On a cool, breezy night in July, the Angels baseball club played host to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a series-opening game. Both teams had similar records to each other entering the series occurring right before the All-Star break and were in tight positions when it came to their positions in the Wild Card standings in their respective leagues. The D-Backs stood five games back of the final Wild card spot in the National League, while the Halos were four games back of the third Wild Card spot in the American League. The stakes were high, for both ball clubs. And they were high for me personally as well.

Seeing the Angels win games that I have attended in-person used to be a guaranteed thing, at least when I was younger. I had all the optimism in the world that things would go their way, no matter what. But that’s not how it always goes in baseball, the game of failure that makes success seem more sweet and harder to find. The Angels had won at least three games that I attended in the three seasons before 2020, so being a fan that sparsely attends games throughout the season, I had my mixed bag of results to go with. I thought myself to be “good luck” in my younger years, seeing mostly close games with thrilling victories or crushing defeats be the end result. But after the misfortune of a pandemic robbed baseball fans everywhere of attending games at their teams’ home ballparks, things changed, and not for the better for me. The Angels started losing more games that I attended than usual. This worsened in the 2022 season, when they lost four times on Friday night games that I attended mostly with my dad. The Halos were losing by close margins and wide margins. On different days of the week, they ended up winning three separate games I attended, so I thought of this as a “Friday night” problem. That problem persisted into 2023 and extended to different days of the week, as I attended a record-high eight home games at the Big A that year. As Shohei Ohtani decided to leave Anaheim for the brighter pastures of Chavez Ravine, there was less of a reason to attend Angels games. And I attended fewer of them in 2024, only four of them at home and one on the road. The results continued to be lowly for the Halos, who had their worst record ever in franchise history last year. For this season, the “Friday night” results have been mixed for the Halos, who lost the two games that I attended prior to this Friday game that is the main topic of this article.

There are tough moments that shake baseball fans to their core. A team can give up so many runs and not score at all for the rest of the game. A starting pitcher can have a bad start and the bullpen tries its best to hold down the fort, but that team’s offense is unable to come through in the end. A team can come so close to victory, only for them to choke the game and miss golden opportunities to win it, leading to the opponent to capitalize on those missed opportunities. I have seen so many different forms of losing from the Halos over the years that I’ve almost grown numb to it. It still stings, but it’s what I expect. Something that I used to expect more of is a miraculous occurrence of success. Something that can be taken too much for granted by millions of fans, who expect victory above all else in a game. No matter how it has to happen, a win is a win. Regardless of all the flaws in a team’s performance, if they win in the end then it’s worth all the stress and failure. I have seen my fair share of Angels victories over the years and some of them have featured magical moments of awesomeness. Winning the game with the bat when a team is down to its last licks is epic. The term for the home team in a baseball game scoring the game-winning run in the ninth inning or later is “walk-off”, a term phrased by Hall of Fame relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley, who used that term in referring to Kirk Gibson’s game-winning home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Eckersley simply said “He walked off on me” and that term was forever etched into the dictionary of baseball.

I have seen a load of Angels walk-offs over the years, whether on TV or at Angel Stadium. A walk-off is the best thing that a baseball fan can ask for, especially when it comes in a comeback situation. Usually, most fans would like their team’s bullpen to close out the game and that is what happens in the majority of contests. But a walk-off win is like heaven for the fans of the home team. Seeing the players on the home team celebrate around their teammate who is able to knock the game-winning score in is so epic. It’s like seeing a bunch of grown men celebrating the biggest accomplishment someone could ever achieve. Having a walk-off is like winning the lottery. You don’t expect it to happen, it just happens. And everyone celebrates the happy ending to the story that is a baseball game. Well, mostly everybody. Those on the losing side have to suck it up and move on to the next game.

I have seen walk-off hits for a lot of different periods during my fandom of the Angels. When I was eight, Maicer Izturis hit a game-winning single in a day game against the Toronto Blue Jays. When I was a young teenager, I saw Josh Hamilton hit a walk-off blast against Craig Breslow(the current Boston Red Sox general manager) in extra innings. When I was 18, I saw two different walk-off victories, a game-winning hit fueled by a throwing error that brought David Fletcher home in a Freeway Series win against the Dodgers and a walk-off solo blast by Kole Calhoun three weeks later. Then, a year ago, I saw Logan O’Hoppe hit a ball that was caught by a left-fielder, who subsequently lost control of the ball and it fell into the “Trout Farm” stands for the game-winning walk-off homer. For every walk-off I have seen, there are so many that I have not see come to fruition. Extra-inning losses and last-chance opportunities in the ninth inning resulting in failure. That’s the magic of walk-offs. They occur in an unpredictable environment and give all of us who root root root for the home team so much joy and pride in the game of baseball and the success that comes with a thrilling ending. That’s what every one of us needs when we start to lose faith in our teams’ ability to succeed when the chips are down. And I’ve needed this form of magic more than ever as I have had my trust in the Halos shaken to the core multiple times over the past few years.

