LSU's Warren Morris hit one of the most famous walk-off home runs 25 years ago today
(Editor's note: Parts of this story are being reprinted from 2016)
LAFAYETTE, La. — On June 8, 1996, LSU second baseman Warren Morris needed to speak to coach Skip Bertman.
The last game of the College World Series — a winner-take-all championship at high noon against Miami in Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska — was less than two hours away.
"Coach, I feel 100 percent for the first time since the surgery," Morris told Bertman.
"He was only 50 percent when we were in the Regional,” Bertman said 25 years later.
Morris, a lefty-hitting junior from Bolton High in Alexandria, had led LSU with a .369 average and eight home runs in 1995. But he had been handcuffed for most of 1996 by a hamate bone injury in his right wrist that was originally misdiagnosed and finally required surgery April 24.
After missing 39 of 59 games, Morris returned to the lineup — quicker than most who have had the common procedure — on May 23 for the NCAA regional in Baton Rouge and hit .411 (7-for-17) with five RBI, despite often resorting to partial swings and bunts at ninth in the order.
With two outs and Brad Wilson on third in the bottom of the ninth with Miami up 8-7 in the title game at 3:29 p.m. on June 8, 1996, Morris swung completely at the first pitch from Miami closer Robbie Morrison. It was a hard, low, outside curve that Morris somehow went down and got with his suddenly healed right wrist.
"I had decided I’m just going to be aggressive. If I go down, I’m going down swinging," Morris said years later.
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"I think the first time he really had a good, hard, full swing since the surgery was that home run," said Ronnie Mathews, a hand specialist who did the surgery at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge just six weeks previously. He was at the game behind Bertman’s wife, Sandy, on the third base side.
After the ball just cleared the corner of the right field fence, Morris raised his repaired right wrist as he rounded second and headed to immortality.
“It was remarkable how quickly he recovered from the surgery,” said Mathews, who originally thought it was a ligament tear because the pain was on the top of his wrist. “I knew that Warren hit the ball well. It was more of a straight shot. Didn’t know if it had enough carry to it, but the story is that it did.”
It was Morris’ only home run of the season.
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"It was unbelievable the way everything came together and happened at the end," Morris said. "I mean, had the injury happened earlier or if I had the surgery earlier, I wouldn’t have been batting ninth and might not have come up in that situation."
Morris, a vice president with Red River Bank in Alexandria, has lived in his hometown since he retired from baseball in 2006 after five big league seasons with Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Detroit. He and his wife Julie of Tioga have three daughters.
He watched LSU come back from a 7-6 deficit on Monday night to beat Oregon, 9-8, in the NCAA Eugene Reginal final that finished after midnight.
"Another big 9-8 win for the Tigers that finished on June 8," Morris texted.
Morris still thinks about how many things had to happen for his home run to happen.
"Had the injury happened later or if the surgery was a week or two later, I wouldn’t have been ready to play,” he said. “I was not 100 percent until that day. You just never know.”
Morris was not thinking home run.
"Just hit a line drive," he said he told himself. "I didn’t know it was a home run until I was rounding first and saw the Miami guys lying down on the field."
Back in Alexandria, euphoria replaced dread.
“I turned to my wife, ‘Hey, his whole life just changed,’ ” Warren's older brother Wally Morris said.
Morris was interviewed so much after the game, Rosenblatt was nearly empty by the time he left.
“The team bus left me,” he said. “I guess they got tired (of) waiting, but I have never cornered anyone and asked why.”
Once back at the hotel, Morris learned that most of the team had left for celebrations around town. He was alone again just as he was in the batter’s box.
“Really, the first time I saw the home run was when I flipped on SportsCenter in my room,” he said. “I watched it by myself.”
Morris and his wrist would go on to lead the bronze medal winning U.S. team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta with a .409 average as he hit five homers with 11 RBI. A fifth-round pick of the Texas Rangers that June, he was traded to Pittsburgh in 1998 and finished third for the National League Rookie of the Year in 1999, hitting .288 with 15 homers and 73 RBI.
Morris also found time that summer to drop by Mathews' office with an autographed picture of his full home run swing from that fateful day. Mathews, who recently semi-retired, moved the picture from his office in Zachary to his home.
"I look at that every day," he said Tuesday.
Morris' words remain: “One Good Cut Deserves Another! … Warren Morris.”
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