There are moments in sports that make for extraordinary memories. One small play, by a role player can engrain that player and team in your brain for the rest of your life. This is how fan favorites are born.
Sometimes, the players with the lowest expectations can stand out the most. The burden of expectation is real, especially in sports where players are paid large sums of money to perform. At times, it’s simply easier to root for the underdog.
When you watch a team play every single game, these fan favorites are bound to appear. When your team is good, they become all the more memorable.
Enter, Endy Chavez and the 2006 Mets.
Chavez, a career journeyman, had one of the best seasons of his career in 2006 with the Mets.
In 2006, he hit:
.306 batting average
.348 On base percentage
12 stolen bases
42 rbis
48 runs scored
His batting average and on base percentage were both career highs. However, his numbers that season are not why Mets fans remember him so fondly. Most fans probably couldn’t tell you his batting average that season if they had 100 guesses.
In fact, there is one play that explains why Chavez can do no wrong in the eyes of Mets fans.
Let’s examine when and why the legend of Endy Chavez was born.
The Situation
The Mets had a great season in 2006, pacing the NL with 97 wins. The Cardinals won the lowly NL Central with just 83 wins. However, you control what you control, and they were just as much division winners as the Mets.
The Mets and Cardinals both took care of business handily in the Division Series. The Mets swept the Dodgers (3-0), and the Cardinals beat the Padres (3-1).
This setup a meeting between the Mets and Cards in the Championship Series. In case you don’t remember, it was an absolute battle.
They traded wins in games 1-6, ultimately setting up an epic game 7 at Shea Stadium. Winner goes to the World Series.
Which brings us to…
The Play:
It was a 1-1 ballgame. Top of the 6th inning, one out.
Scott Rolen is at the plate, Jim Edmonds on first and Oliver Perez (much less of a Mets fan favorite!) on the bump.
Rolen had been struggling due to a bum shoulder. However, Perez throws him a pitch middle-in and he tries to turn on it.
BANG… turn on it he did. That ball had a one-way ticket to the left field seats.
Going down 3-1 in the sixth inning of an elimination game is a daunting thought. Presumably, that is the main thought going through the minds of Mets fans everywhere.
And then, Chavez, the fourth outfielder the Mets signed before the season, comes out of nowhere and launches himself over the wall.
He makes the grab, a snow cone catch. HE ROBS THE HOME RUN.
Almost as incredible, he has the presence of mind to immediately fire the ball back in to complete the double play at first base, as a helpless Jim Edmonds was running back around the bases.
It was an incredible play, one Rolen said he thought Chavez had no chance of making.
He did make it though, keeping the Mets in the game.
By the way, it goes without saying, the stadium went absolutely nuts.
The aftermath
Unfortunately, Chavez’s big moment did not end happily ever after.
Perhaps the greatest catch in franchise history will be remembered as a precursor to the infamous curveball that ended the game on a called strike three.
The Cardinals would go on to beat the Tigers 4-1 in the World Series. It’s widely believed that the winner of the Mets vs Cardinals series would win the World Series that year.
Chavez undoubtedly would have traded in the catch for a Mets victory that night. However, the catch did seal his legacy – at least with Mets fans. If you talk about the last two decades of the Mets for long enough, the catch and Endy Chavez’s name is bound to come up at some point.
In 2006, Chavez put together the best year of his career, hitting .300 for the first time in the Majors. Yet amazingly, it’s one play that cements you and your legacy. A play on defense, nonetheless.
For a 13 year player with a career WAR of 5.6, who never hit more than 5 home runs in a season, to have one play make him such an integral part of a franchise's history is why sports are second to none.
Year in, year out, sports bring us storylines that the greatest writers in Hollywood could not dream of. One of the few things in this world that can make grown adults run around in ecstasy like children.
I’m sure there were a few of those when Chavez made the catch in 2006.
Drop your game 7 Endy Chavez memory in the comments.
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