On a Friday night game in a homestand where the Angels were wearing their throwback uniforms that harken back to their classic days playing with the moniker of the Golden State attached to their name, one of those magical moments happened. And I made it come to fruition with a prediction of a player who could come up to bat when the situation demanded it. Before that moment is discussed, the game experience and the setup to the magical moment will be examined. Me and my dad had already seen four Angels games before this one on July 11, 2025 occurred. Two of those games were in St. Louis, where the Angels won an extra-inning thriller against the Cardinals and lost the very next day in a game that got away from them. Losing previous Friday night home games to the Detroit Tigers in May(due to a lot of runs given up to them in the ninth inning) and the Washington Nationals(in a high-scoring game that made the pitching for the Halos look extremely atrocious), I was starting to see the same trends of failure that the Angels had been cursed with for the past few years with me in attendance. Friday night games are usually when the bulk of fans show up and for the reason of gaining a giveaway item that the stadium workers hand to the first 25,000 patrons that enter through the gates at Angel Stadium. Saturday night games have the same effect of bringing fans to the park, but with a different incentive of seeing a fireworks show after the game concludes. Over the past few seasons, the Angels have struggled mightily in winning Friday night games. Whether it be due to an off-day on Thursdays that make them look more sloppy and rusty or the team facing them has an advantage of an off day that makes them look better, the Angels have stunk on Friday nights. But I attribute their failures on Fridays to another source and that is the modern folly of streaming games on an app service that has a broadcast deal with MLB to broadcast multiple games each week on a Friday night.

Before the 2022 season, the league office landed a deal with Apple TV+ to broadcast two separate games on Friday nights, when series usually begin for teams over the weekend. The games are usually random matchups that generate a lot of views due to fans of the teams playing not being able to attend the game in-person and thus a subscription to Apple TV+ is necessary to view the game in one’s own living room. The Angels were having a few games on Friday nights scheduled on Apple TV’s Friday Night Baseball broadcasts due to them having Shohei Ohtani on their roster. Some of those games were at the Big A, while others have occurred on the road. It became easier to have the Halos on Apple TV broadcasts in 2023, when young broadcaster Wayne Randazzo was hired as the main TV voice of locally broadcasted Angels games. Randazzo became a broadcaster for weekly Friday night games on Apple TV+ not long after and- along with crew members Dontrelle Willis and Heidi Watney- is a part of one of two main broadcast teams that Apple TV+ has used for broadcasting these games to a wide audience on a streaming platform easily connected to the most purchased digital device in the whole world. My point in this is that the Angels’ record on Friday night games has suffered ever since MLB inked this deal with Apple TV+. I have attended a few Friday night games at the Big A that have been streamed on that service and those games had all resulted in Angels losses. Even if they would win one of those games, the post-game interview would not be shown on the big screens and the audio would not be heard on the stadium’s sound system because only the Angels’ local network has that ability to do that. So, that is a dismaying breakdown.

Regardless of that, I was still excited to go see the Angels play against the Arizona Diamondbacks, who I had never seen play against my favorite team before. I have seen the D-Backs play in their indoor retractable-roof ballpark in downtown Phoenix, but that was a long time ago. As inter-league opponents, the Halos and D-Backs have played against each other more often due to their western location and the one thing that indelibly connects them both is the timeframe in which both franchises won their first ever World Series titles. Arizona made it to the World Series in 2001 and defeated the New York Yankees in a thrilling 7-game series that had a magical ending with a walk-off hit by Luis Gonzalez off of future Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera. That occurred in only the fourth year of the D-Backs’ existence and at that point the Angels had still yet to make it to the World Series. But the very next year, the Halos broke a long 15-year playoff drought and had a glorious run of their own as a Wild Card team. They went through the gauntlet of the ALDS and ALCS to win the AL pennant and defeated another NL West team in the 2002 World Series in seven games. That team was the San Francisco Giants and the Angels had a fairytale ending on their home field as well. One year separated, both teams in the two separate West divisions had won their first World Series championship(and their only ones to date). Ever since the early 2000s, both teams have struggled to rediscover that magic, but both have made multiple LCS appearances. Arizona got lucky in 2023 and made it back to the World Series, only to lose in five games to the Texas Rangers, who won their first title in franchise history. The Angels have had worse luck, not making it to the postseason since 2014 and having nearly a decade of under .500 seasons deriving from bad roster decisions, close losses and managerial changes.

