The home run that saved a life on 9/11

The unlikely baseball player

Long before Brad Thomas pitched in the Minnesota Twins organization, the native of Sydney, Australia, considered soccer to be his first love. His parents only signed him up for baseball as a 9-year-old because they were hunting for activities to keep him occupied during the summer when soccer wasn't in season.

Thomas showed immediate promise in baseball despite having little-to-no previous exposure to the sport. He doesn't even recall watching the sport at all until he turned 11 and stumbled across a video of Kirk Gibson's iconic pinch-hit home run in the 1988 World Series.

Even when Thomas did start watching more MLB games as a teenager, he seldom spotted any players with Australian ties. Second baseman Joe Quinn was the first Australian to reach the Major Leagues way back in 1884. It took 102 years before another Aussie achieved the same feat.

"I never thought I could play baseball as a job," Thomas told Yahoo Sports with a chuckle. "Coming from Australia, it just wasn't really happening back then. "

Thomas' outlook changed as a 17-year-old when he participated in a national tournament that showcased many of Australia's top young players. Major-League scouts in attendance came away intrigued by Thomas' overpowering fastball and fluid, easy delivery. The tall, broad-shouldered teenager suddenly had a trio of teams willing to overlook his lack of guile and experience and bet on his physical upside.

Though the

By 2001, Cuddyer and Thomas were both pillars of a Double-A New Britain team loaded with future Major Leaguers. Cuddyer hit .301 and mashed 30 home runs and Thomas posted a team-best 1.96 ERA as the Twins' Double-A affiliate went 87-55 to finish with the Eastern League's best regular-season record.

The divisional playoff series against Norwich pitted two teams who had developed a distaste for one-another over the course of 20 hard-fought regular-season matchups. Players unanimously describe Cuddyer's walk-off home run in the opening game as the series' pivotal swing.

"The walk-off was huge," New Britain outfielder Michael Restovich said. "In a short series, a best-of-five, whoever wins the first game has all the momentum. We were on cloud nine and their heads were down. You got the sense we put a big dent into them. "

When the New Britain Rock Cats fell asleep on the night of September 10, 2001, their foremost concern was preparing for the Eastern League Championship Series opener the following night against the Reading Phillies. They were confident that their toughest obstacle was behind them, optimistic that they were days away from celebrating a championship.

Hours later, hoisting a trophy suddenly felt trivial.

America was under attack, and one New Britain player was fortunate to be alive. 

'He changed my life'

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Thomas awoke to a ringing phone in his Connecticut hotel room.

It was his girlfriend's father calling to make sure Thomas had seen that a plane had just plowed into the World Trade Center's North Tower. Thomas thought the crash might turn out to be a tragic accident until he flipped on the TV in time to watch a second plane strike the South Tower.

"How could somebody do this? " Thomas remembers wondering to himself. "How could this even happen? "

Later that day, after Thomas and his teammates had gathered in the New Britain clubhouse, a team official approached the Australian pitcher with a dazed expression. That was how Thomas learned that he and his girlfriend originally had seats aboard the first of the hijacked planes, that they were nearly two of the flight's 90-plus fatalities, that the outcome of an innocuous baseball playoff series essentially spared their lives.

"At first, I was in total shock," Thomas recalled. "Then reality set in. I had nightmares about hijackings on planes and that sort of thing for a while. I struggled to fly on commercial flights for a long time afterward. "

The next few days were a whirlwind. President George W. Bush shut down U.S. civilian airspace and grounded all commercial planes. Major League Baseball postponed all games for six-plus days. The Eastern League canceled its championship series and declared New Britain and Reading co-champions, sending players on both teams scrambling to find a way home.

When the Minnesota Twins called Cuddyer up from Double-A that September, flights across the country were still grounded. Cuddyer made a 24-hour drive from Connecticut to Minnesota in time to make his big-league debut against the

To Twins fans, Cuddyer is an important piece of six division championship teams during the 2000s. To Thomas, Cuddyer is a guardian angel. He knows that he and his ex-wife Kylie might not be alive without Cuddyer's home runs against Norwich. He knows their two kids, 20-year-old Sivy and 12-year-old Justin, might never have been born.

"It's always in the back of your mind," Thomas said, his eyes tearing up and his voice cracking. "He changed my life. Things could have worked out a lot differently if we lost that playoff series. We wouldn't be having this conversation today. "

For years, Cuddyer would downplay the idea that his home runs saved Thomas' life. Now he openly acknowledges that he and Thomas will always be connected.

Cuddyer hit 197 home runs in his 14-year big-league career. He hit postseason home runs and walk-off home runs. He once even hit two home runs in the same inning. None of them, he says, were as "impactful" as the ones he hit in the Eastern League playoffs against the Norwich Navigators.

"On a baseball level, those were extremely impactful," Cuddyer said, "and then you take it to a completely different stratosphere when you talk about 9/11 and Brad not being on that plane. "