June 5, 1987: Freshman Paul Carey’s walk-off grand slam propels Stanford toward College World Series championship

For the fourth time in six years, the Stanford Cardinal was in the College World Series in 1987. And for the fourth time in six years, the Cardinal was on the verge of leaving Omaha empty-handed.

After finishing fifth in the 1982 and 1983 CWS, and sixth in 1985, Stanford punched its ticket to Nebraska in 1987 by winning the West I Regional. The team won its first two games against the University of Georgia and the University of Texas, but lost its third to Oklahoma State University, setting up a showdown with the Louisiana State University Tigers.

LSU made its way to the CWS by winning the South II Regional, even without its best hitter, All-American Albert Belle, who’d been suspended for chasing after fans who’d shouted racist taunts at him during the Southeastern Conference championship game. In Omaha, the Tigers won their opener against Florida State University but lost to Oklahoma State in the second round. They bounced back with a loser’s bracket win over the University of Arkansas, but now both LSU and Stanford were 2-1 in the double-elimination tournament, with elimination on the line for the loser.

Through their three games, Stanford’s hitters were batting an anemic .210 with just one extra-base hit, an Ed Sprague triple in the opening round. “Pitching has just dominated this Series,” suggested Stanford head coach Mark Marquess. “I don’t think it’s bad hitting, the pitchers have been unbelievable.”1

That had to be a concern for Marquess because LSU boasted one of the best pitching staffs in the country–LSU coach Skip Bertman would jokingly concede that “the New York Mets are better”2—which included future major leaguers Ben McDonald, Mark Guthrie, Russ Springer, and All-American reliever Barry Manuel.

On this afternoon, the Tigers sent right-handed senior Stan Loewer to the mound before a standing room-only crowd of 15,411 fans at Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium, the second-largest in College World Series history to date.3 Stanford countered with sophomore righty Brian Keyser.

In the second inning, Stanford took a 2-0 lead when designated hitter Mark Machtolf hit an RBI triple, then came home on a single. The Tigers cut the lead in half an inning later when left fielder Rob Hartwig singled, stole second, advanced to third on a groundout, and scored on a single by shortstop Dave Cunningham.

In the fourth, LSU right fielder Jack Voigt, hitting .500 in Omaha with two doubles, two triples, and a homer, tied the game with a similar sequence. He beat out an infield single, stole second, made it to third on an errant throw by catcher Doug Robbins, and scored on a sacrifice fly.

From there, the pitchers on both sides kept things scoreless through the ninth inning, though for a moment, Stanford appeared to have a chance at a walk-off win in the ninth. Strong winds had been blowing to left field high above the field, threatening to carry away a ball hit with enough height. With a runner on third, Machtolf hit a fly ball that sounded good off the bat but dropped harmlessly into Hartwig’s glove. “It was really kind of low,” he said disappointedly. “I didn’t want to go out like that when I had a chance to win it.”4

In the top of the 10th inning, Stanford reliever Rob Wassenaar, who’d come in for the sixth inning and had only surrendered one hit over four innings, loaded the bases on two walks and a hit. With Voigt, who was later named to the All-Tournament Team, coming to the plate, Marquess turned to closer Steve Chitren, who’d saved a school-record 13 games during the season.

Chitren struck out Voigt. But cleanup hitter Craig Faulkner, who was 2-for-16 in the tournament, smashed the second pitch he saw into left field. The line drive fell in and rolled all the way to the wall for a bases-clearing, three-run double that seemed like a nail in Stanford’s coffin.

With a 5-2 lead in the bottom of the 10th inning, Manuel got ahead of left fielder Ruben Amaro Jr. 0-and-2, but then struggled to find the strike zone, walking him and then centerfielder Toi Cook, who’d been drafted as a defensive back by the New Orleans Saints a month earlier.5

“Amaro’s at-bat was the key to the whole inning,” declared Marquess.6

Wassenaar watched from the dugout, “just praying we’d get some guys on,”7 knowing that he was on the hook to take the loss. “We weren’t optimistic until Ruben got on base,” he said. “Then we were saying that we might get a shot.”8

Bertman went to his bullpen and called on McDonald, the 6-foot-7 freshman he trusted to throw strikes. The hard-throwing right-hander had joined the team halfway through the season because he’d been playing on the LSU basketball team that had come within six seconds of making the Final Four.9 Within two weeks of his baseball debut, Bertman moved McDonald to the starting rotation, calling him “as talented a freshman as I’ve ever worked with. I look for him to be our ace next year.”10

McDonald’s second pitch was a curveball that slipped from his fingers and hit Sprague to load the bases for the NCAA Freshman of the Year, right fielder Paul Carey. The muscular lefty was batting .200 in the CWS and was hitless in three plate appearance in this game, but his coach had high hopes.