So, me and Dad went to this game in hoping to see our Angels win and preferably without any drama. But we went in with a mindset to expect anything, good or bad, to occur. We ended up getting premiere parking tickets so that we didn’t have to walk across the street from where we usually find free parking that is taken up by fans who arrive early so that they don’t have to pay relatively cheap parking fees(the Angels have the cheapest parking of pretty much any pro sports team in Southern California). We arrived at around 5:15-ish and went up to our seats in the lower upper deck section 420, where we saw that the D-Backs were still taking their pre-game batting practice. Dad ended up buying food for us and I ended up getting a throwback Angels helmet with nachos in it. That was one of two retro-logo throwback items that I was pleased to receive along with the reversible logo bucket hat with the hat colored modern Angels red on one side and throwback navy blue(with the old school logo with the golden halo) on the other. I wore that bucket hat on the retro side. Something crazy that occurred before most of the fans in our section arrived was that I lost my balance in trying to stand up so I could let Dad respectfully pass while I had my nacho helmet in my lap. I had already let some of the toppings spill over onto the cement platform that our seats were stuck on. The helmet fell onto the next row in our section and some of the nachos came out. So that was an unfortunate accident that we thankfully cleaned that up and I was able to eat the nachos that remained in my plastic helmet, which thankfully landed on its closed flat side. The typical pre-game entertainment occurred, but with added old footage of the Angels back in their classic playing days of the late 1970s and early 1980s on the screen. Career achievements of batting average titles, home run titles and others were shown in highlights of Angels legends Rod Carew and Reggie Jackson. There were three different gentlemen who threw out the first pitch to Halos relief pitcher Sam Bachman and one of them turned out to be an Angels legend in a different light. Bill Stoneman, the general manager of the team from 1999-2006, ended up throwing out the ceremonial first pitch and received a nice ovation. Stoneman was a pitcher in his playing career and pitched in 1974 for the California Angels, a moniker that the Halos held for 30 years and that they should have never abandoned. At least for one full week in July for the past several years, the Angels have worn their throwback unis for an entire slate of home games at the Big A.

Following the national anthem sung by a beautiful young girl named Jamesyn, the starting lineups for both teams were announced. The Diamondbacks had an odd lineup that did not include their All-Star outfielder Corbin Carroll, who was getting an off-day for this Friday night contest. They did have their other All-Star selections in Ketel Marte and Eugenio Suárez in their starting lineup and had right-hander Ryne Nelson as their starting pitcher. As for the Angels, they had a more elite lineup than they had the last time I saw them. Zach Neto was leading off as he was not in the starting lineup two weeks ago due to an injury to his shoulder. There was a slight doubt about Nolan Schanuel’s status as he had missed a game the night before in the series finale against the Texas Rangers with calif tightness, but he was back in the lineup tonight. Mike Trout was the DH(again), Taylor Ward and Jo Adell followed him and Yoán Moncada was batting sixth at third base. Moncada was recently activated off the injured list due to his banged-up knee feeling better and it was nice to see him again. Logan O’Hoppe was behind the plate tonight and I was kind of irked by that. I was hoping to see Travis d’Arnaud start at catcher, but that wasn’t the case. I did make a prediction that d’Arnaud could be used as a pinch-hitter later in the game and that thought proved to be prophetic. Wrapping up the starting lineup, Luis Rengifo was batting eighth and playing at second base while Gustavo Campero was in the nine spot as the right-fielder for tonight’s game. Jorge Soler was getting a night off as well, so I was kind of bummed not to see him. The starting pitcher for the Angels was Tyler Anderson, who was looking for a good start to wrap up his first half strong. The game started on time at 6:38 pm PT.

