It was fun watching it happen but Chris Wheeler annoyed me by repeatedly calling it a "true" steal of home. A true steal of home is when the pitcher goes into his delivery and the runner on third breaks for home and beats the pitchers throw to the plate while hoping and praying that his teammate the batter doesn't swing. :eek: That is why a true steal of home is a high risk play. What Jayson Werth did was a delayed steal because he stole home on a lazy throw by catcher Russell Martin back to the pitcher without having to worry about whether or not the batter would be swinging. Nevertheless, it was a great heads up play by Jayson Werth.

Interesting that the last steal of home by a member of the Phillies was Carlos Ruiz, probably the back end of a double steal. Mariners catcher Kenji Johjima stole home (reluctantly) in 2008. It was a planned suicide squeeze with Johjima breaking from third. The pitch was in the dirt and couldn't be bunted or handled cleanly by the catcher so Kenji scored and was credited with stealing home.

Jackie Robinson stole home 19 times in his career. Ty Cobb stole home 8 times in 1938 and over 50 times in his career. More recently, Rod Carew stole home 17 times. According to the baseball almanac stealing 2nd, 3rd and home in the same inning has happened quite often. Even Pete Rose did it with the 1980 Phillies. The last player to do it was Eric Young in 1996. Altogether it was done 49 times by 39 different players. Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner did it 4 times each and 2 other players have done it twice.