TORONTO -- You’ve seen Game 5 of the 2015 American League Division Series before -- maybe twice -- but you haven’t seen it like this.
On Friday night, Sportsnet will stream the Bat Flip game, and its coverage will feature the king himself, José Bautista. Also joining the broadcast will be Ryan Goins and umpire Dale Scott.
Bautista lived at the heart of the rivalry between the Blue Jays and Rangers, which boiled over more than once during this fifth and deciding game. The Bat Flip home run in the bottom of the seventh inning is what this game is best remembered for, but the marathon top half of that inning lives on as one of the most bizarre stretches of baseball we’ve seen in Toronto.
That inning featured the infamous Russell Martin play, when a ball he was throwing back to the mound bounced off the bat of Shin-Soo Choo and rolled towards third base. The umpires ruled it a dead ball at first, but eventually overturned the call, allowing Rougned Odor to score.
"It never happened in my life before. I don't really know what the rule is,” Martin said after the game. “He was in the box. I mean, it's just one of those moments and it created an opportunity for us to do something special. José, the hero.”
Hearing Scott’s retrospective on that inning will be particularly interesting, along with the players, who now have some distance from the moment nearly five years later.
"I've never seen anything like that in 19 years in baseball," said pitcher R.A. Dickey back in 2015. "It was like a novel that you don't want to put down."