MLB's 10 Most Memorable World Series Moments of the Modern Era

From broken curses to walk-off blasts and plenty in between, the modern era of Major League Baseball's World Series history has delivered no shortage of unforgettable moments.

Not every Fall Classic has been an instant classic, but most of them have given us at least something worth remembering.

However, the most memorable moments naturally occurred in the latter stages of the best-of-seven series that actually went the distance.

For the purposes of this exercise, we're defining the "modern era" as any World Series played a year beginning with a 2. With apologies to the 1985-1993 window that featured a plethora of iconic moments, that's basically ancient history at this point.

After a handful of honorable mentions, we've ranked the 10 most memorable World Series moments of the past quarter century.

Honorable Mentions

In putting together a top 10 from more than 25 years' worth of World Series, there were a lot of things worth jotting down. But these are the seven that were the most difficult to leave out of the top 10, presented in chronological order:

Roger Clemens vs. Mike Piazza, Game 2, 2000 World Series

There was no love lost in the Subway Series, especially between this pair of many-time All-Stars. Clemens drilled Piazza in the head with a pitch earlier in the season, and then he hurled the barrel of Piazza's broken bat back at him in their first meeting of the World Series. Nothing like a little benches-clearing conversation in the Fall Classic.

The Rally Monkey's Biggest Rally, Game 6, 2002 World Series

Down 3-2 in the series and down 5-0 in the seventh inning, things sure looked bleak for the Halos. But they harnessed the power of the rally monkey like never before with a three-run home run by Scott Spiezio in the seventh, a Darin Erstad homer to lead off the eighth and a colossal two-run double by Troy Glaus to take the lead. The Angels went on to win the series in seven.

Álex González's Walk-Off Homer, Game 4, 2003 World Series

The 2003 Marlins had six different position players who ended up receiving votes for NL MVP, but González was not one of them. And prior to hitting this walk-off blast in the 12th inning of Game 4—the only home run he ever hit in 24 career games in the playoffs—he was 5-for-53 in that postseason. Needless to say, nobody saw it coming, and the Yankees were unable to recover from it, proceeding to lose Games 5, 6 and the World Series.

Red Sox End the Curse of the Bambino, Game 4, 2004 World Series

It was an historic moment 86 years in the making, but it was also maybe the most anticlimactic World Series ever? Not only did the Red Sox sweep the Cardinals, but they never trailed for a moment.

Cardinals Walk Off Red Sox on Obstruction Call, Game 3, 2013 World Series

Because the Red Sox bounced back to win each of the next three games and the series, this completely chaotic ending has been kind of forgotten in the sands of time. What initially looked like a 4-2-7-2 inning-ending double play turned into a walk-off win for St. Louis because Will Middlebrooks got his legs tangled up with Allen Craig at third base.

Jorge Soler Launches One Over the Train Tracks, Game 6, 2021 World Series

Officially, this home run traveled 446 feet, which is nothing compared to some of the tape-measure blasts we see annually in the Home Run Derby. But that sure feels like a miscalculation, as Soler cleared the train tracks in left field at what used to be Minute Maid Park. What slim hopes the Astros had of winning this series left the stadium along with that ball.

18th Inning Walk-Off Blasts for the Dodgers in Both 2018 and 2025

What are the odds, right? There have been just two World Series games that lasted more than 14 innings. Both of them were home games for the Dodgers, and both of them ended on walk-off home runs in the 18th inning. Max Muncy delivered the first one against the Boston Red Sox in Game 3 of the 2018 World Series, while it was Freddie Freeman providing the round-tripper in Game 3 of the 2025 World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

10. Alex Bregman's Game 5 Walk-Off Single (2017)

Knowing what we now know about the Houston Astros cheating scandal, this one hits a whole lot differently than it did at the time.

In the moment, though, the 2017 World Series between the Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers was one heck of a fun roller coaster ride, with Game 5 in particular featuring all sorts of corkscrews and loop-de-loops.

