In a pinch

Long before becoming a successful manager, Davey Johnson is an All-Star second baseman with Baltimore and Atlanta from 1966-74.

He then becomes a valuable bench player from 1977-78 for Philadelphia, where over two seasons he hits three pinch-hit home runs.

Turns out that Johnson hits the last of his three pinch-hit homers 46 years ago today as his walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Dodgers' Terry Forster lifts Philadelphia to a 5-1 victory before a Saturday afternoon crowd of 31,442 at Veterans Stadium.

Johnson – batting with no one out and in the midst of a 5-for-44 skid – says after the game that he initially thinks he hits Forster’s slider just well enough for a game-winning sacrifice fly rather than hitting it so well that it clears the wall in left.

“I really didn’t hit it well,” Johnson tells The Associated Press. “I just hit it in the right place.”

The slam off the bench also is Johnson’s second of the 1978 season – the other coming against San Diego's Bob Shirley on April 30 – to mark the first time in history that a pinch-hitter hits two grand slams in the same season.

Johnson’s record of two pinch-hit slams in one season later gets company as San Francisco’s Mike Ivie matches the feat in 1978 before Darryl Strawberry does the same in 1998 with the New York Yankees.