The memory is still vivid in Nico Hoerner’s mind.

As a 15-year-old, he was at the Oakland Coliseum — then the O.co Coliseum — for the umpteenth time, cheering on his hometown team.

“It’s 15 minutes from where I grew up,” Hoerner said.

This time, though, Hoerner was watching his beloved Oakland Athletics in their most important game of the season. Oakland was down 2 games to 1 in the 2012 ALDS against a loaded Detroit Tigers team featuring future Hall of Famers like Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera.

The situation, though, looked dire.

The A’s were down 3-1 in the bottom of the 9^th and Detroit’s closer, José Valverde, was coming in to try and shut the door. Valverde had amassed 110 saves and a 1.19 WHIP in his first three seasons with the Tigers, further stacking the odds against the A’s.

But Oakland rallied – collecting 3 straight hits off Valverde to tie the game. With a runner on second, Valverde bounced back to collect a pair of outs, setting up a showdown with outfielder Coco Crisp. Crisp connected with a splitter, sending a hard grounder past the second baseman and into the outfield. Seth Smith charged toward the plate and when the ball slipped past right fielder Avisaíl García, Smith raced home for a walk-off win, forcing a do-or-die Game 5.

“That was pretty electric,” Hoerner said. “Everyone was hanging out at the field for another 20, 30 minutes after the game. No one left. Great energy.”

While the A’s would lose that decisive Game 5, that day sparked even more of a desire in Hoerner to be like Crisp and produce in the most tense of games.

“Moments like that as someone growing up, you wanna do those kinds of things as a player yourself,” said Hoerner, who collected his first career walk-off RBI last week at Wrigley Field. “I’ll never forget that.”

He’ll never forget Monday night, either.

Hoerner has done quite a bit in his young career, but as he pointed out earlier this season, he had yet to face an AL West foe until this season when the Cubs hosted the Rangers. As such, he had yet to play in his hometown stadium, the Coliseum, against his childhood team until the Cubs open a three-game set against Oakland Monday night.

“Just a really familiar place, but it’ll be a new way of experiencing it, so I’m excited for it,” Hoerner said.

Hoerner has made references to his fandom of the Oakland A’s in the past. In 2021, when he was locked in a roster battle with Eric Sogard, he didn’t look at it as competition and instead remembered where Sogard had come from.

“It doesn’t change my work at all,” Hoerner said at the time. “It’s just another guy that played for the A’s — which is awesome — is a great baseball player, plays a bunch of different positions and has had a successful career, another person to learn from.”

He’s played in neighboring San Francisco and has had plenty of ticket requests for those games, but this is different. This was his team as a kid, his stadium. For the first time in his life, he’ll get to step on the grass and infield as a major leaguer. He’ll be creating memories for young fans in the stands, much like Crisp and countless other A’s did for him.

“That’s always gonna be home for me in a lot of ways,” Hoerner said. “Excited to see the ballpark and had a lot of memories there, going to playoff games and stuff like that. It’s a special place for me.”