In that one, each team had three innings with at least three runs scored, including the Dodgers putting up a three-spot in the top of the ninth to tie the game at 12-12.

All told, there were seven home runs and 16 extra-base hits in a game that took well north of five hours. (All hail the pitch clock.)

But in the bottom of the tenth inning, it was a two-out single by Alex Bregman off Kenley Jansen that broke the tie, both in the game and in the series. The Dodgers bounced back to win Game 6, but Houston prevailed in Game 7.

Bregman was only in his second year in the majors, while Jansen was on the tail-end of a two-year run as the undisputed most dominant reliever in the sport. It was the unofficial moment in which the former truly emerged as a star while the latter was never quite the same again.

9. Scott Podsednik's Walk-Off Home Run (2005)

In the past three decades of MLB history, there have been just 12 instances of a player making enough plate appearances during the regular season to qualify for a batting crown while failing to hit a single home run.

One of those players was Scott Podsednik, who was named an All-Star for the only time in his career while playing in 129 homer-less games in 2005.

What a long con it was, though, setting the stage for perhaps the unlikeliest walk-off home run in postseason history.

It was Game 2 between the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros, the latter knotting things up with two runs in the top of the ninth inning off Bobby Jenks. José Vizcaíno singled to left and Podsednik was unable to cut down the tying run at the plate.

He made up for that throw with a tater off Brad Lidge, though, as the White Sox won the second of four consecutive games in that World Series sweep.

And poor Lidge, am I right? He had a 2.18 ERA in his postseason career, allowing just two home runs in 45.1 innings pitched. But the two that he allowed came in back-to-back games, this one by Scotty Pods coming one appearance after he let Albert Pujols hit one approximately 1,000 feet in Game 5 of the NLCS.

8. Houston Astros Combined No-Hitter (2022)

There have been more than 700 games played in World Series history.

Only two of them have ended with a zero in the hits column: Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956 and Houston's four-headed gem against the Phillies in Game 4 of the 2022 Fall Classic.

Cristian Javier pitched the first six innings of near perfection with nine strikeouts, putting quite the capstone on what was (by a wide margin) the best season of his career thus far. He did issue one free pass in the second inning and another in the third, but no harm done.

Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly followed suit with one hitless inning apiece, the latter's eight-pitch walk of Kyle Schwarber the only minor blemish of the bunch.

In the entire game, only one ball hit by the Phillies had an expected batting average north of .320—and even that Jean Segura lineout to Kyle Tucker in the eighth inning was a pretty routine catch by the right fielder. They just never even threatened to put a hit on the board.

Heading into that game in the City of Brotherly Love, the Phillies were leading the series 2-1 with high hopes of celebrating a championship at home after Game 5. However, that no-no turned the series on its ear, Philadelphia managing just three total runs scored while losing the final three games.

7. Freddie Freeman's Walk-Off Grand Slam (2024)

Pardon the semi-spoiler, but what's left on this list is five Game 7s and an iconic Game 6 performance.

Kind of hard for something that happened in Game 1 of a World Series to hold a candle to those do-or-die scenarios.

But the only walk-off grand slam in World Series history certainly made us think about it.

This wasn't just any walk-off grand slam, either.

It was the tenth inning.

There were two outs.

The Dodgers were down by a run.

And the Yankees had just intentionally walked Mookie Betts in order to get a left-on-left matchup of Nestor Cortes vs. Freddie Freeman.

An injured Freddie Freeman, no less, for a Kirk Gibson-esque moment. Freeman hurt his ankle late in the regular season and missed both Games 4 and 6 of the NLCS, entering the World Series with a .461 OPS in eight postseason games played.

A single almost certainly would have been sufficient to win the game, but an out would have resulted in a victory for the Yankees and quite possibly a very different outcome to that World Series.

Freeman jumped all over the first pitch, though, clobbering Cortes' 92 MPH fastball for a no-doubter into the Los Angeles night sky.