The first inning featured a strong 1-2-3 outing by Anderson and then the Angels came up to bat. On the second pitch of his at-bat, Zach Neto hit a ball deep to left center field and the ball was gone. Neto hit a leadoff solo shot for the 7th time this season, tying himself with Halos legend Brian Downing for the most leadoff home runs in a season in franchise history. Neto did the exact same thing at a game that I attended with Dad and my best friend Ethan at the stadium in early May against the Detroit Tigers. Neto had his 15th homer of this season and he had missed the first few weeks of the season while recovering from offseason shoulder surgery. Those are pretty impressive numbers and it’s unfortunate that he isn’t being recognized as an All-Star yet. Thankfully, the Angels would get more than one run off Nelson, as Schanuel worked a walk and then Trout came up to bat and he knocked a ball to left-center field. Schanuel went to third and Trout hustled into second base, sliding in safely for a double. Ward came up and he hit a ball to left field and it was caught for the first out of the inning by Lourdes Gurriel Jr, but the ball was deep enough for Schanuel to come home to score. The Angels had a 2-0 lead. After Adell flew out for the second out of the inning, Moncada came up and he hit a blast on the first pitch he saw to the right field pavilion. It was a 2-run shot and Moncada’s 100th career home run in big league play. Definitely nice to see him achieve that. The Halos weren’t done with Nelson yet, as O’Hoppe and Rengifo got back-to-back singles to give Campero a chance to bring in some more runs. Unfortunately, Campero lined out to Gurriel to end the inning. A strong four-run first inning definitely gave some run support to Anderson, who had been sitting for nearly 25 minutes before the second inning began. Little did we know what we were in store for tonight.

In the top of the second inning, a very tough situation occurred as Anderson got into big trouble after walking Arizona first baseman Josh Naylor with one out. A former Angel in Randal Grichuk came up to bat and he blasted a deep ball to left center field that ended up being a two-run shot. The Halos’ lead had been cut in half and the sparse smattering of D-Backs fans that chose to attend this game as a part of their “Disneyland/Big A” trip started cheering on their slithering team from the Sonoran desert. Anderson struggled as more hits occurred off his pitches. The second baseman for Arizona in Blaze Alexander(Ketel Marte was DH-ing tonight) got a double and then was brought in by an RBI double from his teammate Alek Thomas, who scored on a single by the D-Backs catcher José Herrera. Thomas came in to score on a close throw at the plate and O’Hoppe got shaken up when Thomas collided with him on the slide. Logan was alright, but Anderson was not as he gave up his fifth straight hit to Marte. There were runners on first and second and the game was tied. Barry Enright came out to talk with Anderson and he settled down after that. The next two at-bats were a strikeout and a pop out to end the inning thankfully with the score still tied at 4 apiece.

The score remained at a deadlock for a while and that wasn’t the only issue going on. In the section that we were sitting in, the arrangement was obviously a more packed one. Needing to cram in with our big bodies and there being a couple of annoying fans in our section, we were less than pleased. There was this girl(young woman, probably around my age or a bit older) who was shouting out at the top of her high-pitched lungs every time the big screen graphics encouraged the fans to get loud and make noise. Any time that the people playing the fanfares over the loudspeakers played the “Let’s Go Angels” chant, that girl was so loud. She was literally sitting behind us and her loud shouting voice disrupted any conversation occurring between me and Dad. I mean, I’m usually the loudest fan in a section and I don’t consider myself to be too loud. But when I’m drowned out and there’s a loud voice right behind me(not from a random heckler in the area), I feel a little bothered. I used to be able to block out loud sounds at ballparks with earplugs when I was extremely sensitive to them. Ever since I surpassed 18 years old, I had stopped wearing earplugs to Angels games. But this lady’s loud voice in cheering on our team was too much for me to handle. There were also a couple of young kids sitting in the row in front of us that were fooling around on their seats and that bothered Dad a lot. Thankfully, we had friends who were sitting in a section not far from ours and after the fourth inning ended we decided to move there for the rest of the game. Our friends Colin, Juanita and Trevor were sitting in Section 513(they said 512 and that confused us when we tried to find them during the top of the fifth), as when we entered the section from the upper deck concourse we walked the wrong way. We found them eventually and made our way into a couple of seats that were yielded by another one of our friends sitting with our good pals along with one of his pals. Right as we sat down for the bottom of the fifth, another rally occurred.

