July 15, 1977: Bob Bailor homers in 13th inning for Blue Jays’ first-ever walk-off win

Typically stocked with ballplayers past their prime or otherwise below average, major-league expansion teams have had little prospect of participating in pennant races during their inaugural seasons. As a result, their fans celebrated lesser triumphs – like their first win, their first win at home, and their first walk-off win.

The Kansas City Royals collected all three in their very first game, on Opening Day in 1969. The Seattle Mariners did the same three games into their first season, in 1977. No expansion team had to wait as long before celebrating their first walk-off win as Seattle’s expansion-mates, the 1977 Toronto Blue Jays.1 Not until their 89th game, on July 15, did the Blue Jays win a game on the last swing of a bat. Fittingly, that bat was in the hands of the very first Blue Jay, Bob Bailor.

“A gritty, hustling blue-collar player” from western Pennsylvania, Bailor had been signed by the Baltimore Orioles as an undrafted free-agent shortstop in 1969.2 He’d worked his way up through the Orioles’ minor-league system, but his path to meaningful playing time in the majors was blocked by Baltimore’s talent-filled roster.3 Exposed to the 1976 expansion draft, the 25-year-old Bailor was the first player taken by Toronto after the Mariners selected Royals prospect Ruppert Jones.

“Bob Bailor will be a key player,” said Pat Gillick, the Blue Jays’ vice president of player personnel. “He is young, aggressive and a real team player as well. He has outstanding speed and excellent range. He’s an ideal choice and we’re very delighted to have him at this key position.”4

Slated to be manager Roy Hartsfield’s Opening Day shortstop, Bailor could only watch as the Blue Jays fell at home to the Chicago White Sox; he’d cut his hand in late March while trying to open an oyster, giving himself a wound that took three stitches to close.5 Wearing uniform number 1, Bailor made his first start at shortstop three days later.

Over the next three months, Bailor bounced between shortstop, left field, and center field as Hartsfield shuffled through fielders who couldn’t hit and hitters who couldn’t field. A sure-handed fielder and Toronto’s most consistent hitter, “the guy that makes the Blue Jays tick” was batting .337 entering play on July 15, the fifth highest batting average in the American League.6

Through the first two weeks of July, the Blue Jays were 32-56 and sitting in the AL East basement. Back from a dismal 2-9 road trip, they were kicking off a six-game homestand heading into the All-Star break with a night game on July 15 against the Detroit Tigers, the team immediately ahead of them in the standings – by 7½ games.

Starting for Toronto was 20-year-old right-hander Jeff Byrd. The Blue Jays’ 21st selection of the expansion draft, he was making his fifth start after a June promotion from Double-A Jersey City. He’d won his last start, five days earlier, but carried an ugly 6.85 ERA and a WHIP of 1.79. Detroit manager Ralph Houk countered with the senior statesman of his pitching staff, 32-year-old southpaw Dave Roberts, a 16-game winner in 1976. Only 4-8 through 19 starts, he’d allowed Toronto seven runs when the two teams met four days earlier but had held the Blue Jays to four hits in a complete-game victory the first week of the season.

A crowd of 23,749 was on hand at Exhibition Stadium, hoping for relief from a brutal heat wave that two days earlier had triggered a citywide blackout in New York City.7 Rain delayed the game’s start by close to 40 minutes, leaving the artificial surface soggy and challenging for the fielders.8 Five days past his 26th birthday, Bailor was in center field, moved there from shortstop after previous center fielder John Scott misplayed a pair of fly balls in Detroit.9

Detroit broke the ice in the second, scoring a run on a one-out single by 23-year-old first baseman Jason Thompson, followed by Ben Oglivie’s double. A day earlier, Thompson had been announced as a member of the AL All-Star team by manager Billy Martin, replacing Tigers pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, who’d suffered an arm injury earlier in the week.10

Toronto took a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the second, courtesy of Detroit’s defensively challenged center fielder, Ron LeFlore.11 First he overran a two-out liner hit by Doug Ault for a two-base error that should’ve been an out, then he allowed a base hit by shortstop Héctor Torres to skip under his glove for a triple. A single slapped “in front of the beleaguered center fielder” by the next batter, Sam Ewing, plated Torres.12

The lead changed hands once again in the third. With one out, LeFlore tripled and Tito Fuentes, on the way to hitting .300 for the only time in his 13-year career, singled to right, scoring LeFlore. Fuentes advanced to third on a two-out single by 22-year-old rookie cleanup hitter Steve Kemp and jogged home when Thompson cracked a ground-rule double that the Detroit Free Press described as going under the right field fence.13 Detroit led, 3-2.

