The last game we checked in on, I had a vivid memory of, for no great reason I can name, other than Cristhian Martinez being awesome, I guess. This game, though — I have a very vivid memory, and I know the reason.
As I mentioned, 2001 was really my plunge headlong into baseball as a 13-year-old kid. I’ve said this way too many times before, but that plunge came in large part as a result of a vacation to Hawaii with my grandparents, where I was present mostly just to translate for them, and my exposure to baseball came during their daytime naps, which happened to be right at the time that TBS would be showing Braves games during the Hawaiian afternoon. This probably hasn’t raised the question for anyone, but I’ll pose it anyway: why was I on vacation with my grandparents? Answer: my mom was eight months pregnant at the time, hence why it wasn’t a family vacation. (Why yes, that is a big age gap between me and my sister, thanks for noticing.) You can probably see where this is going.
On the morning of Tuesday, May 15, 2001, I rolled out of bed, ate breakfast, and went to school. My middle school was within walking distance of home, so it was pretty normal for me to just get up and go, and it wasn’t unusual for me not to interact with any adults before getting to school. So, I had no idea that my family had actually left to go to the hospital much earlier that morning. By the time the school day was mostly over, I was the (unknowing) recipient of a sister. My grandparents picked me up after school and informed me of that fact. Had this been a normal day, I would have commend with my weekday routine: get home, grab a snack, do some homework while watching the Braves (who, in Pacific time, were on at 4:30, not 7:30, local time). But, instead, off to the hospital we went, and I missed a lot of this game... but not all of it. Anyway, the point is, this game has been seared into my memory. If someone says May 15 to me, yes, that’s my sister’s birthday, but it’s also the date that Marcus Giles hit his first career home run, which happened to be a game-winning grand slam.
The gist: I mean, I pretty much told you. Marcus Giles hit a game-winning grand slam fairly late, and the Braves hung on despite a shaky ninth. The slam accounted for four of the Braves’ five runs.
Box scores: Baseball-Reference, Fangraphs
How it happened: This game was actually very uneventful, and I’m not just saying that. The pitching matchup was pretty intriguing, though. For the Braves, it was John Burkett, he of the 2001 renaissance season. (We covered more on Burkett here, during our April 12 lookback.) Burkett had been dominant to date (70 ERA-, 69 FIP-), with scoreless outings in two of his last three and three of his last six starts. He’d given up just 10 runs over his last 44 innings. For the Rockies, it was Mike Hampton, who would be making his eighth start for the team with which he signed a mega-deal (remember, biggest in baseball when it was signed). At least to this point, Hampton had given the Rockies exactly what they were hoping for: 45 ERA-, 78 FIP-, 8 1⁄3 scoreless frames in the season opener, and most recently, a shutout of the Mets at Coors Field. So if you figured runs would be at a premium in this series opener, that would be a logical assumption, and a pretty accurate one!
Burkett’s first inning was a little worrisome, as Todd Helton’s two-out, hard-hit double into right put runners on second and third. But, a first-pitch groundout from Jeff Cirillo ended that threat. The Braves managed only a two-out Chipper Jones single versus Hampton in the first; Burkett worked around eight-place hitter Brent Mayne (career wRC+ = 74) with two outs to get to Hampton (career wRC+ = 67) on a groundout. The game was flying by.
The Braves strung together a rally against Hampton in the bottom of the second, with two singles to start the inning, and then a third from Marcus Giles after Bernard Gilkey flew out. But, that brought up Burkett, who tried to lay down a squeeze in a 2-2 count and nudged the ball right at Helton, who started the 3-2-4 double play to keep the Braves off the board. Burkett worked around a Chipper error, and then the Braves were able to push a run across.
Rafael Furcal led off the inning with a single, but got thrown by Mayne trying to nab second immediately afterwards. That was temporarily costly, as Andruw Jones hit a double down the left-field line right after. Chipper couldn’t score him, grounding it, but Brian Jordan came through, banging another two-bagger where Andruw’s went earlier to give the Braves a lead.
