Headley's Two Day Journey Ends With 14th Inning Game Winner

Headley celebrates his game winning hit over Texas

Chase Headley (@chaseheadley7 on Twitter) woke up in Chicago on Tuesday, 7/22 and will go to bed in New York early Wednesday morning as a baseball hero. Headley has been the subject of trade rumors involving the Yankees for the last three years, but it took until Tuesday for rumor to become fact.

Almost a dozen hours later, Headley was getting doused with Gatorade by new teammate Brett Gardner and was being interviewed on the field by Meredith Marokovits (YES Network) and Suzyn Waldman (WFAN-AM). With the game tied at one apiece in the 14th inning, Brian Roberts reached with a one-out ground rule double. Francisco Cervelli, who ripped a potential game winning line drive to Adrian Belte at third base two innnigs earlier, singled to push Roberts to third base and gave Headley a second chance to play the hero.

Headley, who had arrived shortly after the game started, pinch-hit for Zelous Wheeler in the 8th inning and struck out. He made the second out in the 11th inning with a ground out and bounced out again with the bases loaded to end the 12th.

But with his fourth at-bat of the night, Headley got his first Yankees' RBI when he dropped a Nick Tepesch pitch into left-center to drive home Roberts with the game winner. It was a satisfying ending to a long day.

Headley had been informed around 11:30 CDT this morning that he had been traded. He got the first plane out to New York and walked into the dugout in pinstripes with the number 12 on his back as the Yankees battled the Rangers in a scoreless duel. Headley told Marokovits after the game that he was excited "to go from the situation I was in (the Padres fell to 43-56 after the Cubs shut them out 8-0 on Tuesday), to go right into a pennant race."