Unlikely Hero Sparks Life into Blue Jays with Game Tying Home Run in ALCS
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It is game three of the American League Championship Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners. The Blue Jays are already down 2-0 in a best-of-seven series and it might not be an elimination game, but it definitely is a must win for Toronto.
The first two games were all Mariners and no Blue Jays. It isn't often that the Jays lose at Rogers Centre, but they did, and badly. The team looked all out of sorts both on the mound and especially at the plate. The organization desperately needed to come into Seattle and make a statement in a big way.
Well, they didn't, at first.
Momentum Shift in Game Three
The game started off eerily similar to the beat down that the Jays received the game prior. No runs on the board in their first at-bats with a pair of strikeouts. Then, their starting pitcher, Shane Bieber, walked the first man for the Mariners and then threw a home run ball to Julio Rodríguez. It was 2-0 already.
Bieber rallied in the next inning with back-to-back strikeouts and from that point on the Blue Jays looked like themselves again. The top of the third inning started with an Ernie Clement double on the very first pitch and up next was the No.9 man Andrés Giménez.
With no outs on the board and a runner on second Giménez hit a near 400 foot bomb of his own, his first career playoff homer and as someone who only had seven in the regular season this year he was the least likely to pick as the Rudy.
The third didn't end there though. It was a tie ball game and the top of the hitting order was up with no outs. Nathan Lukes had a nice single to get him on base followed by a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. double (who had been ice cold this series) put runners on second and third.
Andrés Giménez ties the game! #ALCS pic.twitter.com/drtdQh8gQ1
— MLB (@MLB) October 16, 2025
It was now Alejandro Kirk up and he didn't get a hit, but he did draw a walk- bases loaded. A wild pitch would bring Lukes in to take the lead, but the team still wasn't done. Who other than Daulton Varsho would hit a double to give the Blue Jays a 5-2 lead going into the bottom of the third.
The Jays finally looked like the team that won the AL East and dismantled the New York Yankees the series previous and it all started with the two-run homer by Andrés Giménez.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.