Yandy Díaz, one day after calling his shot, delivers a no-doubt homer to help send the Rays to the World Series

· Yahoo Sports

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It is a sequence that has unfolded in some form at quite possibly every baseball game ever played.

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"I called it!"

Someone in the dugout gets a funny feeling: That guy is about to hit a homer. And then he does. A volcano of jubilation and validation ensues, followed by the customary spreading of the word to all who will listen that they did, in fact, call it.

Some accurate forecasts, however, are sweeter than others.

The latest rendition of this age-old tradition came courtesy of the newly minted American League champion Tampa Bay Rays, who defeated the Cleveland Guardians 7-3 on Monday in Game 6 to advance to the third World Series in franchise history. Just two players from Tampa Bay's last trip to the Fall Classic in 2020 remain in the organization. One of them — starting pitcher Shane McClanahan — had the feeling. The other — designated hitter Yandy Díaz — was scheduled to hit in the bottom of the eighth inning.

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Take one look at the mega-muscular Díaz, and you might be inclined to predict a homer every time he strolls to the plate. In reality, the long ball has never been his calling card. As successful as Díaz has been throughout his major-league career, he has cleared the fence just 122 times across 1,058 regular-season games, plus another three in 34 postseason games before Monday. 

He has instead thrived as an on-base machine with uncommon contact skills and one who hits the ball ridiculously hard, though often at lower launch angles than dingers require. Even so, his longstanding rock-solid production has made him a staple in Tampa Bay's lineup for years, and his commitment to the organization and community has made him the rare Ray who wasn't dealt away when his value reached its peak.

"He's wanted to be here. He's valued being here," Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said postgame. "And when you have someone that really loves being here … righty bats — everybody talked about it all year — they're really hard to find. When you got one that wants to be here and is as timeless as Yandy, you don't let him go, and we haven't."

McClanahan, teammates with Díaz since 2020, knows as well as anyone what the 35-year-old is all about. So as the Rays found themselves nearing another trip to the Fall Classic but in need of some insurance runs late in Game 6, McClanahan — who was shut down in September due to forearm tightness — told Díaz in the dugout that he was about to go yard.

Of course, Díaz himself had called his shot 24 hours earlier. On Sunday at Progressive Field in Cleveland, the Rays' 3-1 victory in Game 5 gave them a 3-2 series lead. Before jumping on a late-night flight home, Díaz sat at the postgame podium and made his intentions clear.

"It's a great opportunity," he said through interpreter Kevin Viera of being one win away from the World Series. "All of us are thinking of it.

"It all ends tomorrow. We're going to win tomorrow."

That night and the next morning, social media was abuzz with the notion that Díaz’s proclamation could come back to bite him if Cleveland staged a comeback — after all, just two wins were needed to make him eat his words. But Díaz did his part to make sure that didn't happen — and to make his longtime teammate look smart. 

In the seventh inning Monday, star slugger Junior Caminero broke the game open with a dome-shaking home run of his own. Facing Cleveland's top reliever, Cade Smith, Caminero executed an unthinkable swing on a gnarly splitter that dove inside toward his hands. Somehow, he lifted the ball down the left-field line and off the foul pole for a two-run homer that made it 5-1 Tampa Bay. 

It wasn't quite the jaw-dropping moon shot Caminero is known for — it traveled just 346 feet and left the bat at 92.3 mph, by far the lowest exit velocity on a home run in his career — but the final destination was all that mattered. And even without gaudy batted-ball metrics, Caminero's swing stood out: It was the first home run Smith had ever allowed on his splitter. The stakes amplified it tenfold, and Caminero's ecstatic trip around the bases indicated as much.

But Cleveland trimmed Tampa Bay's lead to 5-3 in the top of the eighth, upping the tension at the Trop and the need for more cushion with three outs to go. In the bottom half of the inning, shortstop Taylor Walls led off with a walk against Hunter Gaddis, Cleveland's eighth pitcher of the game. It was the eighth and final free pass (six walks plus two hit-by-pitches) issued in Game 6 by an exhausted Guardians pitching staff that had worn thin as October progressed.

Up came Díaz, 0-for-3 on the evening but having scorched a 111-mph lineout to center field in the fourth inning. Díaz was already responsible for the hardest-hit ball of this postseason, with his 114.6-mph double in ALCS Game 1, and he was looking for another sweet swing to push the Rays closer to the pennant.

Gaddis painted a perfect 95-mph fastball on the inner half for strike one. Díaz watched it sail by unbothered. Then Gaddis attacked inside again, this time with his unusually slow changeup that often floats past the barrel or coaxes weak contact. Not this time. The 75.6-mph pitch didn't quite make it far enough inside; Díaz uncoiled his violent, right-handed cut and connected. In a blink, the ball jumped off Díaz’s bat, his bat jumped out of his hands, and Díaz jumped toward the sky, enjoying a home run hop that would make Sammy Sosa proud. 

The ball soared into the left-field seats, having left the barrel with a 111.9-mph exit velocity that makes it the seventh-hardest hit home run of Díaz’s career. As the sellout crowd of 40,430 went ballistic, Díaz took his time on the way to first before picking up the pace and hustling around the bases to make it 7-3 Tampa Bay.

That score would hold, as closer Bryan Baker tossed a scoreless ninth for the third straight day to send Tampa Bay back to the World Series. The 2026 Rays punched their ticket 18 years to the day after the only other Rays team that won the pennant at Tropicana Field did so in Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS. (Their most recent run to the Fall Classic in 2020 took place at neutral sites).

About an hour after Díaz’s monumental blast, he was one of the main characters in the postgame party in the clubhouse, soaked in booze and wielding a tomahawk steak because, well, why not? McClanahan marveled at the scene — and made sure everyone knew how it went down. 

"I told him he was gonna do it," McClanahan said. "I showed him where to hit it, too."

A joyous Díaz emerged from the celebratory chaos to validate his teammate's tale. "This is my guy," a beaming Díaz said in English. "This is my hitting coach.

"He said 'left-field homer.' I said, 'I got it.'"

When Díaz concluded his home run trot, he ran through a tunnel of teammates before leaping onto McClanahan at the end of the line for an enthusiastic bear-hug and a nod to what had occurred before. 

"That's why he attacked me," McClanahan confirmed.

Said Díaz of his message to McClanahan upon his return to the dugout: "Thank you, sir." 

Díaz bounced away, off to receive more congratulations and appreciation from players, coaches and front-office officials who had just watched a longtime franchise anchor author a signature moment. 

"He's the same guy every day," Walls said. "Works out for about five hours, hits about 30 balls off the tee, and then he goes out and rakes. It is not by accident that his biceps are about 45 inches around."

Added Neander: "He said we were gonna win. He did his part. That was unbelievable."

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