June 6, 2015
Blue Jays 7, Astros 2
W – Hutchison (5-1)
L – Oberholtzer (0-1)
Brett Oberholtzer’s first-hand D-Day account (adapted from here):
Our assault bus hit the brakes. I looked through the windshield and we were at least seventy-five yards from the stadium, and we had hoped for a closer landing. I told the driver, “Try to get in further.” He screamed he couldn’t.
I began to run into the stadium with my ball and glove in front of me. I went directly to the dugout to try to get to the mound. In front of me was the top of the order, pinned down and lying behind the dugout railing. They hadn’t managed to score. I kept screaming at them, ‘You have to get runs across! You gotta get runs across!’ But they didn’t. They were worn out and defeated completely. There wasn’t any time to help them.
I continued across the field. There were mines and obstacles all up and down the batting order. Absolutely nothing that had been planned for that part of the game had worked. I knew that Rogers was going to be a hellhole, and it was.
When I was about twenty yards from the plate I was hit by what I assume was an RBI single. It shattered and broke my spirit. I thought, well, I’ve got an L. As I rose my left leg to pitch again, another burst of I think baseballs whizzed past me, knocking me back again.
I stood there for seconds, looked ahead, and saw several Astros standing there. One was Marwin Gonzales. I screamed at Marwin, ‘Get up and tag the base!’ Marwin, a talented athlete, just looked back and said, ‘I can’t.’
As I moved forward, I hobbled. After you’ve given up a big inning, your body stiffens up, not all at once but slowly. The pain was indescribable. I managed a few pitches, then blacked out for several minutes. When I came to, I saw A.J. Hinch. He was up to the dugout stairs. When he saw my predicament, he crawled back to me under a heavy barrage of hits and signaled to the bullpen.
The manager looked at me and said, ‘You’ve done your job.” I answered, “How? By using up three of our relievers?” Despite the awful loss, I hoped that McHugh could avoid the sweep the next day.