Over the next two innings (four frames), only two batters would reach base. But, Walker creamed a leadoff homer off Burkett to start the sixth, tying the game, and Helton followed with a single. It was the first time back-to-back batters reached base since the bottom of the third. Burkett rebounded to end the inning with two strikeouts, but the lead was gone. The Braves tried to rally with a one-out single from Javy Lopez and a two-out single from Gilkey, but Giles grounded back to Hampton to render it moot. Burkett gave up a one-out single to Hampton to start the seventh, but still managed a 1-2-3 inning after Hampton was caught stealing, for some reason. (Actually, the reason was that the Rockies called for a hit-and-run with noted contact dude Juan Pierre, but Pierre missed a Burkett pitch.) That was Burkett’s last inning of work. He finished with as many strikeouts (seven) as baserunners (six hits, one walk), and allowed just the one run. It was another fantastic effort from him in a career year full of them.
Hampton, though, was still out there and matching Burkett. He gave up a leadoff, eight-pitch walk to pinch-hitter Quilvio Veras, batting in Burkett’s spot, but then needed just five more pitches to retire Furcal and the Jones Boys on grounders.
It was around this time that I actually got home and turned the game on. I’m sure I caught a replay of most of the above at some point (I had a lot of free time as a kid), but I don’t remember much or any of it. I do, however, remember the rest.
With Burkett gone, the Braves turned to Mike Remlinger for the eighth. This seemed like a promising move: Remlinger was really good at the time (four straight 1.0+ fWAR seasons as Braves reliever from 1999-2002) and threw with his left hand, giving him the platoon advantage over Walker and Helton, essentially the only Rockies to have done anything in the game. (The 2001 Rockies actually had a really good, top-six position player group in baseball, but it was driven disproportionately by Walker and Helton combining for over 14 fWAR, well more than half of the team’s position player total.) Remlinger easily dispatched the switch-”hitting” Neifi Perez (batting second despite three straight seasons of a wRC+ below 60, kill me now), but then walked Walker. Helton then struck with a double over Andruw’s head in center, and Walker motored around to score the go-ahead run. It took Remlinger a couple of intentional walks to finally get Mayne up with two outs and strike him out, but the real issue was that the Braves were now trailing with just six outs left.
Hampton was at 100 pitches, and facing the middle of Atlanta’s order a fourth time. He was left in. Ah, 2001. Jordan grounded out to start the inning, but Lopez and Helms both lined balls into left-center to move the tying run into scoring position. Hampton then gave up his second walk of the game to Gilkey, on just his fourth three-ball count of the evening. (Can you imagine, these days, a pitcher having thrown 100 pitches through seven innings with just three three-ball counts?) And that set up this, still seared into my memory, embedded in all of its 2001 TV broadcast glory. For extra emphasis, watch the entire PA, and then the post-PA camera shots.
That was Giles’ first career homer, in his 13th career PA, in his third career start. It was worth .421 WPA, a heady sum, though amazingly, he’d actually top it later in the year. He wouldn’t homer for another 10 weeks in the majors, because he actually got sent down two days after hitting this homer. (Giles would stay down as the Braves kept dumping PAs into Veras, who was honestly fine but got sent packing on July 31. Giles and Veras basically produced at the same rate in 2001, with Giles hitting better but Veras playing better defense at the keystone. The real question is why Keith Lockhart basically had a permanent roster spot, but no one’s been able to answer that one.)
Anyway, the point is: 13-year-old me was very excited. Hype, as one might say, in anachronistic fashion. But, after Mike “not that one, not that one either, the guy that only exists to face Barry Bonds” Myers came in after Hampton and got the next two outs, the Braves still had to get some outs.
