He lands on every Astros fans list of top historical moments.\u00a0 Game 4 of the 2005 NLDS lasted 18 innings until Chris Burke walked off the Braves with a 338 shot to left field.\u00a0 This is the second installment of our Legends Series.<\/p>\n
Q: How often are you asked about that moment?<\/p>\n
A: I don\u2019t think a week goes by in my life, where somebody doesn\u2019t bring it up.\u00a0 \u00a0 What I remember most about that at bat was how electric the stadium was prior to my at bat, because Roger Clemens actually hit directly in front of me due to the way he entered the game and the crazy nature of an 18-inning game.\u00a0 He was making only his second ever relief appearance in his career and he struck out in front of me.\u00a0 When I got up next, I was actually going to bunt on the first pitch, but Joey Devine threw a slider for a ball which was way outside.\u00a0 The count went to 1 and 0 and then with the second pitch, he almost hit me, and so I knew up 2-0 in the count, I could start thinking about a pitch middle in that I could drive and he threw me an inside fast ball on the inside corner.\u00a0 I put my best swing on it and the rest is history.<\/p>\n
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Q: Where is the ball now?<\/p>\n
A: I don\u2019t have it.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually in Cooperstown at the Hall of Fame.\u00a0 Lance Berkman hit a grand slam that game in the 8th inning and the same fan who caught his shot, also caught my home run.\u00a0 Each of them is in the Astros display portion of the hall.\u00a0 The fan was gracious enough to give both of the balls to the Astros who sent them there.\u00a0 I still have the actual bat and the batting gloves from that plate appearance.<\/p>\n
Q: If that\u2019s your most famous home run, what\u2019s number two on your career list?<\/p>\n
A: It would have to be my first ever career home run.\u00a0 I hit it off of Pedro Martinez to break up a no hitter in New York in the 7th inning in his first year with the Mets.\u00a0 It was of course a sell out with Pedro pitching and at that time, the Mets had never had a no hitter as an organization and he hung me a 1-1 curveball, and I hit it into the leftfield bullpen.\u00a0 That was very surreal, being my first homer of vintage Pedro in New York.\u00a0 I still have to pinch myself.<\/p>\n
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Q: What do you love most about broadcasting now?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A: I love college baseball.\u00a0 I deeply cherished my time as a college baseball player, and I consider it one of the joys of my life.\u00a0 Now I get to cover it as a career, and I just love it at this level.\u00a0 The all-in nature, the way that coaches teach and compete and develop players and the buy-in they get from the players is just incredible.\u00a0 I appreciate the urgency.\u00a0 I love the environment and atmosphere.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He lands on every Astros fans list of top historical moments.\u00a0 Game 4 of the 2005 NLDS lasted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2389],"tags":[84135,42,46,5,71037,18067,139,54,3211,4,10873,1567,812],"class_list":{"0":"post-659509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-2005-national-league-division-series","9":"tag-astros","10":"tag-atlanta-braves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-chad-qualls","13":"tag-chris-burke","14":"tag-houston","15":"tag-houston-astros","16":"tag-houstonastros","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-pedro-martinez","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-the-mets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116337074930120955","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}