In the fifth, Toronto scored twice to take a 4-3 lead. Ewing led off with a single and was forced at second on a grounder by catcher Alan Ashby. Rookie Steve Staggs, the Blue Jays’ everyday second baseman since he was brought up from Double-A Iowa two weeks earlier, doubled down the left-field line, the ball stopping in a puddle as Ashby eased into third.14 A walk to Al Woods loaded the bases for Bailor, who singled, driving in Ashby and Staggs. With Woods and Bailor moving up a base on the throw home, Roberts intentionally walked hot-hitting right-handed cleanup hitter Doug Rader to face veteran lefty Ron Fairly.15 Roberts fanned Fairly, the Blue Jays’ sole All-Star representative, and retired Ault on a grounder to end the inning.

Toronto didn’t hold the lead for long. After Detroit loaded the bases with nobody out in the sixth, Hartsfield replaced Byrd with rookie southpaw Dennis DeBarr. Plucked from the Tigers’ farm system in the expansion draft, DeBarr had taken a loss against Detroit in his last appearance, done in by the shoddy outfield play that had put Bailor back in the outfield. DeBarr allowed two of his inherited runners to score on a sacrifice fly by the first batter he faced, longtime Tiger Mickey Stanley, batting for Phil Mankowski, and a single from the Tigers’ light-hitting shortstop, Tom Veryzer.16 

Detroit threatened again in the seventh but came up empty. With one out, runners on first and second, and Oglivie in the middle of his at-bat, Hartsfield pulled DeBarr and brought in swingman Pete Vuckovich.17 Vuckovich walked Oglivie, then retired the next two batters to escape unscathed.

The Blue Jays knotted the score at 5-all in the bottom of the seventh on a triple by Staggs and a sacrifice fly by Woods, but were denied the go-ahead run in the eighth when Veryzer threw Ault out at the plate trying to advance on a one-out infield grounder.

Neither side was able to push a run across in the ninth. An “outstanding” backhanded grab by second baseman Staggs on a grounder by Thompson prevented Detroit from moving the go-ahead run into scoring position in the top of the inning.18 Facing Detroit reliever Steve Grilli19 with two out in the bottom of that frame, Bailor had the first of three chances to win the game with his bat, but he flied out, sending the game into extra innings.20

Vuckovich was rudely greeted in the 10th when catcher Milt May homered on the second pitch he threw, a breaking ball.21 The burly right-hander retired the next three batters, but Toronto, winless in all five home extra-inning games played at Exhibition Stadium so far, was at risk of losing another.

A leadoff walk to Rader in the bottom of the 10th gave Toronto fans hope. Now facing lefty Jim Crawford, Fairly bunted Rader over to second. Ault struck out, but Torres saved the day, pulling a single to left to score Rader and tie the game.

Relying more on his fastball as the game wore on, Vuckovich made quick work of the Tigers in the top of the 11th, with all three batters grounding to first. A single by Staggs put the winning run on in the bottom of the inning, but he was thrown out by May trying to steal second. Woods reached on a two-out single but went no farther as Bailor flied out to center, missing chance number two.

Thompson led off the 12th with his fourth hit of the game, a single to center, but was erased when Blue Jays first baseman Ault turned Oglivie’s grounder into a nifty 3-6-3 double play. The bottom of the inning started out as a repeat of the Toronto 10th, with Rader reaching first (this time on a single) and advancing to second on Fairly’s sacrifice. Crawford intentionally walked Ault and induced Torres into a force out at second. With the winning run 90 feet away, Ewing grounded out to second, sending the game to the 13th.

Both sides were flagging as the clock made the turn for midnight. All three Tigers failed to hit the ball out of the infield in the 13th, as did the first two Blue Jays in the bottom of the frame. With two out, Woods singled to right, bringing Bailor up once again. The third time proved the charm. Bailor crushed a Crawford offering into the left-field bleachers for his fourth homer of the season, giving Toronto an 8-6 victory and kicking off a long-anticipated celebration.22

“I felt along we would win it, but I was beginning to wonder just how long it was going to take,” Bailor told reporters.23 He had good reason to worry – his girlfriend, a flight attendant, was in town and he’d promised to meet her at a time that had long since passed. “I hope she’s not mad at me,” Bailor shared.24 On the night he’d given the city its first major-league walk-off win, it’s hard to imagine that anybody in Toronto could find fault with Bob Bailor. 

Acknowledgments 

This article was fact-checked by Thomas E. Merrick and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Bob Bailor, Trading Card Database.

Sources 

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Rory Costello’s SABR biography of Bob Bailor, and the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Stathead.com, and Baseball-Almanac.com websites, including box scores listed at the links below:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR197707150.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1977/B07150TOR1977.htm

Notes

1 Here are details on the first walk-off win for each of the 14 new major-league teams in the expansion era (since 1961).