There were missed scoring opportunities for both teams in between the bottom of the second and fifth innings. Anderson got into big trouble in the top of the third, but he used a strikeout and double play to get out of it unharmed. The bottom of the third yielded another chance for the Angels to score when Ryne Nelson walked both O’Hoppe and Rengifo with two outs. Campero blew another chance with runners on base as he grounded out to end the 3rd inning. A walk and single occurred with two outs in the top of the fourth, but Anderson got out of that jam. In the bottom half of the fourth inning, Neto got a leadoff single, but was ruled out on a pickoff attempt by Nelson when the D-Backs manager Torey Luvollo chose to challenge the play, which had been ruled safe by the first base umpire. The crew chief announced that after review Neto was out and that was huge since Schanuel got a single on the first pitch after the replay challenge. Trout grounded into a fielder’s choice and Ward lined out to end the inning. In the top of the 5th, while we were unable to locate our friends, Anderson gave up another two-out hit in a double to our old friend Grichuk but he got Blaze Alexander to ground out to end the inning. Now in the bottom of the fifth, the Halos sought to break the tie and they would have to do so against a new pitcher.

Kendall Graveman had entered the game following four innings by Nelson and he has experience as a starting pitcher earlier in his career with teams such as the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners. Graveman has seen the Halos a lot throughout his time in the major leagues and he looked to keep the score tied in the bottom of the fifth. Adell and Moncada both were retired with ease, but Graveman ended up walking O’Hoppe with two outs. Rengifo came up with a chance to bring in the go-ahead score in the middle part of this game, with O’Hoppe making a bold attempt to steal second base happen. Logan ended up sliding in safely on a close play that Arizona decided not to challenge. On the very next pitch, Rengifo knocked a ball to right field that landed down the line and O’Hoppe came around to score. Rengifo went into second with an RBI double that gave the Angels a 5-4 lead. With a chance to extend the lead, Campero walked to allow Neto a chance to provide add-on runs to pad the lead. Unfortunately, Neto grounded out to end the inning, but the Halos had the lead back and were now set to deploy their top available relievers to pitch for the rest of the night.

Tyler Anderson had that one bad inning in the second inning, but he settled down just enough to keep the Diamondbacks’ bats at bay. Now with five innings pitched and the Halos having the lead, Anderson was in line for the win if this lead could stay intact for the remainder of the game. Lefty reliever Brock Burke came in to pitch in the top of the sixth and he retired the three batters that he was slated to face. In the bottom of the sixth, the Angels had a chance to add-on again but facing a new relief pitcher in Anthony DeSclafani. Schanuel got a lead-off single and Trout worked a walk to start the inning out strong. However, DeSclafani escaped the jam by getting the next three batters out. In the 7th inning, José Fermin came in to pitch for the Angels and he got his three batters out in successive order. Following the seventh inning stretch, the Halos were also dealt with cleanly. The 8th inning happened and Reid Detmers was going to enter the game in his setup role to Kenley Jansen. Detmers has undergone a transition from being a starting rotation arm to a key piece to the bullpen. Detmers struggled early on in his new role, but eventually got into a groove that allowed him to pitch for nearly two months without giving up an earned run to an opposing team. That streak of luck had recently ended in the series against Texas and Detmers was seeking a bounce back performance. But something bad was on the horizon and it wasn’t the moon(which was bloody red and full when it rose from my view sitting in the left field upper deck seats).

After getting Naylor to ground out to start the inning, Detmers faced Grichuk, who ended up whacking a ball hard to deep center field and the ball went over the wall for the game-tying run. That was Grichuk’s second home run of the night and it was the second time this year that I had seen an opposing player have a multi-HR game against the Angels(Iván Herrera hit three big flys at Busch Stadium in April). I was dismayed when I saw that, seeing that Arizona easily re-tied the game following five straight innings of scoreless efforts. Just one swing and the game was tied at five. Thankfully, Detmers worked his way out of any further trouble to keep the score tied. The bottom of the eighth was a huge frame. If the Angels could just get one run, Jansen would be slated to have a rare save appearance. His most recent one was on Wednesday, but among closers with at least 15 saves, it seems that Jansen has the most non-save appearances pitched in the big leagues this year. With a lack of run margin and a load of close tied games played by the Halos, Jansen is not on an ideally good team that can guarantee him a save opportunity in most of his outings. So, scoring here was paramount. If the Angels could not score in the bottom of the eighth, it would continue a streak of games that I have attended where the Halos have either failed to win at all or failed to win without needing a walk-off hit/extra inning scoring to win the game. The streak was at eleven games that I attended dating back to Aug. 2023 and the Angels’ record with me in attendance since then is a dismal 2-9. I did not want this game to come down to the ninth inning or extra innings. But I don’t get to control what happens out on the field, so I just had to sit and watch nervously.

