World Series 2011: Rangers Home-Field Advantage Key to Stunning Late Victory

Home-field advantage in baseball is something that I feel isn’t that important.

I mean it certainly has an effect on teams, as Baseball Analysts have found that home teams win 54 percent of their games, but I’ve never seen it have it such a noticeable impact on a game like it did last night.

The Texas Rangers won an absolute thriller in Game 5 of the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals and they could certainly credit a good amount of this victory to the 51,000-plus fans in attendance making a ton of noise.

In the bottom of the eight inning, Mike Napoli, the right-handed hitter who had a phenomenal season for the Rangers, smacked a line drive double that scored two runs and broke the 2-2 stalemate.

This clutch hit would prove to be the difference in the game and give the Rangers the victory.

Now you might be wondering why the home-field advantage was so important for this play.

It’s because Napoli wasn’t supposed to be facing the left-handed Marc Rzepczynski, who he hit that double off of.

When Cardinals manager Tony La Russa called down to the bullpen, he requested Rzepczynski and Jason Motte to warm up.

Derek Lilliquist, the Cardinals bullpen coach, only heard Rzepczynski’s name because of the extremely loud crowd and just had him warm up.

After David Murphy got on base because Rzepczynski botched a double-play ball, La Russa called for Motte to come in, who had not been warming up. Lilliquist against misheard him and started warming up Lance Lynn.  

These crazy mishaps allowed for a huge mismatch with Napoli at the plate.

Of course Napoli did what he has been doing all year long and smacked the go-ahead RBI.

He has to thank his fans for chanting and screaming and keeping a right-hander off the mound for that easy game-winning hit.