October 15, 1988: Kirk Gibson’s ‘impossible’ home run wins World Series opener for Dodgers
1988 World Series program cover. (SABR-Rucker Archive)
The Los Angeles Dodgers weren’t supposed to be there. Even after claiming the 1988 National League West crown by seven games, they were picked to fall to the heavily favored New York Mets in the National League Championship Series. The Mets, who won the NL East by 15 games, had beaten Los Angeles in 10 out of 11 regular-season contests. However, capped by a five-hit shutout by their magical ace Orel Hershiser in Game Seven, the Dodgers had surprisingly vanquished the vaunted Mets.
So here was the “Blue Crew,” lined up on the third-base line, listening to 18-year-old pop sensation Debbie Gibson belt out the National Anthem on October 15, 1988, before Game One of the World Series. Their opponents across the diamond on the first-base line were the mighty Oakland A’s, winners of 104 games in the regular season and coming off a sweep of the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. The A’s were led by “Bash Brothers” outfielder Jose Canseco, the newly minted inaugural member of the 40-40 (homers and stolen bases) club, and second-year first baseman Mark McGwire.
The Dodgers’ thoroughbred, left fielder Kirk Gibson, signed as a free agent before the season, had come up lame and was scratched, not even appearing or being announced during pregame on-field introductions. Gibson, signed after nine successful years with the Detroit Tigers, proved to be a bona fide star in LA in 1988, leading the team with 25 home runs and 28 doubles, on his way to a National League MVP award. He also belted two memorable home runs in the NLCS. His 12th-inning blast in Game Four in New York gave Los Angeles a dramatic 5-4 victory, while his three-run shot the next day gave the Dodgers a 6-0 lead en route to a 7-4 win. However, Gibson had suffered a strained left hamstring and a sprained right knee ligament during the series. He received a cortisone shot in his right knee an hour before game time but could not answer the proverbial bell for the World Series opener. As NBC’s Bob Costas lamented in the pregame analysis: “So the Dodgers brought in Debbie Gibson. Now if they only had Kirk Gibson.”1
Gibson even admitted “I was trying to swing the bat in my living room this afternoon, and there was no way. Oh my Lord, there was no way.”2
On top of not having Gibson in the starting lineup, the Dodgers matched up against 20-game winner Dave Stewart, buoyed by full rest after the ALCS sweep, as Oakland’s Game One starter. It was a reunion of sorts, as Stewart joined teammates Rick Honeycutt, Bob Welch, and Matt Young (injured) as former Dodgers on the A’s roster, while former A’s Jay Howell, Mike Davis, and Alfredo Griffin now donned Dodger blue.
Replacing Gibson in left field and in the Dodgers’ lineup was journeyman Mickey Hatcher, self-anointed leader of the “Stuntmen,” a cadre of Dodgers role players who performed admirably throughout the season. Hatcher, in 212 at-bats over the regular season and playoffs, had hit exactly one home run. His three-run shot in the eighth inning in San Francisco on September 23 accounted for all of the Dodgers run in a 3-0 shutout and extended Hershiser’s incredible scoreless inning streak to 49⅓ innings. Yet, here in the bottom of the first, Hatcher connected for an improbable two-run homer off Stewart, giving the underdog Dodgers an early 2-0 lead. (Hatcher would surprisingly club another two-run first-inning homer in the clinching Game Five.) The giddy Hatcher sprinted around the bases, prompting Dodgers third-base coach Joe Amalfitano to later quip, “It was as if he thought they would suddenly change their minds and take it back.”3
The Dodgers’ early lead would not last long. In the top of the second inning, rookie pitcher Tim Belcher, a mainstay starter for Los Angeles in 1988, allowed a single and two walks, including one to opposing pitcher Stewart, who had not made a plate appearance in five years. With the bases loaded and two outs, up stepped Canseco. In a prophetic bit of foreshadowing, the NBC television feed displayed the statistic that Canseco had never hit a grand slam among his 114 major-league homers (including the three in the ALCS). Two pitches later, that statistic would no longer be valid. Canseco “crunch(ed) a 1-and-0 slider from Tim Belcher on a frozen line, like a 2-iron shot, directly over the center-field fence. The ball caromed off an NBC camera and rolled between the two huge flagpoles. … It was one of the lowest, hardest homers you’ll see, clearing the fence like a comet, by about three feet.”4 The grand slam gave Oakland a 4-2 lead. (That was Canseco’s only hit in the entire series in 19 at-bats.)
The scrappy Dodgers added a run in the sixth inning on Mike Scioscia’s RBI single to close the gap to 4-3. However, all during this period, the Dodgers’ leader, Gibson, was nowhere to be found on the bench. Even the inimitable Vin Scully pointed this out during the national broadcast, instructing his producer to pan the dugout, verifying Gibson’s absence. But, as lore would have it, Gibby was not sitting idle. He had hobbled down into the bowels of Dodger Stadium, and started to hit off a tee, with clubhouse attendant Mitch Poole placing ball after ball on it.
The score remained 4-3 in favor of Oakland until the bottom of the ninth inning. A’s manager Tony La Russa opted to remove starter Stewart after eight innings, summoning his lockdown closer, Dennis Eckersley. Eckersley notched 45 saves during the regular season and four more in the ALCS sweep, earning the ALCS MVP award.