DeSclafani returned to pitch a third inning for the D-Backs and the top of the Angels’ order came up to bat for the fourth inning in this game. This was the fifth time through the order for Arizona’s pitching against our lineup. Neto had a long at-bat that ended with him flying out to Alek Thomas in center field. The very next at-bat was a double off the bat of Nolan Schanuel, who was in scoring position as the go-ahead run. Trout came up in trying to be the hero, but after two pitches thrown out of the zone Luvollo decided to intentionally walk Trout to put him on first base. The Halos fans booed that move, but that was a sign of respect towards Trout, who in spite of his lack of late-game clutchness was still being viewed as one of the most feared hitters in the sport. Taylor Ward came up to bat in trying to get the go-ahead score in, but in a long at-bat when Schanuel stole third base(meaning that a sac fly could have given the Halos the lead) and Ward nearly had a hit down the left-field line that ended up barely going foul, Ward struck out swinging in failing to get the job done. Now the last hope for this inning to be a successful one was Jo Adell, who hit the first pitch he saw out to left field and Lourdes Gurriel Jr made the catch to end the inning. I was stunned. Discouraged. This game was tied heading into the ninth inning and yet again, Kenley Jansen would enter the game to pitch in a non-save situation.

Jansen’s entrance was met with a bunch of applause and his new hype song(no longer California Love) was played on the sound system. Kenley had a job to do in attempting to keep this game tied so that the Halos would have a good chance to walk it off in the bottom half of the inning. The top of the D-Backs lineup was due up in Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo and Gurriel Jr. The Arizona fans were cheering in hoping that their team could take the lead in this game for the first time. They got some positive offerings on that when Marte hit a leadoff single to start the inning. Perdomo came up to bat against Jansen, who would see the second pitch he threw to the D-Backs shortstop hit a far distance. Thankfully, the ball stayed in the yard and did not hit off that accursed bullseye above the yellow line on the right field pavilion. Adell made the catch at the lower part of the wall and the first out of the inning was secured. Dad was definitely shocked in thinking that the ball was a goner. The Halos dodged a big bullet there. The very next at-bat, a very awesome play happened. Gurriel hit the ball down the third base line, where Moncada gloved the ball and threw it to second base, where Rengifo caught it for one out and then he gunned the ball to first base, where Schanuel caught it for the inning-ending double play. The fans were pumped up, myself included, as the Angels had gotten out of the jam with a tailor-made double play. No better time for one than at that moment. Now the bottom of the ninth was upon us and so was the magic of the Big A.

The big screens at the stadium played the clips of people dancing in that famous scene from the late-70s party movie “Animal House” and the graphics also accounted for the unofficial mascot of the Angels. The Rally Monkey made his once-a-game appearance(it used to be much more in previous years before this decade of doom) and thankfully I had brought two of my Rally Monkey plushies with me to this game. Both of them were Throwback Rally Monkeys in a sense. One of them is “Grooves”, who I got as a giveaway item at a Throwback Night game in 2016 I think and he wears a hippie outfit. The other is Sharky, who I received the very next year as a Rally Monkey in a shark suit(meant to commemorate Jaws, at least in my mind). I bought them both in my clear bag and thankfully got to use them as this game was tied and the Halos needed a little Rally Monkey power to win this game.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Diamondbacks were going to use a new pitcher in left-handed reliever Kyle Backhus, who sought to force the game to extra innings. The Halos countered this move by using Kevin Newman as a pinch hitter for Yoán Moncada, who had just aided in turning that spectacular double play in the top of the ninth. Moncada is a switch hitter, but Newman was going to be used in this pinch-hit situation ironically after he had pitched in two games that the Angels had lost in blowout fashion to the Rangers earlier in the week. The night before, when the Halos were down by enough runs(eight is the minimum requirement for a team to be down by to use a position player as a pitcher), Newman pitched a clean inning. He had no such luck when he pitched three of them against Texas in a Tuesday night blowout loss. After taking three pitches, Newman made contact on a sweeper thrown by Backhus and flew out to left field for the first out of the inning. Logan O’Hoppe would be due up next and him coming up is ironic, since I witnessed him hit a walk-off home run last year against the Houston Astros. Me and Dad were sitting in club level seats located down the third-base line and we were positioned in the upper deck seats down the same third base line(almost with the same view, but a bit higher up). It would be a repeat of history if O’Hoppe was the O’Hero tonight. Instead he worked a full count and ended up getting hit on the foot for a virtual walk. O’Hoppe was now on base as the game-winning run, and Rengifo was up to bat next. Having provided the most recent score for us, Rengifo could’ve been the hero if he could hit it far enough or if O’Hoppe tried to steal second base again. After taking two pitches for balls out of the zone, Rengifo hit a sinker to center field for a base hit. O’Hoppe got to second base and was now in scoring position as the game-winning run. Gustavo Campero’s spot in the order was up next, but it would not be Campero coming up to bat in this situation.

