HILAND PARK — As baseball legends go, Sid Bream doesn’t quite fit the profile: a .264 lifetime average, 90 career home runs, zero All-Star appearances.
But baseball legends come not just by virtue of legendary careers, but also of legendary moments, and Bream’s moment was one of the most memorable in the modern history of baseball.
The former Atlanta Braves star shared his memories of that moment – beating a Barry Bonds throw to home plate to score the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning of the 1992 National League Championship Series – and much more when he visited Hiland Park Baptist Church for its sixth Annual Wild Beast Feast on Tuesday evening.
The event features hundreds of local men for a feast of wild game, bluegrass music, thousands of dollars in prizes, and a question-and-answer session with a guest speaker.
Bream’s appearance gave Braves fans a chance to ask one of the principals of one of the franchise’s greatest moments about his memory of the play fondly remembered as “The Slide,” a play that has earned him a notoriety rarely bestowed on players of a similar stature.
Despite having surely fielded similar questions over the past 20 years, Bream said it never gets old interacting with fans who want to ask him about the play.
“That’s the give-back,” he said. “That’s something that gets me about a lot of players today. They don’t realize that without the fans, they don’t get paid and they don’t get a chance to play. I’m always happy to talk with fans and share my experiences with them.”
Bream, who now makes his home in Pittsburgh, does that in a formal setting approximately 35 to 40 times per year, by his count, appearing not just at churches but also in corporate settings as a motivational speaker.
It’s not something that came natural for Bream, who said it has taken a while for him to get comfortable as a public speaker.
“I don’t love to speak (publically),” he said. “It’s not something that was easy for me at first. You talk about stress and butterflies, it was worse than coming up with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Very nerve-wracking.”
Bream was far more comfortable, as most ballplayers are, in between the lines where he played Major League Baseball for four teams over a 12-year career, starting with the Dodgers in 1983 before being traded in 1985 to the Pittsburgh Pirates, stationed just a few hours away from his hometown of Carlisle, Pa.
He was part of a resurgence in Pittsburgh that saw the Pirates go from 64 wins in 1986 to 95 wins and a division title in 1990, but he left to sign in free agency with Atlanta for the 1991 season and helped the Braves knock out his former team in seven games in the NLCS.
The two clubs met again in 1992 and again went to seven games, with the Pirates taking a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth of the deciding game, but the Braves rallied and after a walk, Bream found himself at second base representing the winning run in a 2-1 game.
A Francisco Cabrera single to left field scored David Justice from third to tie the game, with Bream charging around towards home and just beating the slightly-off target throw from Bonds to give the Braves a 3-2 win.
The future Hall of Famer Bonds drew criticism after the fact for not throwing out Bream, who had been slowed significantly by injuries, though he said Tuesday that he had every advantage to score in the situation.
“I didn’t have to worry about holding up at second because there were two outs and I could go on contact, and I didn’t have to worry about getting picked off because (Pirates reliever) Stan Belinda wasn’t holding me on, so I was able to get a bigger lead,” Bream said. “People have said that if (Bonds) had made a better throw, he would’ve gotten me, but it wasn’t that far off. I just got a good jump and outran the ball.”
But it wasn’t all baseball talk for Bream, who also shared with the audience the role his religious faith played in guiding him from ‘a lost little puppy in the big city’ in Los Angeles to a team leader on a championship club in Atlanta.
“Christ is what I’m about. He’s the reason I’m here,” he said. “Having a baseball career is great, but the best part is the platform that God has given me through baseball to have an opportunity to speak to people about having a relationship with Jesus Christ. Without Him, I’m nothing.”