The last weekend of May 2015 was unseasonably cool and rainy in Chicago. When the Cubs defeated the Royals at Wrigley Field May 31, the game-time temperature was just 47 degrees — that’s almost 30 degrees below the average high for the date, 75.
And the game the day before had been rained out. The only possible makeup date was Sept. 28, the day after the last scheduled game at Wrigley Field.
By then, the Cubs had already clinched a wild-card spot, and were likely headed to Pittsburgh for the then-single
Wild Card Game, though they still had a slim chance to pass the Pirates (five games back with seven remaining, and the Cubs held the tiebreaker for home field).
So that’s the scene that presented itself when the Cubs and Royals took the field on a much warmer evening than those late-May days —74 degrees.
Yordano Ventura and Kyle Hendricks were the starting pitchers, and both kept putting up zeroes. The Professor threw six innings, allowing two hits and striking out nine.
The game went to extras scoreless; the Cubs had just two hits and a walk through nine and the Royals just four hits and two walks. Through 10 innings, just three runners — two Royals and one Cub — had been in scoring position. Fernando Rodney, whose 17-year MLB career for 11 teams included 15 games for the Cubs in 2015, retired the Royals 1-2-3 in the top of the 11th.
Miguel Almonte, whose MLB career consisted of 19 games for the Royals and Angels from 2015-18, entered to throw the bottom of the 11th.
Almonte threw one pitch to Chris Denorfia.
That was the first pinch-hit walk-off home run to win a 1-0 extra-inning game in MLB history. Ten years later, it still is the only such walk-off home run.
Denorfia hit only three home runs for the Cubs. That was the last one, and also the last of his MLB career. He played a couple more minor-league seasons, then joined the Cubs front office as a special assistant, later spending 2019 as the Cubs’ quality assurance coach. He later managed the Colorado Rockies’ Double-A team in Hartford, Connecticut, from 2021-23, and also coached for Italy in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
