IStock Photo 564990 © Rob Friedman

The baseball term walk-off—a play that instantly wins a game and results in the players walking off the field without finishing the inning—was coined by pitcher Dennis Eckersley, who gave up one of the most famous walk-offs in baseball history: a pinch-hit home run hit by the Dodgers’ Kirk Gibson in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

Devastating though it was to Eckersley and the Oakland A’s, Gibson’s game-ender doesn’t compare to a game-winning home run that clinches the Series. The last time a walk-off home run won the World Series was in 1993, when Joe Carter sent a 2-2 pitch from the Phillies’ Mitch Williams over the left-field fence to give the Blue Jays the championship. The first time the Series ended in a home run was in 1960 when Bill Mazeroski stunned the Yankees in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 7 to capture the Series for the Pirates. Of the 104 World Series played between 1903 and 2008 (there was no World Series played in either 1904 or 1994), these are the only two times that the Series ended with a walk-off home run.

Carter and Mazeroski bucked considerable odds to accomplish their feat. The odds a World Series will end in a walk-off of any kind are 1 in 10.4—about the same likelihood as regular season games. However, the odds a World Series will end with a walk-off home run are 1 in 52.

Some World Series walk-offs are as bizarre as they are rare. Consider Game 4 of the 1927 Fall Classic. Pittsburgh reliever John Miljus was facing the Yankees’ Tony Lazzeri when, with two outs, Miljus uncorked his second wild pitch of the inning, allowing Earle Combs to race home with the winning run, and the championship was won on a walk-off wild pitch.

Stranger still were the events in Game 7 of the 1924 Series between the Giants and the Senators. In the eighth inning, a ground ball took a bad hop and bounced over the head of third baseman Fred Lindstrom, as the Senators tied the score. In the bottom of the 12th, an almost carbon-copy play took place when Earl McNeely hit a grounder that took a bad hop over Lindstrom's head and scooted into left field. The winning run crossed the plate, giving baseball a World Series-ending walk-off bad hop.

While few baseball fans fantasize about winning the Series on a bad hop, the dream of winning a championship with a walk-off home run is hardwired into baseball fans’ collective unconscious. For these fans, Joe Carter explained the feeling in Baseball Digest: “Everyone who has ever played baseball has probably dreamed of hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win a World Series,” Carter said. “I can tell you what it feels like to actually do it. It feels incredible—really incredible.”