In Memoriam: Todd Benzinger — The Man Who Caught the Final Out

Every ballplayer who ever lived has dreamed the same dream: the last out of the World Series, hanging in the air, coming down in his glove. For Todd Benzinger, on October 20, 1990, it wasn't a dream. Carney Lansford's foul pop drifted toward the first-base side at the Oakland Coliseum, Benzinger settled underneath it with the whole season in the balance, and the 1990 World Series — a wire-to-wire coronation, a four-game sweep of the mighty Oakland A's — ended in his mitt.

Todd Benzinger, the Cincinnati Reds' first baseman on one of the most improbable championship teams ever assembled, has passed away. He was 63.

"The Cincinnati Reds are saddened by the passing of former first baseman and 1990 World Series champion Todd Benzinger," the club said in a statement. "Todd will be remembered with great affection and gratitude for his place in one of the most memorable chapters in Reds history."

He was a river kid. Born February 11, 1963, in Dayton, Kentucky, and raised across the Ohio in New Richmond, Benzinger was a first-team All-American as a high school senior and a fourth-round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox in 1981. Then came the part they don't put in the dream: six long years of bus rides before he finally reached the majors on June 21, 1987 — the first day of summer, which felt about right.

Boston is where the legend started. In 1988, the Red Sox caught fire in the second half — "Morgan Magic," they called it — and Benzinger was in the middle of it, hitting .394 with a runner standing on third base. On July 20, his tenth-inning walk-off home run won a game that Red Sox fans, to this day, simply call "The Benzinger Game."

After that season, Boston traded him to Cincinnati in the deal that sent Nick Esasky to the Red Sox, and Benzinger wasted no time writing himself into somebody else's history. In the first inning of Orel Hershiser's first start of 1989, it was Benzinger's RBI hit that ended the record scoreless streak at 59 innings. The man had a genuine gift for showing up in the middle of other people's stories.

Mets fans of a certain age got their own up-close look a month later, on the night of May 3, 1989, at Shea Stadium. Sid Fernandez was on the mound, 27,412 in the seats, and before the Mets came to bat, Todd Benzinger had already beaten them twice without the game being ten minutes old. Kal Daniels singled. Chris Sabo flied out. Barry Larkin singled. And then, with Benzinger standing in the batter's box, Fernandez balked — home came Daniels with the first run of the night, on a balk, during Benzinger's at-bat. El Sid never recovered, and Benzinger made sure of it, driving a two-run home run deep into the left-field night. Three-nothing Reds, before the Shea crowd had finished settling in.

Cincinnati won that night, 6-4, and the save went to a hard-throwing left-hander named John Franco — one year before Franco came home to Flushing and became ours. Baseball balanced the books the very next evening, when Howard Johnson took Rob Dibble deep in the bottom of the tenth and the Mets walked off the Reds, 3-2. But that first night belonged to the visitors' first baseman, and anybody who was there remembers exactly how it started: a balk, and then a bomb.

That 1989 season was the best of Benzinger's life, and the toughest. On a snakebitten Reds club playing out Pete Rose's final season in the dugout, Benzinger was the ironman — 161 games, a National League-leading 628 at-bats, career highs of 17 home runs and 76 RBIs. He never stopped showing up. The following summer, the Reds never spent a single day out of first place, marched through the Pirates in the NLCS, and ran into an Oakland team that was supposed to be a dynasty. Four games later, it was over, and the final out of the 1990 baseball season was a foul pop in Todd Benzinger's glove.

The journeyman years followed. He was traded to Kansas City in 1991, played 121 games for the Dodgers in 1992, and was the Giants' regular first baseman in 1994, before his last big-league game on May 14, 1995. The final line: nine seasons, 924 games, a .257 average, 66 home runs, 376 RBIs — and one October night that no journeyman's résumé has any business containing. His teammates, naturally, called him "Mercedes." Benzinger. You can do the rest.

Then he went home, and stayed home, and gave the game back. He coached girls' basketball at Loveland High School from 2006 to 2008. He managed the Dayton Dragons, Cincinnati's Class A club, in 2009 and 2010. He won the Reds' Joe Nuxhall Good Guy Award, and he became a fixture of everything the franchise does for its own — the Reds Caravan, the Fantasy Camps, Redsfest, always there, always glad to talk ball with anybody who wanted to talk it.

"Todd will forever be remembered by Reds fans for catching the final out of the 1990 World Series," said Rick Walls, executive director of the Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, "but those of us who had the privilege of knowing him will remember so much more."

He was never a Met. But he doesn't have to have been one for us to tip a cap. For one May night at Shea he broke our hearts before the first inning was over, and for one October night in Oakland he stood under the last fly ball of the season with a former Met, Randy Myers, having thrown the pitch .

Somewhere, that foul pop is still coming down. In the dream every ballplayer dreams, it always lands in the same place.

Rest easy, Todd. You caught it.