Astros set record with HR on 1st & last pitch?
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You've got to play hard from the first pitch to the very last. That's the kind of seemingly innocuous statement about what it takes to win in the postseason that you could probably find in a book of sports clich¨¦s. But the Astros took that advice very literally in their 4-3 ALCS Game 5 victory over the Rays on Thursday.
Faced with a must-win game to keep from heading back home for the winter, the Astros got things started early -- very early. As in, George Springer homered on the very first pitch the Astros saw in the game early:
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A few hours and a few hundred pitches later, Carlos Correa added another piece of home run bread to this baseball sandwich as he hit a walk-off home run against Nick Anderson to end the game.
That's right: The first pitch the Astros saw and the last were both home runs.
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This was also the first time in postseason history that a team had ever started and ended a game with dingers.
While Correa had hit one other postseason walk-off home run before -- beating the Yankees in Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS -- we can safely say that this is the first time Correa's hit a walk-off in another team's ballpark. (Oddly enough, Correa has two walk-off homers in just 61 postseason games, but zero game-ending dingers in 604 regular-season ones.)
The Astros will attempt to pull off this feat again on Friday, but will have to do it against Tampa Bay ace Blake Snell. First pitch is at 6:07 p.m. ET on TBS.