Jonathan Rodriguez capped his dream season with a dream swing.
With the Chattanooga Lookouts down to their final ninth inning of the season and trailing Montgomery 2-1, Rodriguez followed LaMonte Wade's leadoff infield single with a monstrous two-run home run to left field Sunday night that clinched the victory and the best-of-five North Division series before a crowd of 1,408 at AT&T Field.
The Lookouts will be recognized as Southern League co-champions for the 2017 season along with Pensacola, which swept Jacksonville in the South Division playoffs.
"I had a feeling I was going to do something at some point in the game," Rodriguez said after a celebratory mobbing. "That's the highlight of my career right there."
The Lookouts learned before last Wednesday's series opener that the Southern League had decided to cancel the title series due to the uncertainty of Hurricane Irma's potential damage in Florida. That eliminated Chattanooga's chances of adding a 2017 league championship to the 1988 and 2015 titles won by the franchise.
Delivering a dramatic co-championship, however, wasn't a bad way to call it a year after a record-setting 91-49 regular season.
"These guys have been so resilient all year," manager Jake Mauer said. "It's just unbelievable. To have a game five come down to a walk-off homer - I don't know if it gets any better than that. I don't even know if he touched any of the bases, because we were all so excited.
"You can't make it up. You really can't. We wanted to finish the year that we had on a great note, and to be able to do it at home like that? It can't be scripted any better."
It would have been a game-tying homer by Rodriguez had Wade not successfully battled Biscuits reliever Ian Gibaut in the opening at-bat of the bottom of the ninth.
"I was just trying to do anything I could to get on base," Wade said. "We just wanted to put some pressure on them. You've got to battle in that situation, and I'm glad we got it done. When J-Rod hit it, it was instant relief, and I was just ready to celebrate.
"It's been a great season, and I'm glad we could finish it off in front of our fans."
The Biscuits took a quick 1-0 lead when Joe McCarthy opened the game with a homer to right, and Andy Wilkins tied it for the Lookouts when his homer to right led off the second inning. Montgomery took its 2-1 lead in the fourth, when Dalton Kelly's two-out double to left was followed by Nick Ciuffo's RBI single to left.
Chattanooga did not have a runner in scoring position after Wilkins tied the game, setting quite the stage for Rodriguez, a 2009 draftee of the St. Louis Cardinals who was signed by Minnesota in January. Rodriguez played in 119 regular-season games for the Lookouts this year, setting career highs with a .309 average, 21 homers and 76 RBIs.
Before producing heroics he will never forget, Rodriguez admitted he thought about the possibility of not even having a co-championship to celebrate.
"It would have been disappointing, and that crossed my mind in game one," he said. "If we didn't cap this off, the 91 wins in the regular season wouldn't have mattered."
Included in Chattanooga's 91-49 record was an 11-3 mark against Pensacola.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.