It proved to be just the spark he needed, also homering in Game 2, Game 3 and Game 4 en route to becoming one of the easiest picks in the history of World Series MVPs.

6. Howie Kendrick off the Fair Pole (2019)

The theme of the 2019 World Series between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros was: One for the Road.

That's because for the first time in the combined history of MLB, the NBA and the NHL, the road team won every single game of this backwards best-of-seven series.

For the first six innings of Game 7, home starter Zack Greinke was untouchable. He allowed one single in the second inning, and immediately erased it with a double play ball. That was the full extent of the damage against him until Anthony Rendon hammered a solo shot with one out in the seventh inning to make it a 2-1 ballgame.

When A.J. Hinch went to Will Harris out of the bullpen one batter later, the Cardiac Nats knew their time to shine had arrived.

Fittingly, Howie Kendrick's subsequent lead-flipping two-run home run—AKA hands down the most important moment of the series—would not have been a home run at Nationals Park, per Statcast.

At Minute Maid Park, though, he got just enough to clang one off the fair/foul pole.

What's hard to believe about this one is it arguably wasn't even Kendrick's most iconic moment of the 2019 postseason, considering he also had a 10th inning grand slam in the winner-take-all Game 5 of the NLDS against the Dodgers.

Without that home run, he never gets a chance to hit this one.

But between those two moments and winning NLCS MVP in the middle of them, he'll never need to pay for a drink in the nation's capital.

5. Madison Bumgarner Slays the Royals (2014)

In Game 4 of the 2010 World Series, a 21-year-old southpaw by the name of Madison Bumgarner went eight shutout innings in a San Francisco Giants victory over the Texas Rangers.

Two years later, he put up seven scoreless frames in his lone appearance of the 2012 sweep of the Detroit Tigers.

But it was during the last act of the Even-Year Giants that MadBum etched his name in MLB lore.

In Game 1 of the 2014 World Series, a solo home run in the seventh inning of a 7-0 game was the only damage the Kansas City Royals could muster against him.

In Game 5, he tossed a 117-pitch complete-game shutout.

Three days later, Bumgarner delivered maybe the greatest relief appearance in MLB history.

He entered Game 7 at the beginning of the bottom of the fifth inning, staked to a 3-2 lead. And after allowing an Omar Infante leadoff single, he proceeded to retire the next 14 batters before things got a bit dicey with two outs in the bottom of ninth when center fielder Grégor Blanco misplayed an Alex Gordon single into a "triple."

A mere mortal might have cracked in that moment, especially with Salvador Perez coming to the plate. At any rate, it was Perez who delivered the aforementioned home run in Game 1 of this series—the only run Bumgarner ever allowed in 36 innings pitched in the World Series.

Sorry for the spoiler there, but Bumgarner won the battle, getting Perez to foul out to clinch the World Series. Neither team scored in the final five innings, and he threw 68 pitches to seal the deal.

4. The David Freese Game (2011)

Every other moment in our top six came from a Game 7.

But David Freese ensuring there would be a Game 7 in the 2011 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers was nothing short of legendary.

The funny thing about Game 6 being remembered as "The David Freese Game" is that through the first 53 outs, it was anything but.

Freese dropped a routine pop-up to start the fifth inning, which led immediately to a run for the Rangers. He also had a combined total of five runners on base through his first four plate appearances, going 0-for-3 with a walk—after thriving to the tune of a .393/.443/.732 line through his first 16 postseason games.

When it mattered the most, though, he brought the lumber.

With two on and two down in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 7-5 game, Freese lifted a 98 MPH Neftalí Feliz fastball over the head of Nelson Cruz in right field and off the wall for a game-tying triple to extend the game.

And after a chaotic 10th inning that produced two runs apiece, Freese led off the bottom of the 11th with a walk-off home run off Mark Lowe.

Just for good measure, he also delivered a two-run double in his first plate appearance of Game 7, polishing off a three-AB sequence for the ages.

