Cub Rookie David Bote Hits “Shot Heard ‘Round the (Cub) World” With Ultimate Grand Slam!

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Cub Rookie David Bote Hits “Shot Heard ‘Round the (Cub) World” With Ultimate Grand Slam!

With all due respect to Bobby Thomson’s historic homer, how in the world does Cub rookie utility infielder David Bote now get mentioned in the same sentence with….Babe Ruth??? And yet it happened last Sunday night!

Yes…You read that right. And, of course, David Bote’s hit has a nice connection to baseball history, or else I wouldn’t be featuring it here on Old Time Baseball Photos.

So let’s see how it is that David Bote – a 18^th round pick with a grand total of 34 games on his baseball resume, and only playing because of an injury to Kris Bryant – now shares a page in baseball history with the great Bambino himself! Here’s what happened…

In a game Sunday against the Washington Nationals at Wrigley Filed, the Cubs entered the ninth inning trailing 3-0. They had been unable to do anything against the Nationals’ ace, Max Scherzer, who fanned 11 batters over seven innings and left the game leading 3-0.

In the ninth, the game was turned over to reliever Ryan Madson. With one out, Jayson Heyward reached on a botched infield dribbler. Madson then hit Albert Almora, got Schwarber to foul out, and then hit Wilson Contreras to load the bases.

That brought to the plate pinch-hitter “Babe” Bote (hey…that has a nice ring to it!). With the count 2-2, Bote launched Ryan Madson’s next pitch, a 95-mph 4-seamer, 442 feet into the centerfield bleachers for a walk-off grand slam, giving the Cubs a dramatic 4-3 win and sending the sellout crowd into a frenzy of excitement. It was definitely an “all-time moment” for Bote, his first ever walk-off homer going all the way back to his Little League days.

But what made the homer even more dramatic was that Bote’s grand slam is known in baseball vernacular as an “Ultimate Grand Slam” (UGS). I have to be honest and admit that I’ve been following this game for over 60 years, and I’ve never heard the term “Ultimate Grand Slam.” I wonder how many of you reading this would say the same thing?

An “Ultimate Grand Slam” is defined as a player hitting a bases-loaded, walk-off homer when his team enters its final at-bat trailing by three runs. Boy…you learn something new about this game every day!

With his UGS, Bote entered some rarified air, joining such UGS hitters as Jason Giambi, Alan Trammell, Buddy Bell, Roberto Clemente, Del Crandall, Bobby Thomson, and, yes, the great Bambino himself, Babe Ruth.

With a little more research, here’s a few more things I learned about this historic home run:

• There have been only 27 UGS in major league baseball history (since 1925).
• UGS are some of the rarest occurrences in baseball history, approximately as rare as Perfect Games (23), unassisted triple plays (15), and natural cycles (14).
• There have been 15 UGS hit with two outs and seven hit by pinch hitters. Bote is one of only three players in baseball history to hit one as a pinch hitter and with two outs.
• Bote’s shot was the first to erase a 3-0 deficit in the ninth since pinch-hitter Sammy Byrd of the Reds hit one in 1936, although his came with no outs.
• The last UGS hit by a Cub was by Ellis Burton at Wrigley Field on August 31, 1963.

Just how exciting was this hit? Cub president Theo Epstein termed it “unbelievable,” adding “That really struck a chord with everyone. I probably got more texts after that game than some of the World Series games.”

Of course Cub manager Joe Maddon chimed in too: “Pretty neat what he did, and what it means for him and his family and us, of course, and even the city.”

And what did Bote, a guy who almost quit the game twice, have to say about his historic game which now puts his name in the same sentence with Babe Ruth? “Baseball is a fun game. It’s a crazy game. I don’t know what else to say. It’s just baseball!”

…And we thank you, “Babe” Bote for making it even crazier!

Gary Livacari

Photo Credits: All from Google search

Information: Excerpts edited from the Chicago Tribune, August 14, 2018.

Check out my two books, both now available on Amazon in e-book and paperback:  “Paul Pryor in His Own Words: The Life and TImes of a 20-Year Major League Umpire” and “Memorable World Series Moments.” All profits go to the Illinois Veterans Foundation