TORONTO — It was Game 1 of the 2025 World Series. And assuming you don’t reside in a land we like to call “Canada,” I bet you didn’t see this game coming.
Blue Jays 11, Dodgers 4? Nope! Stuff happens, even in the World Series.
But nine-run innings, against the reigning champs? They don’t happen. And pinch-hit grand slams — that bust open a World Series opener and cause Rogers Centre to shake like your grandma’s 1968 Oldsmobile? They don’t happen, either.
Well, fortunately, there’s such an invention as the World Series Weird and Wild column (Game 1 edition). So let’s dig in on this rollicking little baseball game Friday evening in Toronto. What do you say?
Don’t bother Addison Barger — he’s slammed
Addison Barger celebrates as he rounds first base after his sixth-inning slam. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
The first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history, authored by Addison (Big Fly) Barger, was sailing through the Toronto sky. And somewhere between liftoff, back there in the batter’s box, and touchdown, way out there in right-center field, Barger’s Blue Jays teammates were trying to grasp what they were watching. It wasn’t easy.
“Insane,” said outfielder Myles Straw. “I’ll remember that forever.”
“Awesome,” said pitcher Chris Bassitt.
“I’m not sure it’s hit me yet,” said Davis Schneider, the man Barger pinch hit for. “I honestly don’t know if it will ever hit me. It’s like when George (Springer) hit that homer in (ALCS) Game 7, it was like an out-of-body experience. But the fact that we’re in the World Series, it doesn’t feel like it’s really happening.”
Then again, aren’t the best kind of October moments the ones that feel like they can’t really be happening? So, in that way, this one fits right in.
World Series history is a seductive blend of legends rising to heroic heights and the Addison Bargers of this sport somehow doing things that have never been done. So this was a wave of the bat that made total sense but also no sense at all. Think about it.
In the first game of the 121st World Series, we somehow witnessed the first pinch slam in the long, distinguished history of this event?
Really? Oh yeah. Really.
That. Happened. So here at Weird and Wild Postseason HQ, you know what we’re all about. Let’s tell you what made that blast so special, and yet so hard to believe.
The first one ever? ‘That’s outrageous’
Here’s how long the World Series has been around. A dude named Brickyard Kennedy pitched for Pittsburgh in the first World Series ever played, in 1903. Poor Brickyard has been dead for the last 110 years. But the World Series goes on.
So how is it possible that it took until Friday night for somebody, anybody, to hit a pinch home run with the bases stuffed? That’s the question I asked in the Blue Jays’ locker room afterward.
THE ATHLETIC TO STRAW: “I guess you’ve heard that was the first pinch slam in World Series history. How many pinch slams would you have guessed there had been in the history of the World Series?”
STRAW: “That’s kind of weird to think about. I would have assumed there was maybe one anyway. That’s outrageous, right?”
TA: “Right. Like wouldn’t you have thought that maybe Babe Ruth would have hit one? Or Reggie Jackson? Or George Springer?”
STRAW: “Yeah, somebody. In hundreds of years of baseball? That’s insane.”
Next up, I asked Schneider the same question.
SCHNEIDER: “Man, at least three. Or five. Or something like that. I mean, it’s been going on for so long. I know there are always records that were made to be broken. But the fact that there wasn’t even one is kind of crazy to me.”
So how crazy was it? According to Baseball Reference, Barger was the 1,642nd pinch hitter in World Series history. Yet, somehow, he was the first to do this …
ADDISON BARGER
PINCH-HIT
GRAND SLAM#WORLDSERIES pic.twitter.com/REg58MNosp— MLB (@MLB) October 25, 2025
How can we explain that? That’s the easy part. It’s …
Baseball!
But there’s so much more we can’t explain. So let’s keep going.
It’s a specialty of the Dodgers’ house
How bizarre is this: If you count all kinds of postseason series, this was actually the fourth pinch slam in postseason history. And somehow or other, the Dodgers have allowed three of them!
In the 2016 NLCS, Joe Blanton served up a pinch slam to the Cubs’ Miguel Montero. In the 1995 Division Series, the Dodgers’ Mark Guthrie gave up a pinch slam to the Reds’ Mark Lewis. And then there was this one — Anthony Banda to Barger.
The only non-Dodgers pinch slam in postseason history? The late, great Rod Beck, pitching for the Red Sox, gave up that one to the Yankees’ Ricky Ledee in the 1999 ALCS.
Five more fun grand slam facts
It isn’t the NLCS anymore! Remember, the Dodgers just got through allowing four runs to the Milwaukee Brewers in the entire NLCS — all four games of it. Then, in Game 1 of this round, they allowed four runs just on this one swing by Barger.
Even in the regular season, this doesn’t happen much! The Blue Jays haven’t hit a pinch slam in a regular-season game in more than seven years.
