What is a walkoff in baseball? Why is it called that and what does it mean?

Sometimes, it takes an unfeasibly long time for something to catch on. For example, human hands have been the same shape for at least 300,000 years, since the appearance of homo sapiens.

The heart-shape that we all know has been commonly known and associated with romantic love since at least 1250 AD, or nearly eight hundred years. Yet it would appear that prior to the early 2000s, or at least the late 1990s, nobody had really taken note of the fact that if you put your fingers together, you can approximate this same shape. It seems crazy that it took that long, but as someone in their fifth decade on this earth, I can assure you that the now-common gesture simply did not exist as a thing.

Baseball has been around in some form since the middle ages, and in its modern variant for well over 150 years now. And yet, the phrase “walk-off” was only invented in the 1980s. The phrase was coined by Dennis Eckersley and was originally “walk-off piece.” Appropriately, Eckersley surrendered the most memorable walk-off in modern baseball when Kirk Gibson took it deep in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

That is not to say that in all of the time prior to this, there were not plays that ended a game immediately. That has been a rule since 1880. But for over a century, nobody called the play that ended the game anything other than simply a “hit” or a “home run” or whatever other play that scored a run.

The actual definition of the term as per the MLB’s official glossary is “A ‘walk-off’ is any offensive play that gives the home team the lead - and thus, the win - in the bottom of the last inning.” This reflects the modern usage of the term, which awards the status of “walk-off” to the batting team. But originally, when Eck coined it, he was referring to the pitcher, not the hitter. The “walk-off piece” was to make the walk of shame, head hung low in defeat, not the triumphant walk of victory that we associate the term with today.

Another difference between the original use of the term and the way that it is used today is that originally, it was only applied to a pitcher who surrendered a home run. Any other type of score was not shameful, it was just baseball. Today, however, we will regularly refer to a “walk-off RBI” or a “walk-off walk” giving the name to any play at all that surrenders the winning run in the bottom half of the ninth or beyond.