Backup catcher Travis d’Arnaud had come onto the on-deck circle as a pinch-hitter and he would now have a chance to be the hero in this game. I had hoped that d’Arnaud would be the starting catcher in this game, but O’Hoppe was awarded with the start instead. I surmised that d’Arnaud could be a pinch-hitter late in the game if the situation demanded it, and now it did. d’Arnaud was coming up to try and get a walk-off hit, something that he has done multiple times in his career. As the younger brother of former big leaguer Chase d’Arnaud, Travis had grown up in Long Beach and he had been to numerous games at Angel Stadium in his life. Now he had a chance to walk-off a game at his childhood ballpark. Backhus threw a couple of sweepers for strikes to make the count 0-2, then d’Arnaud laid off a couple of pitches that were called balls(a 1-2 sinker looked like it had hit the inner-right corner of the strike zone and could have been challenged with an Automated Ball-Strike review, which aren’t available to use in regular season games yet). d’Arnaud then hit a 2-2 sinker into the stands for a foul ball. The very next pitch, a 79-mph sweeper, d’Arnaud swung his bat and the ball went clean off of it. The ball went down into fair territory(unlike an earlier ball hit by Ward in the 8th inning) and everyone was going nuts. O’Hoppe was running to the plate and he would slide in safely. The Angels had won the game. d’Arnaud had gotten a walk-off single. I was so excited that I nearly choked up with beer nuts that I had eaten earlier and hadn’t drunk down. The Halos were going wild on the field and serenading their veteran catcher, who was the hero in this game. They had achieved a Friday-night walk-off, something I hadn’t seen at the Big A in almost seven years. An incredible ending to a tight game and the sixth walk-off of the season for the Angels at the Big A.

d’Arnaud was interviewed by Heidi Watney on Apple TV+ and as I had predicted earlier, the audio to that interview was unable to be played to the fans that remained in the stands. I watched the interview on the Apple TV app on my phone, which was behind on live time by like thirty seconds or so. We saw d’Arnaud get splashed with Powerade by Neto and Schanuel I think, with Neto on-deck when the walk-off happened. Then, we proceeded to leave the section. We thanked Colin, Juanita and Trevor for having us sit with them and that was all. The Angels had achieved their 46th win of the season and had won yet another game by one-run. This team has done well in tight and close games this year and that has kept them in a relevant position to contend in the American League Wild Card race. With 16 one-run wins and a few more by margins of three or two runs, the Angels have certainly gotten lucky in a lot of games so far this year. They remain a few games out of the final Wild Card spot and they definitely have an important stretch coming up that will determine whether they are buyers or sellers at the trade deadline at the end of this month. But for now, they can have confidence that their performance at the Big A has improved this season from where it was last year. That is undeniably important to a team being led by an interim manager and some very experienced coaches.

This Friday night win is only the third one that I have been in attendance for in this decade so far. The Halos have done so poorly in general on Friday nights that we decided to avoid going to any of those games last year(save for the last game we attended). Seeing them win in close fashion definitely gives us a cardiac surge, but it is undoubtedly worth the trouble when they come through when they need to. Seeing them win a close and thrilling extra-inning game in St. Louis was awesome, but this was pretty cool too. A subtle and less dramatic walk-off with the moon shining bright and the fireworks going off at Disneyland a week after the Fourth of July is a top summer memory for me. I will never forget this game as it will serve as a reminder for why I will still choose to go to Angels baseball games for many years to come. Magic is never too far away in a sport where duels between a nasty pitcher and different-styled hitters determine who wins and who loses. It’s the ultimate sport form of a sworded duel match(unless you’re talking about fencing). The beauty in it is undeniable to the fans that are the most supportive, hardcore and passionate. And I’m among that group, and will be forever.