The Los Angeles Dodgers’ attempt at winning three straight World Series ended Thursday when they were swept out of the National League Championship Series by the Milwaukee Brewers.
Dodgers fans in need of consolation can look back to Oct. 15, 1988, when Kirk Gibson hit one of the most dramatic home runs in World Series history.
Gibson won the National League’s MVP award in ’88, his first season with the Dodgers. After sustaining leg injuries in that year’s NLCS, however, Gibson wasn’t supposed to play Game 1 of the World Series against the heavily favored Oakland Athletics.
Gibson was an All-America wide receiver at Michigan State and took pride in playing through pain. But on the morning of Game 1, he couldn’t even jog across his living room.
“I said, ‘Oh, boy, this isn’t good,’” Gibson told Sports Illustrated in 2013.
Gibson spent most of the game in the clubhouse wearing shorts and a T-shirt and watching the game on TV while he iced his legs. In the eighth inning, there was no shot of Gibson as the camera panned across the Dodgers’ dugout.
“There is no Kirk Gibson. It doesn’t look like he will be playing tonight,” said the legendary Vin Scully, calling the game for NBC.
That inspired a defiant Gibson to start taking practice swings on a batting tee with the help of Mitch Poole, the team’s batboy and assistant clubhouse manager.
“I was sitting on the ball bucket and all of a sudden, he stops, looks down at me and says, ‘This could be the script.’ Those were his exact words. I’ll never forget them,” Poole told SI.
Gibson pinch hit for pitcher Alejandro Pena in the ninth inning with two outs, a runner on and the Dodgers trailing 4-3. On the mound was Dennis Eckersley, the future Hall of Famer and the game’s most dominant closer at the time.
Gibson walked gingerly to the plate. He fouled a grounder down the first-base line and struggled to run. It looked like a colossal mismatch.
But Gibson worked the count to 3-2. Gibson remembered a report by Dodgers scout Mel Didier who said Eckersley often threw a backdoor slider to lefties in a full count with the tying or winning run in scoring position. Mike Davis, who walked before Gibson, had stolen second during the at-bat.
“That’s what he got, and that’s what he hit out of the park,” Bob Costas, a member of NBC’s crew that night, told Rich Eisen.
Gibson drove the pitch into the right-field stands for a walk-off home run and a 5-4 Dodgers victory.
“In the year that has been so improbable,” Scully said, “the impossible has happened.”
Gibson limped around the bases and pumped his right arm in celebration before his delirious teammates mobbed him at home plate.
“I was in shock, total shock. Everything went into slow motion,” Eckersley told SI. “It was incredible. Once it sunk in, I turned around to walk off.”
It was Gibson’s lone at-bat of the series. And the Dodgers scored a tremendous upset by winning the World Series in five games.
“When I was running around the bases,” Gibson said, “I could feel no pain at all.”