Last to do it: Justin Smoak, on Aug. 31, 2018. And it was an all-timer — hit with the Blue Jays trailing the Marlins (managed by current Jays coach Don Mattingly) by three runs in Miami, with two outs in the ninth, only to have Smoak change everything with a game-winning slam on an 0-and-2 pitch. So they were one strike from losing. Then a pinch slam happened.
Meanwhile, only twice in franchise history (before Friday night) had the Blue Jays hit a pinch slam in Toronto — once by Tony Fernandez on Sept. 4, 2001, the other by Jesse Barfield on April 24, 1982. Both of those, obviously, were hit in the regular season.
Game 1 World Series slams are always memorable, don’t you think? And we hadn’t seen one of those since … oh, wait … last year, when Freddie Freeman pounded that indelible walk-off extra-inning slam for the Dodgers, off the Yankees’ Nestor Cortes.
The other three Game 1 slams before Friday: Tino Martinez for the Yankees in 1998 (off the Padres’ Mark Langston), Jose Canseco for the A’s (off the center-field camera) against the Dodgers’ Tim Belcher in what would later become the Kirk Gibson Game in 1988, and Dan Gladden for the Twins off the Cardinals’ Bob Forsch in 1987.
Finally, there’s a first for everything. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only three other players prior to Barger had hit a grand slam in a World Series before they ever hit one in a regular-season game: Bobby Richardson (Game 3, 1960), Chuck Hiller (Game 4, 1962) and Canseco (see above). What a trio.
Banda’s claim to fame
The Blue Jays gave Anthony Banda a rude welcome to the World Series. (Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
For every hitter who gets to round the bases after a pinch-hit home run, there’s a pitcher who has just made that possible. So here’s to Banda, the Dodgers’ left-hander who arrived in this game and then served up this pinch slam on the first pitch he threw.
According to my friends from STATS Perform, only six other relief pitchers in World Series history can share his pain. Here they come, the only other relievers to allow a Series slam to the first batter they faced.
| PLAYER | TEAM | OPPONENT | DATE |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Anthony Banda |
Dodgers |
Blue Jays |
Oct. 24, 2025 |
|
Dan Otero |
Indians |
Cubs |
Nov. 1, 2016 |
|
Chad Qualls |
Astros |
White Sox |
Oct. 23, 2005 |
|
Ken Dayley |
Cardinals |
Twins |
Oct. 24, 1987 |
|
Gordie Richardson |
Cardinals |
Yankees |
Oct. 14, 1964 |
|
Russ Meyer |
Brooklyn Dodgers |
Yankees |
Oct. 4, 1953 |
|
Dick Coffman |
New York Giants |
Yankees |
Oct. 2, 1936 |
Quiet! Managerial genius at work
All right, one more thing. When a manager — namely John Schneider — dials up a move that results in the first World Series pinch slam in history, shouldn’t he get to wear a GENIUS patch on his jersey for the rest of the Series, if not the rest of his life?
Or shouldn’t we just award him the Manager of the Year trophy on the spot?
“Yeah, I believe you should,” said infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa. “Well, we’ve got to finish the job first. But after that, hopefully.”
A reminder that postseason developments are not a factor in Manager of the Year voting. Nevertheless, after hearing that exchange, my Athletic colleague Ken Rosenthal tracked down the manager himself to explore this very topic. But rather than launch his Manager of the Year campaign, Schneider chose just to lay out his thinking in how he came to send Barger up there in that spot.
Wait. So it wasn’t brilliant managing?
“No,” Schneider said with a laugh. “Those are just situations where guys make me look good. But thank you.”
Hey, as always, you’re welcome!
Bo knows 48-day layoffs
Bo Bichette returned to the Blue Jays’ lineup, and promptly singled in his first at-bat. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
Speaking of managerial genius, can we talk a little about Bo Bichette?
Before Friday night, he hadn’t played a big-league baseball game in 48 days (since Sept. 6). So naturally, his manager just dropped him into the lineup, in the cleanup spot, in Game 1 of the World Series.
It seemed to me that you don’t see many guys go from seven weeks of not playing baseball to hitting cleanup in the World Series. But when I asked Schneider about it before this game, he acted as though it was almost amusing that I’d pose that question about Born to Hit Bo Bichette.
“You can probably drag him off vacation this offseason,” the manager said, “and say: ‘Go get a hit,’ and he’s probably the guy to do it.”
So what happened in Bichette’s first plate appearance in 48 days? Right you are. He got a hit — off Blake Snell, who had only allowed one hit per start in each of his two previous trips to the mound in this postseason.