3. Luis Gonzalez Series-Winner off Mariano Rivera (2001)

For an entire generation of baseball fans, watching the New York Yankees lose in the postseason has become a darn-near annual rite of passage. They've made the playoffs 21 times in the past 26 years, but with just one World Series trophy (in 2009) to show for it.

Heading into the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks, though, the Bronx Bombers were an October juggernaut.

To fans of the other 29 teams, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera were the four horsemen of the baseball apocalypse, spearheading an unstoppable Yankees force that had won three consecutive World Series and four of the past five Fall Classics.

So, when Rivera entered in the eighth inning with a 2-1 lead in Game 7, things felt almost hopeless for the underdog—even more so after the Sandman mowed down the Snakes with three swinging strikeouts in his first inning of work.

But when Mark Grace opened the bottom of the ninth with a base hit to center, followed by Rivera committing a throwing error on Damian Miller's sacrifice bunt, it felt like the MLB equivalent of the Rocky IV "He's cut! The Russian is cut!" moment.

Tony Womack tied the game with an RBI double, setting the stage for Luis Gonzalez to deliver the most unforgettable duck snort in the history of the sport.

2. The Andy Pages Catch (2025)

Call it recency bias if you must, but Game 7 of the 2025 World Series had everything.

The Dodgers and Blue Jays combined to use nine starting pitchers in a winner-take-all extravaganza that featured:

• Extra innings (11)
• A mammoth home run by a top free agent-to-be (Bo Bichette)
• Incredible defense (diving catches by Daulton Varsho and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a game-saving play by Miguel Rojas immediately before the game-saving play by Andy Pages)
• A benches-clearing incident (when Andrés Giménez was drilled by Justin Wrobleski)
• Home runs in the eighth (Max Muncy), ninth (Rojas) and 11th innings (Will Smith)
• And a World Series-winning double play turned by Mookie Betts as the would-be tying run crossed the plate

If you had to boil the game down to one iconic moment, though, it was the Pages catch, yeah?

We've seen extra innings in Game 7s before.

We've also seen series-extending or series-ending home runs from the unlikeliest of sources.

But with the bases loaded, two outs, tie game, bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series...an outfield collision?!?

In which the player making the historic catch had just been inserted as a defensive replacement five pitches prior?

Even the script writers in Hollywood would never dream of pitching an idea that absurd, but Pages made it happen.

"I was going to pull a Willie Mays," Kiké Hernández said. "And then [Pages] tackled me, and I felt like I got dunked on, and I thought we lost. I was just down because I thought we lost. And he came up to me and said, 'Are you OK?' 'F--- that, do you have the ball?' He's like, 'Yeah.' I'm like, 'Yeah, let's go!'"

It was the ultimate anti-walk-off moment.

1. The Cubs End the Curse (2016)

Say this much for Game 7 of the 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Redacteds: It featured the most unforgettable rain delay in baseball history.

That 17-minute stoppage between the ninth and tenth innings gave everyone a chance to catch their breath. But it also gave Jason Heyward a chance to deliver the exact "rallying the troops" weight room speech that the Cubs needed after blowing what had been a three-run lead in the eighth inning.

Before the skies opened, though, this one was already an instant classic.

Dexter Fowler led off the game with a home run. Javier Báez atoned for two early errors with a solo shot of his own. David Ross homered in what proved to be the final at-bat of his MLB career. And Rajai Davis delivered the ultimate stunner with his game-tying, two-run blast off Aroldis Chapman.

Throw in the rarely-seen two-run wild pitch, the questionable decision to pull Kyle Hendricks in the fifth inning, the even more questionable decision to have Báez bunt with two strikes in the ninth inning and the lengthy championship droughts for each franchise and that rain delay may have just been the world sweating profusely.

In the tenth, Ben Zobrist delivered the tie-breaking double, Miguel Montero provided a much-needed insurance run and the Cubs finally won a World Series 108 years in the making.