2 Rory Costello, “Bob Bailor,” SABR Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bob-bailor/. Accessed June 22, 2024.

3 With four-time Gold Glover Mark Belanger in firm grasp of the shortstop job in Baltimore as he had been since 1968, Bailor was given the opportunity during the Orioles’ 1975 training camp to compete for a spot as a utility infielder but was beaten out by Doug DeCinces. Bailor made Baltimore’s Opening Day roster in 1976, but an offseason shoulder injury rendered him unable to field his position. Sent down to Triple-A Rochester, he hit well enough as a designated hitter to earn a September recall but was given little opportunity to prove himself. 

4 United Press International, “Accent on Youth in Draft,” York (Pennsylvania) Record, November 6, 1976: 16.

5 Mike Dodd, “The Blue Jays’ Bailor: There’s No Hiding His Ability,” Buffalo Evening News, April 6, 1977: IV-59; “Bailor Idled with Cut Hand,” Connellsville (Pennsylvania) Courier, April 9, 1977: 6.

6 Neil MacCarl, “Fledging Blue Jays Have Growing Pains,” Toronto Star, June 7, 1977: 9.

7 High temperatures in Toronto had for days been hovering around 32C (90F), an unusually high level.

8 Carl MacCarl, “The Lady Had Waited Long Enough,” Toronto Star, July 16, 1977: D1. Throughout the game, a ball splashed whenever it struck the turf. Toronto second baseman Steve Staggs, who made several stellar plays on defense in the game according to the Toronto Star, openly complained about the wet surface afterward. “It was a (bleep) out there. It was hard to keep your eye on the ball because it splashed when it hit the turf.”

9 Arlie Keller, “Jays Juggle the Line-Up after Loss,” Toronto Star, July 12, 1977: C1.

10 Jim Hawkins, “Jason Is an All-Star,” Detroit Free Press, July 15, 1977: 35.

11 On his way to becoming the first AL center fielder to have double-digit errors in three separate seasons since Dom DiMaggio, Flores was first or second in errors among AL center fielders every year between 1974 and 1978.

12 Jim Hawkins, “Houk to Quit? ‘It’s Ridiculous’,” Detroit Free Press, July 16, 1977: 21-C.

13 Hawkins, “Houk to Quit? ‘It’s Ridiculous.’” The outfield fence at Exhibition Stadium was 12-foot-high chain link, covered with padding that stopped several inches above the ground; high enough for balls to get trapped underneath. The author identified one other instance of a ball in play getting stuck under the fence, one hit by Kent Hrbek of the Minnesota Twins on September 30, 1982 that turned into an inside-the park home run. Neil MacCarl, “Long Blast by Barfield Wins Slugfest,” Toronto Star, October 1, 1982: B1.

14 “Call Up Staggs,” St. Catharines (Ontario) Standard, July 2, 1977: 28. Staggs was leading the American Association with a .372 batting average when he was recalled.

15 Purchased from the San Diego Padres five weeks earlier, Rader had hit five home runs in his last nine games, including one off Roberts four days earlier.

16 Hitting .192 entering the game, with a slugging percentage of only .278, Veryzer finished the season with the lowest batting average (.197) and slugging percentage (.254) of any AL player with at least 300 plate appearances.

17 Vuckovich had the unique distinction of recording both Toronto’s first save, on Opening Day, and its first shutout, three weeks before this contest. Rory Costello, “Pete Vuckovich,” SABR Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Pete-Vuckovich/. Accessed June 22, 2024.

18 The Toronto Star’s account of Staggs’ defensive gem claims he made it on a ball hit by Kemp; however the play-by-play account available at Baseball-Reference.com indicates that Kemp singled to right in that at-bat, with Thompson grounding into a 4-6 force-play. “The Lady Had Waited Long Enough.”

19 Grilli’s then-infant son, Jason, born eight months earlier, eventually played for both Detroit and Toronto.

20 This was just his second opportunity all season to deliver a walk-off win. The first came in the ninth inning of a doubleheader nightcap on April 25, when Bailor came to bat with a runner on second, one out, and the Blue Jays trailing the Boston Red Sox, 6-5. He hit into a fielder’s choice and Boston held on for the win.

21 “The Lady Had Waited Long Enough”; “Houk to Quit? ‘It’s Ridiculous.’”

22 Over the remainder of his 11-season career, Bailor hit only five more home runs in over 2,800 plate appearances. He never hit more than one in any season after 1977.

23 “The Lady Had Waited Long Enough.”

24 “The Lady Had Waited Long Enough.”