That seemed like Weird and Wild material to me. So I asked STATS how many other players have gotten a hit in their first plate appearance of the World Series after not playing for as many days as Bichette. You know what I learned? That no one was even close.
| DAYS | PLAYER | TEAM | WS GAME |
|---|---|---|---|
|
40 |
Chief Bender |
A’s |
Oct. 17, 1910 |
|
35 |
Juan Uribe |
Mets |
Oct. 30, 2015 |
|
33 |
Billy Cox |
Dodgers |
Oct. 8, 1949 |
|
28 |
Christian Colón |
Royals |
Nov. 1, 2015 |
|
28 |
Eric Hinske |
Rays |
Oct. 26, 2008 |
(Source: STATS Perform)
But also … Bichette started this game at second base, a position he’d never played for even one inning in the big leagues. (His last minor-league appearance at second: six years ago, on April 17, 2019.) Did you know that only one other player had ever started a World Series game at a position he’d never played in the major leagues? And that, according to Elias, was Patsy Dougherty, who did it as recently as the first World Series ever!
Daugherty was normally a left fielder, but he started in right in Game 8 of the 1903 World Series. Unlike Bichette, Patsy went hitless that day.
More managerial genius
Then there was that other thing the Blue Jays did Friday that you don’t see much. They started a pitcher (Trey Yesavage) in Game 1 of the World Series who had only started three regular-season games in his big-league career.
This felt like a much Weirder and Wilder thing than most people were making it out to be. So we asked our friends from Baseball Reference, Katie Sharp and Kenny Jackelen, to look into it.
Does this normally happen? Of course not! Here’s their list of fewest career regular-season starts by a pitcher who started Game 1 of the World Series:
| PITCHER | YEAR | TEAM | STARTS |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Trey Yesavage |
2025 |
Blue Jays |
3 |
|
Jim Konstanty |
1950 |
Phillies |
13 |
|
Babe Adams |
1909 |
Pirates |
16 |
|
Livan Hernandez |
1997 |
Marlins |
17 |
|
Anthony Reyes |
2006 |
Cardinals |
18 |
(Source: Baseball Reference)
But even that list is misleading. Jim Konstanty was a reliever who had made 137 more relief appearances than starts. Even Babe Adams had divided his time almost equally that year as a starter and reliever.
The closest comp was really Livan Hernandez. But he was called up in June that year and had even pitched once the season before. Yesavage, on the other hand, didn’t arrive in the big leagues until a month ago. So the Blue Jays won a World Series game Friday night doing all sorts of stuff no team had ever done. And just as their whole country pretty much expected, it all worked.
And finally …
Alejandro Kirk hits a two-run homer in the sixth inning. (Mark Blinch / Getty Images)
Speaking of Bo and Trey … Game 1 of the World Series was the first game they’d ever played together. Bichette hurt his knee on Sept. 6. Yesavage made his big-league debut nine days later. Good timing!
Tommy Edman is a switch hitter, but … he batted right-handed twice against a right-handed pitcher (Yesavage) in Game 1 … and got an infield hit while doing that in the second inning. He hadn’t gotten a hit batting right-handed against a right-hander since 2023.
Alejandro Kirk had a cool claim to fame! In the first World Series game he ever played, the Blue Jays’ sweet-swinging catcher went 3-for-3 with a homer. The last player to go 3-for-3 (or better) with a long ball in the first World Series game of their career was Mel Ott, for the Giants, as recently as 92 years ago, in Game 1, 1933. (Hat tip: Elias Sports Bureau.)
Can the Dodgers win with this bullpen? Pretty relevant question, don’t you think? After the six runs they coughed up in this game, this Dodgers bullpen now has a 6.16 ERA in this postseason, in 30 2/3 innings. And it’s a good thing Roki Sasaki has been doing his best Mariano Rivera impression, because Dodgers relievers not named Sasaki have an ERA in this postseason of 7.30.
In case you’re wondering, the worst bullpen ERA by a team that won the World Series (minimum 20 innings pitched) is 8.42, by the 1960 Pirates. So I think that one’s safe, but stay tuned. (Hat tip: STATS Perform.)
Bases loaded — then unloaded! Finally, the first reliever out of that Dodgers pen Friday was Emmet Sheehan. That went well. He arrived on the scene, after Snell exited, with the bases loaded and no outs in a 2-2 game. Here’s how it went:
• First hitter, Ernie Clement: RBI single, bases still loaded.
• Second hitter, Nathan Lukes: bases-loaded walk brings in another run, bases still loaded.
• Third hitter: Andrés Giménez: RBI single, bases still loaded.
So that’s three consecutive hitters who all reached base and allowed an inherited runner to score. If you’re thinking Hmmm, that’s a pretty weird (and wild) little outing … good thinking.
According to STATS, only one other reliever in the history of the World Series has ever entered a game and allowed the first three hitters he faced to reach base while also letting an inherited runner to score on all three. That was poor Ryan Speier, of the 2007 Rockies, in Game 1 against the Red Sox. Here’s how his day went:
Bases-loaded walk to Julio Lugo … bases-loaded walk to Jacoby Ellsbury … bases-loaded walk to Dustin Pedroia … exit, never to pitch again in that Series.
But hey, that’s how it goes sometimes in the never-dull sport of …
Baseball!