BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…August 5, 2001:
Trailing 12-0 in the third inning and 14-2 in the seventh, the Cleveland Indians stage a stupendous rally and beat the Seattle Mariners, 15-14, in 11 innings at Jacobs Field. The Indians joined the 1911 Detroit Tigers and the 1925 Philadelphia Athletics as the only teams in big league history to overcome 12-run deficits. It was an aberration for the M's, as they won an American League record 116 games that season.
Both teams were leading their divisions coming into the game, but the margins were wildly different. Seattle led the Oakland A’s by 20 games in the American League West, while Cleveland was up by just a half-game over Minnesota in the AL Central. The M’s had taken the first two games of the series and were poised to make it three.
Seattle scored eight runs in the third inning to jump ahead of Cleveland 12-0. The Indians were still trailing 12-2 midway through the seventh, but they began their improbable rally with three runs that inning, followed by four more in the eighth. The Tribe was down 14-9 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. An Einar Diaz single scored two runs—then Omar Vizquel ripped a game-tying bases-loaded triple, and Jolbert Cabrera singled home Kenny Lofton with the walk-off run in the 11th for an amazing 15-14 victory.
The other two teams to dig out of 12-run holes did it early in the 20th century. On June 18, 1911, the Tigers came back from a 13-1 deficit to beat the Chicago White Sox 16-15. And on June 15, 1925, the Indians led the Athletics, 14-2 and 15-3 and before a 13-run outburst in the bottom of the eighth paved the way for a 17-15 A’s win.
The Mariners, however, do have the biggest comeback (in terms of deficit) of the past 15 years. On June 2, 2016, at San Diego, the M’s fell into a 12-2 crevasse after five innings. Instead of surveying the dugout for a position player to wrap up the disaster on the mounds, the Mariners put their hard hats on, putting up five runs in the sixth and nine in the seventh, and they won 16-13. The key blast that launched the rally in the sixth was a three-run pinch-hit homer by Dae-ho Lee, a 34-year-old South Korean who played just that one major league season.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