Eckersley quickly dispatched Scioscia on a popup and Jeff Hamilton on a strikeout looking. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda then summoned Mike Davis, owner of a .196 regular-season batting average, to bat for shortstop Alfredo Griffin.
As the story was told, Gibson had sent word from the clubhouse to “Go tell Tommy that I can hit!”5 So Lasorda indeed had Davis hit for Griffin, hopeful for Gibson to get a chance. Eckersley was aware of Davis’s power potential, as the outfielder had hit 22 homers for Oakland the prior season. Davis eventually coaxed a two-out walk.
The crowd of 55,983 then erupted, while Dodgers play-by-play man Scully, working the national television broadcast for NBC, announced “[A]nd look who’s coming up!” Gibson climbed the dugout steps and replaced infielder Dave Anderson in the on-deck circle. He applied tar to his bat, limbered up his arms with a few practice whirls, then strode ever so gingerly to home plate.
“You talk about a roll of the dice, this is it!” Scully commented before Gibson entered the box.
After Gibson awkwardly lunged and fouled off the first pitch, Scully remarked: “Not a bad opening act!” The Los Angeles Times’s Scott Ostler wrote that Gibson “seemed as steady at the plate as a rookie sailor walking the deck during his first storm.”6
Gibson swung late on a second fastball, fouling it away. On the third pitch, Gibson cued a “little nubber” halfway up the first-base line that just barely turned foul before McGwire picked it up. The fourth pitch was a ball outside. The fifth pitch was a foul back of the plate, as Davis was on the move. Scully remarked that “Gibson (is) shaking his left leg, making it quiver like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly. …”
The sixth pitch was a ball outside. The seventh pitch was a curveball outside, making the count full, with Davis successfully stealing second. So now if Gibson could only hit a long single, Davis could score to tie the game.
Until the errant curveball on that 2-and-2 pitch, Eckersley had thrown all fastballs. Now that the count was full, what would Eckersley throw Gibson? The injured Gibson had more than a hunch. Dodgers scout Mel Didier and the team’s scouting department included in their report that Eckersley would throw a backdoor slider on a full count to a left-handed hitter.7 On the eighth pitch of the at-bat, Eckersley threw that backdoor slider, Gibson swung with all arms and connected.
“Long fly ball to right field … she is GONE!” Scully’s iconic TV call was followed by 69 seconds of silence as the crowd and viewers erupted while Gibson pumped his fist and circled the bases.
On the nationwide radio broadcast, Jack Buck exclaimed: “This is gonna be a home run! Unbelievable. … I don’t believe what I just saw! I don’t believe what I just saw!”
On the Dodgers radio broadcast, Dodgers pitching great Don Drysdale screamed: “WAY BACK! THIS BALL IS GONE!”8
Scully finally broke the television silence: “In a year that has been so improbable, the IMPOSSIBLE has happened!” Gibson’s dramatic walk-off two-run home run to the right-field pavilion gave the underdog Dodgers an incredible 5-4 victory in Game One.
The irreplaceable Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times simply titled his piece the next morning “This Could Happen Only in Hollywood.”9 He wrote, “This is John Wayne saving fort stuff. Errol Flynn taking the Burma Road. A guy who can hardly walk hits a ball where he doesn’t have to. A few minutes before, he’s sitting in a tub of ice like a broken-down racehorse. Kirk Gibson is the biggest bargain since Alaska. He should be on crutches – or at least a cane.”10
Gibson did not make another game appearance in the Series, but it didn’t matter. Hershiser tossed a three-hit shutout in Game Two, then another complete-game victory in the clinching Game Five as the Dodgers completed the improbable World Series win.
Sources
In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org, the feed of the NBC television broadcast, and the following:
Schiavone, Michael. The Dodgers: 60 Years in Los Angeles (New York: Sports Publishing, 2018).
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN198810150.shtml
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1988/B10150LAN1988.htm
The final two at-bats of Game One can be seen on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FERsNPyAUZM
Notes
1 Bob Wisehart (McClatchy News Service), “Gibson’s HR Saves So-So Effort by NBC,” Oakland Tribune, October 16, 1988: 29.
2 Jon Rochmis, “No Movie Could Match Heroics Achieved by Gibson in Ninth,” Oakland Tribune, October 16, 1988: 25.
3 Bill Plaschke, “Dodger Quarter Horse,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1988: CC-3.
4 Scott Ostler, “Canseco Really Appreciates a Good Bash, Even One by Gibson,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1988: CC-1.
5 Josh Suchon, Miracle Men: Hershiser, Gibson, and the Improbable 1988 Dodgers (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2013), 242.
6 Ostler.
7 Suchon, 250.
8 Radio calls pulled from Houston Mitchell, If These Walls Could Talk: Stories from the Los Angeles Dodgers Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2023), 110-117.
9 Jim Murray, “It Could Happen Only in Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1988: CC-1.
10 Murray.
Additional Stats
Los Angeles Dodgers 5
Oakland Athletics 4
Game 1, WS
Dodger Stadium
Los Angeles, CA
Box Score + PBP:
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