“We all dream, especially with Paul,” said Marquess. “He’s hit some big home runs for us.”11

McDonald delivered a 1-and-1 fastball high on the outside corner of the plate that the left-hander reached out to clobber. As it sailed toward the left-field fence, Carey stood and watched. “I figured either he was going to catch it or it was gone. It didn’t matter what I did,” he said.12 “I had a feeling it was out. I got it up in the wind and I knew I hit it well.”13

As soon as the ball launched off Carey’s bat, Ron Witmeyer leapt in celebration in the on-deck circle. Hartwig ran toward the 370-foot sign on the wall, but the ball easily cleared it for an opposite-field grand slam.14 “My God, it hit a giraffe in the zoo,” joked a member of the grounds crew.15

McDonald had thrown just five pitches, and LSU’s season was over. As Stanford celebrated, he crouched on the mound for several minutes, unsure of what to do. “A grand slam had never crossed my mind,” he admitted. “I was confident I was going to get him out.”16 His teammates finally led him to the dugout where he covered his face to hide the tears.

The next day, a photo of McDonald holding his head on the bench was published by the Omaha World-Herald. McDonald framed a copy and kept it in his bedroom through the rest of his college career to keep him humble.

Despite the loss, Bertman insisted his players would learn from the experience and use it to improve, and that they should focus on the team’s accomplishments instead of the way things ended. “This is probably the best year in the history of Louisiana State baseball,” Bertman declared. “I don’t think it can be marred because somebody hit a ball 350 feet.”17 LSU returned to Omaha two years later, starting a 17-year streak of earning CWS Regionals slots, during which time they made 11 CWS appearances and won five national championships.

The Cardinal defeated Texas and Oklahoma State in its next two games to win the school’s first national championship. Carey had five hits in seven at-bats in those games, scoring four runs and knocking in two more, earning him CWS Most Outstanding Player honors. Stanford repeated as champion in 1988.

After a week of wallowing in misery at home, watching and rewatching a VHS tape his parents had recorded of the ESPN broadcast of the game, McDonald was playing summer ball for the Anchorage Glacier Pilots in the Alaskan Baseball League. Before his first start, the Glacier Pilots’ opponents, the Mat-Su Miners, filled out a lineup card with “Paul Carey” listed at every position. In response, McDonald tossed a one-hit shutout that broke a six-game Mat-Su winning streak.

In the ensuing two years, McDonald became one of the most dominant pitchers in college baseball history, setting SEC records for strikeouts in a season (202) and consecutive scoreless innings (44 2/3), and winning Baseball America’s College Player of the Year honors and the 1989 Golden Spikes Award. He also earned a gold medal as the ace for the U.S. Olympic baseball team in Seoul, South Korea, in 1988, received the highest rating ever given to a pitcher by the Major League Scouting Bureau, and was selected first overall in the 1989 Amateur Draft by the Baltimore Orioles, signing a three-year deal with a record-shattering $350,000 signing bonus. He was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.

Carey was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 1989 but didn’t sign. He played with the independent Miami Miracle in 1990, was sold to the Orioles organization, and played five minor-league seasons with them. During 1993, he was called up to Baltimore from Triple-A Rochester, making him one of McDonald’s teammates. He played a total of 18 major-league games.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown and copy-edited by Kurt Blumenau. Thanks to Gene Gomes for sharing access to the coverage from the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Photo credit: Paul Carey, 1987, courtesy of Stanford Athletics.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 Kent Heitholt, “Paul Carey’s Slam Sends LSU Packing,” Shreveport Times, June 6, 1987: 23.

