PROGRAMMING NOTE: NBC Sports California is looking back at the A's 50 Memorable Moments since the franchise relocated to Oakland in 1968. Below are the next two moments you can vote on. Tune into A's Pregame Live today at 6:30 p.m. to watch highlights of the two moments. After the A's and Mariners conclude, tune into A's Postgame Live to see which moment will move on to the next round!
1. Scott Hatteberg's walk-off home run to extend A's winning streak to 20 in 2002 (Four-time winner -- Defeated Catfish Hunter's Perfect Game against the Twins in 1968)
(From Ben Ross)
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Every A's fan remembers where they were when Scott Hatteberg hit the biggest home run of his career. With Oakland and Kansas City tied at 11 in the bottom of the ninth, Hatteberg hit a pinch-hit walk-off home run, giving the A's their 20th straight win, a new American League record.
Incredibly, the Athletics had blown an 11-0 lead in the game. The Royals scored five runs in the fourth inning, five more in the eighth, and one in the ninth to tie the game at 11. But Hatteberg came to the rescue, sending the sellout crowd of more than 55,000 into a frenzy.
Hatteberg hit 15 home runs that season, and 106 in his career, but only this one ended up in Hollywood. Hatteberg was portrayed by Chris Pratt in the 2011 film "Moneyball."
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2. Dennis Eckersley records 50th save in 1992
(From former A's starter and current NBC Sports California analyst Dave Stewart)
It’s not even the saves that I remember mostly about Eck, it’s the command and control of the strike zone. My guess is he probably had 70+ innings pitched that year and probably four walks. When you add his walks and hits combined, I mean it was just unbelievable, there were no base runners. He literally came into games and he was 1-2-3, couple of punch-outs and guys were done. He was just unbelievable.
When he first came to us, he didn’t want anything to do with pitching out of the bullpen, but he did it so easily, his command and control were just unbelievable.
When you know you can get to that point in a game, you could be rest assured that you’ve got a better than 99 percent chance of the game finishing in the positive because Eck was just like clockwork. Our saying was, let’s play this game so we can get the ball to Eck.
His command on the corners was just unbelievable, his mixture of pitches, he had a nice 3-2 breaking ball that he threw on a regular basis to get left-handed hitters out and right-handed hitters, he’s coming at you with both the breaking ball away with the low three-quarters delivery which is tough to pick-up and he could dot the corners.
I think he redefined what a closer is suppose to be.
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