‘Phillies Extra’ Q&A: Aaron Rowand reflects on his iconic (and painful) catch on its 20th anniversary
Monday marks 20 years since Rowand’s famed face-breaking catch, which remains among the most memorable plays in team history. To mark the occasion, Rowand recently joined The Inquirer's baseball show.
Aaron Rowand called his shot.
On the eve of the 2006 season, his first year with the Phillies, Rowand was familiarizing himself with his new surroundings in center field in Citizens Bank Park when he spotted an exposed metal bar underneath padding atop a chain-link fence.
“My head slid right underneath it,” said Rowand, known for his kamikaze-style outfield defense, “and I was like, ‘This could be a problem.’”
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Rowand told then-assistant general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. The Phillies ordered extra padding, which arrived one month into the season and was due to be installed while the team was on the road.
A few days too late, as it turned out.
Monday marks the 20th anniversary of Rowand’s famed face-breaking catch, which remains among the most memorable plays in team history. To mark the occasion, Rowand recently joined Phillies Extra, The Inquirer’s baseball podcast, to reminisce about The Catch.
Here are a few excerpts from the conversation. Watch the full interview below and subscribe to the Phillies Extra podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Q: I’m going to guess that you probably don’t get asked about any single play quite as much as you do about running face-first into the wall at Citizens Bank Park on May 11, 2006. Gavin Floyd was on the mound; bases loaded; the Mets’ Xavier Nady at the plate. Take it from there.
A: It’s kind of ironic how it ended up happening. Before the game, I was actually talking to Gavin. He had gotten called up, and he was lights out in spring training. When he got called up, every game that he went out and started for us, he’d shut them down. [But] he always had one bad inning — whether it was walking guys or giving up cheap hits, whatever — but it always seemed to implode, and the other team would throw up a crooked number one inning. But every other inning, he was solid.
And I was actually talking to him in center field … most starters usually sit in the locker room and stuff during batting practice and relax and do whatever, but being a young guy, he wanted to be out on the field and get that major-league experience being in the ballpark. I know I did the same thing when I was young. So, he was out there shagging during batting practice, and I was talking to him. And one of the things I noticed whenever he was having one of those innings was he was getting kind of robotic with his windup, instead of just flowing. And I pointed it out to him. He knew, and I just said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to figure out how to snap out of that. When you recognize it’s going sideways, how do you do that? Where do you go to in your mind that’s going to put you back in the rhythm that you need to have?’
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And so, we just talked a little bit about it before the game. And then, sure enough, first inning that game, strikeout, second guy strikeout. He’s rolling already, and then he walks three straight guys and bases loaded and two outs. And I was like, ‘Here we go. This is it. If we can get out of this inning, he’s going to roll the rest of the way. This is his inning.’ And Xavier hit that ball. And I put my head down, and I just started sprinting back as fast as I could at the fence, thinking to myself, ‘If I catch this, we’re going to win this game, because he’s going to be lights out.’ And when I looked up, I saw it, caught it, hit the wall, and just tried to hold on.
Q: OK, rewind for a second. When you got to Philly after spring training, you had a workout at home, and you were going around center field. And there was that spot where there was that the chain-link fence and no padding, and there was a bar. And I think you actually talked to Ruben Amaro Jr., who was the assistant GM at the time, about doing something about that. They ordered the padding, and it was ready to be installed when you guys went on the road. So you get through one more game and you get the padding there. Did you know that would be an issue because that’s how you play?
A: That’s exactly it. I know how I how I play, whether it was in college at Blair Field in Long Beach, [Calif.], running into a concrete cinder block wall full speed, or Santa Barbara in college jumping up and hitting my head on the pole on the top to try to make a play. In the minor leagues, luckily, most of them were wood. Occasionally, at a newer ballpark, you might have some padding on it. But every time that I went to a new ballpark, I would always go out and try to familiarize myself with the wall, where the angles and stuff were, how the ball is going to kick off the wall. In Philly, left-center, it jetties out, so I knew where the ball was going to bounce before it hit the wall.
And [something] that a lot of people don’t know about that, too, is any time the ball goes up in that left-center gap, it blows back towards right-center. And you see a lot of visiting guys come in and they run to where they think it’s going to go, and it ends up, they get twisted around. It’s just little nuance, things like that that you try to familiarize yourself with before it happens.
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The first time [in Philly] I played at the Vet when I was in Chicago [with the White Sox], but this is my first time [at CBP] during that preseason game. ... and I went back out there and I noticed, because the fence comes down, and then it jets out, and then down again where that inch-thick metal bar was, right underneath the top padding, and my head slid right underneath it. And I was like, ‘This could be a problem.’ So when I went in to go hit I told Ruben, ‘We’re going to need to put some padding on that, on that metal run.’ I actually walked him out there after batting practice, and I said, ‘If we don’t,’ I said, ‘I promise you, I’m going to run into this and try to kill myself.’ And he goes, ‘We’ll get it done.’ ... And then [the collision] happened.
... The best part about that was the grounds crew guy felt so bad that they didn’t go put it up. Later on that year … we bought these gas-powered trucks … that do like 60 mph. And we would put all of our helmet numbers on them, so that we could have races going around the warning track or on the grass. And we used to drive him crazy because they’d flip over and then they would just slowly leak gasoline, so there was a bunch of little dead spots all over the field. But he couldn’t bring himself to come and tell me not to do it after he didn’t put the padding up.
Q: What do you remember about being down on the field after making that catch?
A: It was more about, ‘Thank God I caught that ball,’ because they didn’t score any runs. And I walked into the clubhouse, and we have an X-ray machine in the clubhouse, and they put me on it to take an X-ray of my head. And I just remember laying there, and all the blood that was coming out my nose was now going down my throat, and so I was starting to get sick and I felt like I was going to throw up. So, they gave me a garbage can because I was swallowing all that blood. And I just remember going into the bathroom and I had a gash across the bridge of my nose. I remember ... opening it up, and I could just see the cartilage in my nose. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to need some stitches for this.’ They already knew that I had some fractures in my face, and I just remember getting in the ambulance and taking me to the hospital, and they had to prep me for surgery, and they put the game up. They put the game on [TV] in the emergency room, and obviously it got shortened [to five innings] by rain, but we ended up winning [2-0] ... so yeah, it wasn’t for nothing.
Watch Rowand discuss his iconic sound bite about making the catch, being a part of setting the culture for a team that would win the World Series in 2008, how tough it was to leave the Phillies, his best Chase Utley story, and more.
Phillies Extra is your deep dive into all things Phillies on Gameday Central! Hosted by Scott Lauber, each episode brings you insider analysis, exclusive interviews with players and experts, reader emails, and more to cover the hottest topics with the Phillies and across Major League Baseball. Don’t miss it — the conversation starts here!
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