Luis Castillo not the first, won’t be the last

Here’s an e-mail I got from my friend Ben today…

This whole Castillo thing - "have you/will you ever see anything like it" - made me wonder just how rare the circumstance is. So I did the research - when do you think the last time this happened: walkoff error, batting team trailing, two outs? Answer: August 9, 2000. AP recap can be found here (scroll to Rockies/Pirates); the fly ball is described as "routine." Maybe not a Castillo duplicate - the box score says it was more of a line drive than a flyball (and the recap notes the ball was hit hard enough to roll to the wall), but this "most improbable" way to lose a game just happened 9 years ago. Of course, the Subway Series and the increased media attention will certainly make this one much bigger. After all, I don't think I heard anyone say Luis "pulled an Alex Ramirez."

August 9, 2000, the Rockies beat the Pirates by a score of 4-3. The Rockies scored two in the 9th inning after a “routine” fly ball off the bay of Juan Pierre deflected off of outfielder Alex Ramirez’s glove and skipped to the wall.

Here’s the box score, via Baseball Reference.

Here’s what the AP report said, courtesy of The New York Times:

Todd Walker drew a one-out walk from Mike Williams (2-3). After Walker stole second, Ben Petrick reached on shortstop Mike Benjamin's error. One out later, Juan Pierre hit a routine fly to right that deflected off Ramirez's glove and rolled all the way to the wall, allowing the tying and winning runs to score.

Yikes. Not one, but two errors in the 9th inning to let the game slip away.

Maybe not to the degree of Castillo’s flub, being the Subway Series, and being against the Yankees, but still pretty interesting.

Here’s what first baseman Kevin Young told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"You feel bad for Alex," Young said, "but, hey, we're all in this together. People are going to make mistakes. He catches that ball 499 times out of 500. It just so happened this is the one he missed."

Sound familiar?

Great find, Ben!

The Stat of the Day blog picked up on this as well. In all, this is the 11th time this has happened since 1954.