With a three-run lead and three outs to get, the Braves gave the ball to John Rocker. The volatile lefty had started 2001 with a couple of bad outings, but had been mostly lockdown since. He gave up a couple of singles, including a pinch-hit liner to Greg Norton and then a run-scoring liner into center to Walker, but got Helton to fight off an 0-2 pitch to a diving Gilkey in left, ending the game.
Game MVP: Are you kidding me? Marcus Giles!
Game LVP: No one really failed in this game except Mike Hampton, and even then, it wasn’t Hampton’s “fault” so much as just another of those decisions we used to see a lot (and still see a fair bit these days) of letting the starter totally dig his own grave, lie down in it, and then somehow use telekinesis to cover it with dirt. One curious thing: some retrospectives of Hampton’s career have pointed to this game as some kind of unraveling point. Remember, coming into this game, Hampton was giving the Rockies everything they wanted. Including this game, he finished the rest of the year with a 123 ERA- and 117 FIP-, ending the season with just 1.9 fWAR (much of it accumulated in those first few starts of 2001). He then put up an ERA- and FIP- in the 120s for all of 2002, before being dealt and ultimately ending up with the Braves.
Biggest play: Bruh.
The game, in context of the season: Despite this win, the Braves were still 18-21, in second place but five games out. They’d won back-to-back series just once all year coming into this game, but it kicked off a roll — they’d take this series, and then wouldn’t lose another until a month later. By that point, they were 35-29, 2.5 games out. They actually wouldn’t take a division lead for good until mid-August. It was a really exciting year!
The Rockies, meanwhile, dropped to .500 with this loss. They had a 12-8 start, but this was the third loss in a four-game losing streak for Colorado, dropping them into fourth place despite being just three games back (divisions are weird). They actually hung around reasonably well (36-32 on June 17), but then a 5-25 stretch immediately after killed their season. They literally went over a month without winning back-to-back games, which is pretty horrific.
John Burkett, well, that season was awesome for the 36-year-old. He’d finish the year with a 71 ERA- and 78 FIP-, giving up five or more runs just six times in 34 starts, and four or more runs just 10 times. He had two starts all season with a Game Score (v2) below 33 — one in April, one in September.
Video? Thankfully someone at least put the Giles slam on YouTube!
Anything else? This is a legitimately crazy fact: On Saturday, May 30, 1992, the Braves improved to 23-27. The day before was their last day being five games below .500 until June 22, 2025. That’s over a decade. I bring this up because the Braves had a chance to trim that latter date by a few years with a loss on this day, but it didn’t happen.
Why didn’t manager Buddy Bell pull Hampton? Hard to say for sure, but the Rockies having a really bad bullpen in 2001 may have had something to do with it. Myers, a LOOGY, was basically their best reliever. Hampton got saddled with loss, preventing him from setting a new Rockies record for wins to start a season.
Giles’ slam was the Braves’ first in over a full season. Javy Lopez hit the prior one on May 9, 2000. The Braves came into this game with the lowest run-scoring in the majors; they’d finish the season still in the bottom 10 in MLB, and 13th in the 16-team NL. However, good defense gave them an average position player group overall.
Todd Helton was a menace in 2001, finishing with a 160 wRC+ despite the massive Coors Field park adjustment. With this game, he had driven in runs in nine straight games, a new Rockies record. It would be snapped the next game, to be bested by Vinny Castilla in 2004 and then Carlos Gonzalez (11 straight games) in 2011. The major league record of 17 straight games with a run knocked in, set in 1922 by Ray Grimes, seems pretty hard to beat! Mike Piazza’s 15-game run in 2000 has come the closest in recent history.
Trivia: the last Brave to hit a grand slam for his first career homer was Barry Bonnell in 1977. That was the only homer Bonnell hit that season. He finished with 3.3 fWAR in 3,353 PAs, most of it coming in one season with the Jays.
Baseball is dead to me, tell me something else cool about May 15: My sister turns 19 today. I’m pretty sure she has never watched a baseball game. I’m not even sure she has watched a baseball inning.
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