same moment. It was pure magic, pure unadulterated intensity and pure realism for what makes sports so entertaining.
Bang!
What do we have? Well, let's count the ways;
- The little kid that nobody wanted — former Andrean High School star Mike Brosseau – took down the biggest, baddest baseball franchise in the history of the planet with a late-inning home run off the best and hardest-throwing closer in the game.
- The little team that no one cares to pay tickets to watch — the usually last-in-attendance Tampa Bay Rays — knocked their arch rivals out of the playoffs the same way they kicked their butts all year, scrapping and clawing and finding a way, Tampa Bay won this series 3-2, and went 8-2 over the Yankees in the regular season, little brother beating bully big brother.
- That little kid Brosseau, who was nearly killed — OK, that's a Hollywood embellisment — by a 101-mph fastball to the head from closer Aroldis Chapman on Sept. 1, got his revenge with the home run in the eighth inning. It was the ultimate bitch-slap, the ultimate piece of revenge.
- And since the color of money always matters, it was a kid who makes the the major-league minimum ($563,000) settling a game that was started by a guy (New York's Gerrit Cole) who has a $324-million contact and finished by Chapman, who's made nearly $200-million in his career.
Hollywood, take it away.
"I don’t know if there’s any way to describe that kind of feeling. It’s something I’ll never forget,'' Brosseau said after the game, which was played in San Diego as part of baseball's playoff bubble. "I'm just so happy for this team. We do what we do every day, and that’s come to the park to play. We have so much fun, we click so well together.
"I couldn’t be happier to kind of keep this season going. Nobody here wanted this season to end tonight. I'm just happy to do my part and keep this team going for at least a little bit longer.''
It was a game for the ages, a pressure-packed pitchers dual that saw only six hits total all night. The Yankees started Cole, the highest paid players in the major leagues, and the Rays, like they do, pieced together a gem by using four different pitchers all throwing around two innings each.
New York's Aaron Judge homered in the fourth inning to give the Yankees a 1-0, but Austin Meadows tied it in the fifth with a solo homer for Tampa Bay.
Brosseau, who came into the game in the sixth inning as a pinch-hitter and had an infield single, came to bat again in the bottom of the eighth inning. He kept battling and battling against Chapman, a guy who intentionally threw a fastball at his head a month earlier, and on the 10th pitch, lined a homer to left that barely cleared the wall.
Rays lead.
Rays win.
The little guy. The star. With a memory that will last forever.
"Mike Brosseau is the perfect example of why we think our organization is so special,'' Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said. "Hands down, that was the greatest moment I’ve been a part of in baseball. There’s been some great ones, but what that meant to this team, how we got there, that matchup, it was all pretty special. A lot went into that game, but for Mikey to come up there in that situation and just come up as big as he possibly could, that was incredible.''
"I don’t think that anybody that’s ever followed the game of baseball could be happier with how that one ended for us,'' Tampa Bay reliever Pete Fairbanks said. "Especially with Brosseau getting a little revenge after he almost got decapitated.''
"It’s crazy how the world works,'' added reliever Nick Anderson. "People can say what they want. That’s all I’m going to say is it’s crazy how the world works.''
Teammates swarm Tampa Bay's Mike Brosseau after his eighth-inning homer gave the Rays the lead in Game 5. (USA TODAY Sports)
Waiting and waiting for an opportunity
It is not too Hollywood-esque to say that Brosseau's career has been defined by being that kid that no one wanted. He played shortstop at Andrean High School in Merrillville, a baseball powerhouse, but when he graduated, he was this 155-pound kid that all major colleges passed on. He wound up playing at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.
He hit .308 there in four years and was a Horizon League all-conference player, but when the major-league draft rolled around, there were 1,214 names called.
Brosseau's WAS NOT one of them.
He signed a free agent deal for a whopping $1,000 bonus, and went to work. Three years later, in 2019, he made it to the majors. He's 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds now, and he stuck around in 2020 as a valuable and versatile piece off the Rays' bench.
They had a 40-20 record in the shortened regular season, the best in the American League, and he hit .302. They were fun to watch, and they had that other Indiana University tie with Slegers, the reliever who played at IU from 2011 to 2013. Now they'll play Houston in the ALCS, a seven-game series that starts Sunday.
Brosseau earned his spot in the bigs through sheer hard work at determination. Former Hoosier Craig Dedelow, a Northwest Indiana neighbor of Brosseau's and constant offseason workout partner, was thrilled to see him friend hit that massive homer of Friday night.
"It was just crazy to see that happen,'' said Dedelow, a rising minor-league in the Chicago White Sox organization. "Mike's just the most humble guy, and hitting with him in the offseason just shows that. He doesn't flaunt his success, he just works hard and it shows.
"I'm so happy for him. He went from being undrafted to hitting a home run that sent his team to the ALCS. That's amazing. Brosseau deserves this.''
Yes, he does.
Mike Brosseau connects on the game-winning homer. (USA TODAY Sports)
A win over a hated rival
There's been bad blood between the Yankees and Rays ever since Tampa Bay came into the game as an expansion team in 1998. While the Yankees were winning three straight World Series titles, the Rays were a perennial last-place team and during the winter, it was the Yankees — whose spring training home is in Tampa — who got all the attention, even in the Rays' home town.
Tampa Bay was awful for a decade, but in 2008 they were on the rise and tired of being pushed around. A brawl during a spring training game set the tone for things to change at it was the Rays who went to the World Series that year. They lost to the Phillies, and the Yankees won it again the following year in 2009.
They've been fighting and brawling and throwing at people ever since. It broiled over this September, when the Yankees' Chapman threw at Brosseau during another Tampa Bay win, a 101-mph fastball that just missed his helmet. Benches emptied — again.
Brosseau deflected the revenge factor Friday night, but none of his teammates did. They were so happy for him, and celebrated well into the night at Petco Park, smoking cigars and dancing to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York,'' gleefully dancing on the Yankees' grave.
“It’s just crazy. That was very storybook-like,” said Rays starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow, who worked on only two days' rest. "For Mike to go up there and have that long of an at-bat and battle that hard and with all the history we’ve had with the Yankees and for Brosseau to hit a bomb off Chapman?
“That’s just nuts. I still can’t comprehend it, as you can see. And Brosseau is such a good dude. It’s just so awesome that it was him. He’s grinded all year long for such a big moment. It was phenomenal.”
Grinder is the perfect word for Brosseau, His teammates have seen that from the beginning.
"I remember first meeting him in 2017 when I was doing a rehab assignment down in the minors,'' said Tampa Bay centerfielder Kevin Keirmaier, who's a Fort Wayne native and Purdue grad, told Baseball Tonight. "We're both Indiana guys, and we had some great talks. I told to just keep working and his chance will come.
"I couldn't be happier for him, that's for sure.''
Revenge was sweet for the Tampa Bay Rays, who took out their arch rivals, the New York Yankees, in Game 5 of the AL division series. (USA TODAY Sports)