MLB Archives - Positively Petaluma

(Washington, DC 04/01/2014) Boston Red Sox left fielder Jonny Gomes, wearing his bold USA flag blazer, walks past President Barack Obama at a ceremony on the South Lawn honoring the 2013 World Series Champs at the White House Tuesday, April 1, 2014. Staff Photo by Matt West.

Don’t you just love this guy? He is often waving an American Flag or wearing one. Not too many MLB players have two World Series rings and probably none from the 707. In August Gomes had the good fortune when the Altanta Braves traded him to the Kansas City Royals. But of course Gomes cannot just leave Braves without making history – check out our earlier post Petaluma’s Jonny Gomes pitching one of the greatest innings in history. Gomes, a position player had the rare opportunity to help save Atlanta’s pitching staff by coming in to pitch against the New York Yankees – he struck out a batter to end the inning. How many outfielders can do that?

CBS Sports wrote the following about Gomes in his World Series play:

Jonny Gomes Kansas City Royals Celebrates Series Win — Clip From CBS Sports Video Jonny Gomes Celebrates High Five with Hosmer

Gomes: He batted .167 in 12 games for the Royals in a redundant role, with guys such as Paolo Orlando and Jarrod Dyson getting all of the time as backup outfielders. But, Gomes also has what we like to call veteran presence — he also helped the Red Sox win a title in 2013. And after Christian Colon got the go-ahead hit in Game 5, he credited Gomes in multiple postgame interviews with helping him to stay mentally ready for the moment when the Royals might need him. Well, Colon obviously stayed ready, didn’t he?

Gomes also was noted for his speech in the Kansas City parade – see video on : WATCH: Jonny Gomes’ speech highlights Royals World Series parade.

The following video is from the MLB Baseball Website (It can take time for some computers to load the video below):

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You’re probably saying, Jonny Gomes pitching? What? Yeah he is a position player. Obviously the Braves were in a tough spot, and they brought in Gomes to pitch an inning that will go down in history.

From the MLB.COM website:

With the way the 2015 season has gone, you may have assumed you’d seen about all the different position player pitching archetypes there are to see. But with the Braves down big to the Yankees on Friday, we all learned a valuable lesson: You have not lived until you’ve seen Jonny Gomes pitch.

Gomes is the Platonic ideal of the position player pitcher — the beard, the unbuttoned jersey, the sure-why-not ethos that results from surviving five different brushes with death. And when the moment of truth finally arrived, oh man, did Jonny Gomes not disappoint. Over the course of one glorious inning, he flinched, kicked, flailed, hat-tipped and occasionally pitched his way into our hearts, and to commemorate this historic moment, we’ve compiled this exhaustive timeline:

The Official Site of Major League Baseball