How the Phillies once erased a 10-run (!) deficit

In its new series "Hidden Classics," MLB is digging into its archives and dusting off big games you might have forgotten about from your favorite stars of yesteryear. Stay tuned to MLB.com/HiddenClassics and MLB's YouTube channel for more Hidden Classic games.

A baseball game isn’t over until the last out is notched (or the walk-off run comes home). There’s no game clock on the scoreboard. Yogi Berra said it best: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

But ballplayers are also human beings, and sometimes it just doesn’t feel like your night. When your team is down by a score like, say, 11-3, in the ninth inning … on an August night … thousands of miles from home … your mind might, understandably, start to wander.

“Let’s be honest,” Phillies legend John Kruk told The Sporting News days after this particular late-game deficit. “We’re losing by eight runs, and all I’m thinking about at that point is getting back to the hotel by midnight, because that’s when room service closes.”

But the baseball gods aren’t always interested in room-service deadlines. Thankfully, for everyone besides Dodger fans, those gods had bigger plans on the night of Aug. 21, 1990 – the focus of this week’s “Hidden Classics.” After Los Angeles raced out to an 11-1 lead in the fifth inning, then kept the visitors at an arm-and-a-leg’s length, the Phillies trudged to the plate in the ninth still trailing 11-3. Their win probability sat as low as it could possibly sit: 0.01%.

And then?

“All of a sudden we start getting hits,” said Kruk, “and I’m saying, ‘I’m not going to make it [to the hotel].’ If you’re not going to get room service, you might as well win.”

How in the world did Kruk and the Phillies come all the way back, becoming the only team since 1934 to erase a ninth-inning deficit of at least eight runs and go on to win? Find out by watching the condensed game above in the video player, or over on MLB’s YouTube channel.

And for previous editions of “Hidden Classics”, check out:

• Ken Griffey Jr. and the Mariners’ final game at Seattle’s Kingdome
• Albert Pujols’ 5-for-5, three-homer game at Wrigley Field
• A vintage Pedro Martinez-Roger Clemens pitchers’ duel at Yankee Stadium
• Kirby Puckett’s superhuman 6-for-6, 2-homer game (with a homer robbery on defense!)
• Barry Bonds’ upper-deck homer (and showdown with Mariano Rivera) in the Bronx