2 David Lanier, “LSU Ready to Make a Strong Pitch in Baseball Today,” Shreveport Times, February 15, 1987: 3C. The 1987 Mets’ pitching staff included Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, and Bob Ojeda, all of whom had received Cy Young Award votes in 1986, as well as David Cone, Rick Aguilera, Randy Myers, Doug Sisk, and the closing combo of Roger McDowell and Jesse Orosco, who’d combined for 43 saves the previous season.

3 The largest crowd was 15,678 to see Arizona State University versus Oklahoma State in 1984’s CWS. The 1987 CWS set an attendance record with 130,659 people across ten sessions, and plans were in place to add 2,000 more seats to Rosenblatt Stadium in time for the 1988 Series. In 2011, Rosenblatt was replaced by Charles Schwab Field Omaha, which has 24,000 seats, and the CWS attendance record has more than tripled. In 2023, 392,946 people attended the CWS, which stood as the record as of 2025.

4 Casey Tefertiller, “Stanford Turns CWS into a Fantasy Camp,” San Francisco Examiner, June 6, 1987: C1.

5 Cook was also selected by the Minnesota Twins but chose football over baseball and enjoyed an 11-year career in the NFL. After seven years with the Saints, he was offered a million-dollar free-agent contract by the Cincinnati Bengals in 1994 but turned it down in favor of a league-minimum deal to go to the San Francisco 49ers, with whom he won the Super Bowl.

6 Ryly Jane Hambleton, “Grand Slam Saves Stanford; Texas Edges OSU,” Lincoln (Nebraska) Star, June 6, 1987: 13.

7 Jimmy Burch, “Stanford Rallies Past LSU, 6-5,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 6, 1987: Section 3-1.

8 Hambleton, “Grand Slam Saves Stanford.”

9 The Tigers were seeded #10 in the Midwest bracket and upset #7 Georgia Tech, #2 Temple, and #3 DePaul to get to the regional final. In that game, they led #1-seeded Indiana, the eventual champions, by nine points with just over five minutes to play and withstood a Hoosiers run to lead 75-74 with 20 seconds remaining but lost in the final seconds. McDonald was the only player in the nation to make it to the final eight in two sports’ championship tournaments.

10 Bob Tompkins, “McDonald Cuts the Mustard,” Alexandria-Pineville (Louisiana) Town Talk, April 26, 1987: B8.

11 Robert Williams, “Freshman’s Slam Caps Stanford’s Grand Rally,” Omaha World-Herald, June 6, 1987: 37.

12 Tefertiller, “Stanford Turns CWS into a Fantasy Camp.”

13 Associated Press, “Stanford Ends LSU’s Campaign,” Houston Chronicle, June 6, 1987: Section 3-1.

14 Of Carey’s 12 homers in 1987, three were grand slams and nine went to the opposite field. “I threw it right where I wanted it–on the outside corner,” McDonald said later. “I didn’t know he had hit that many home runs to left until after the game. Had I known, we wouldn’t have worked the outside.” Brian Allee-Walsh, “Grand Slam Ousts LSU, 6-5,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 6, 1987: D1.

15 Tefertiller, “Stanford Turns CWS into a Fantasy Camp.” Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo was located next to Rosenblatt Stadium. When the ballpark was torn down in 2010, the zoo purchased the land on which it stood for expansion. The original foul poles still stand in the zoo’s parking lot, and the zoo preserved bricks, seats, part of the scoreboard, and other materials from the deconstruction to create an “Infield at the Zoo” tribute, which includes a bronze plaque marking the original location of home plate. Stephen Sellner, “Infield at the Zoo Honors Former CWS Home Rosenblatt Stadium,” NCAA.com, June 21, 2015, https://www.ncaa.com/news/baseball/article/2015-06-19/infield-zoo-honors-former-cws-home-rosenblatt-stadium, accessed September 9, 2025.

16 Steve Sinclair, “Tiger Left Standing on Doorstep Again,” Omaha World-Herald, June 6, 1987: 42.

17 Sinclair, “Tiger Left Standing on Doorstep Again.” Carey’s home run cleared a wall marked as being 370 feet from home plate, so it’s fair to assume Bertman’s comment was not meant to reflect an accurate measurement.