Austin Riley's Big Moment in Braves Win Provides Important Reminder

It’s the MLB Postseason. Anybody at any time can be a hero. They can be hitless the whole game up to any point and still be the one who changes the game.

He went through a season of ups and downs, but Austin Riley, one of those ups, came at a moment when the Atlanta Braves needed him more than ever this season.

With two outs, two on, down one in the bottom of the eighth inning, Riley took a 100 mph pitch from Jhoan Duran to right-center field. It towered. It loomed. It was hit hard - 104.6 mph - and the 385 feet the ball was hit proved to be enough.

His three-run home run put his team on top 5-3, putting them in position to take Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series.

“I don’t think I’ve screamed that loud in a very long time,” Chris Sale, who started the game, said.

It was his sixth postseason long ball, but it may go down as one of the most memorable.

Riley’s home run created one of the loudest moments Truist Park has had all season. The emotions are high. So are the stakes. It calls for the volume to be cranked up a notch for a moment like that.

It’s been a tough year at times for Riley. The reality is that that’s been said about him in some way shape or form over the last three seasons. Sometimes, he’s dealing with an injury. Other times, when he’s healthy, he’s struggling to get going.

Even with a clean bill of health, it proved to be statistically his worst regular season to date. Granted, his second half was better, but the doubts kept coming from the outside.

His teammates, his manager, his coaching staff - they all believed in him throughout. The grind continued every day to try and make something happen.

“You couldn’t tell this year if he was the leading MVP candidate in the National League or if he was struggling,” manager Walt Weiss said after the game. “And I mean that. He’s the same guy every day, and stuff like this doesn’t happen if you’re not.”

The numbers are back to zero. The regular season is over. It circles us back to a previously posed question: Why not Austin Riley?

No matter what the contract situation has looked like. No matter what happened in the 159 games he played in before Tuesday. Moments like these can’t be taken from him.

“Obviously, everybody knows how my season went, and not that way I wanted it to,” Riley said. “But that’s the beauty of the postseason. You kind of get a clean slate and out there and try do something for the boys and for the city.”

It's important to remember, too, that this is someone who still has that All-Star form somewhere in him, just waiting to come back out. It's not there every day, but along with the work he's put in, these moments don't happen if you don't have that ability in you somewhere.

With what he's gone through and what he's done to overcome it, he arguably earned the moment more than, if not the most of anybody in the Braves clubhouse.

To quote the popular line from Moneyball, how can you not be romantic about baseball? This is a sport that craves moments in October, even if they’re technically in September, perhaps more than any other sport.

After a couple of seasons of being on a roller coaster, postseason included or not, the Braves have themselves another magic moment.

It came from the man whom many looked for every which way to doubt. Now, these same people never doubted him for a second.

With Riley's home run, it may be good to keep around the following reminder. At any given moment, at any given time, someone can be a hero once more.

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