October 15, 2017: Justin Turner’s walk-off home run in Game 2 calls up memories of Kirk Gibson

On the night that Kirk Gibson hit his epic home run into the right-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium to end Game One of the 1988 World Series, a little red-headed boy squealed with delight at his grandmother’s house in the Los Angeles suburbs.

Justin Turner, not yet 4 years old, watched as family members jumped up and down and the Stadium crowd cheered at such a dramatic finale. Turner has called that game “one of my earliest baseball memories.”1

On October 15, 2017, exactly 29 years after Gibson’s blast, Turner hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Dodgers a 4-1 win in Game Two of the National League Championship Series. It was only the second walk-off postseason home run in Dodgers history.2

Turner thrust his arms outward as he rounded first base and tossed away his helmet when he rounded third and headed for home plate, where he was greeted by jubilant teammates. Cole Roberts, the teenage son of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, described the game-winning hit as “the slickest thing ever.”3 Turner said, “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my baseball career.”4

The victory gave the Dodgers a two-games-to-none lead in the best-of-five NLCS, with the teams headed to Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Dodgers made it to this point after going 104-58 in the regular season and winning the West Division by 11 games over the runner-up Arizona Diamondbacks. Los Angeles swept Arizona in the three-game Division Series. The Cubs, meanwhile, won the Central Division with a 92-70 mark and beat the NL East Division champion Washington Nationals in the division series. The Cubs were coming off a World Series championship in 2016, the team’s first since 1908.

The NLCS began on October 14 in Los Angeles. The Dodgers won, 5-2. Yasiel Puig drove home two runs and Kenta Maeda earned the win in relief of starter Clayton Kershaw, who allowed two runs in five innings. Kenley Jansen picked up the save.

Rich Hill started Game Two for the Dodgers. The 6-foot-5-inch left-hander went 12-8 with a 3.32 ERA in his first full season in Los Angeles. The Massachusetts native was 37 years old and with his eighth big-league team.

Jon Lester, 6-feet-4 and a lefty like Hill, took the ball for the Cubs. Lester had completed a so-so campaign. He went 13-8 but with a 4.33 ERA after going 19-5 with a 2.44 ERA in 2016, his sophomore season in Chicago.

It was a warm day in Los Angeles. The temperature at first pitch, 3:20 P.M., was 92 degrees. A crowd of 54,479 filed into Dodger Stadium. John Jay led off against Hill by singling to left field. Kris Bryant flied out, and Anthony Rizzo and Willson Contreras struck out.

Lester retired the Dodgers in order in the bottom half of the first. Hill did the same to the Cubs in the top of the second and added another strikeout. Enrique “Kiké” Hernández drew a walk to start the LA second, and, with two out, Puig also walked. Charlie Culberson lined out to end the threat.

The Cubs got a runner as far as third base in the third inning. Hill walked Javier Báez to begin the frame. After Lester struck out, Baez stole second base with Jay at bat. Next, Hill unfurled a wild pitch and Baez dashed ahead another 90 feet. Jay hit a weak groundout to first base, though, and Bryant struck out swinging.

The Dodgers put together a rally of their own in the bottom half of the third. Turner walked with two outs and made it to third base on Cody Bellinger’s double. The inning ended when Hernandez flied out to Jason Heyward in right field.

Chicago scored the game’s first run in the fifth inning after going down in order in the fourth. Hill, who by now had seven strikeouts, gave up a leadoff homer to Addison Russell.

The 1-0 lead lasted for just a few minutes. Culberson lined a double into left field to start the Los Angeles fifth. That hit ended Hill’s evening. Roberts elected to lift his starter, who had given up the solo run but just two other hits and had eight strikeouts. The pinch-hitter, Curtis Granderson, fouled out to third baseman Bryant. Chris Taylor grounded out but advanced Culberson to third. That brought Turner to the plate.

He was in his fourth season with the Dodgers and had long red hair and a long red beard. The Cincinnati Reds had selected him in the seventh round of the 2006 amateur draft out of Cal State-Fullerton, where he played on the 2004 College World Series championship team. Cincinnati traded Turner to the Baltimore Orioles on December 9, 2008. After a couple of short stints with the Orioles – he mostly played in the minor leagues – Turner was claimed off waivers by the New York Mets. He spent parts of four seasons with New York before being nontendered after the 2013 season.

Tim Wallach, the Los Angeles third-base coach and a former standout third baseman (260 home runs in 17 seasons), saw Turner play in a Cal-State Fullerton alumni game in early 2014 and recommended him to the Dodgers. Thanks in part to a retooled swing, Turner batted .340 in 2014. He batted .322 in 2017 with a .945 OPS and made his first All-Star team.

In his third at-bat against Lester, Turner grounded a single into right field, and Culberson came home. Bellinger walked, and Cubs skipper Joe Maddon brought in Carl Edwards Jr., a slender right-hander at 6-feet-3, 165 pounds. Edwards fanned Chase Utley for the third out. About being lifted despite allowing just one run, Lester said, “The game has definitely changed.”5

Both teams went down one-two-three in the sixth inning, the Cubs facing Brandon Morrow, who relieved Hill, and the Dodgers batting against Edwards. Morrow pitched another perfect frame in the seventh, while Pedro Strop took over pitching duties for Chicago. After getting the first two batters to ground out, he walked Taylor. Turner flied out to center field.

Josh Fields and Tony Watson combined to throw a perfect eighth inning for Los Angeles, while the Dodgers put two runners on base but could not score against Brian Duensing in the bottom of the inning.

Jansen hit Rizzo with a one-out pitch in the top of the ninth before striking out Willson Contreras and getting Albert Almora to ground out. Puig led off the bottom of the ninth by drawing a walk and Culberson sacrificed him to second. Kyle Farmer, pinch-hitting for Jansen, struck out swinging. Maddon lifted Duensing for John Lackey with Taylor coming up to bat. Usually a starter, Lackey had pitched 1⅔ innings of relief in Game One and gave up an RBI single to Turner, the first hitter he faced.

Lackey also ran into trouble right away in Game Two. He walked Taylor to put runners on first and second. Turner stepped into the batter’s box, took the first pitch, and belted the second one into the left-center-field pavilion. As he took his 360-foot run around the bases, he recalled, “I felt like I was floating.”6 He decided against duplicating Gibson’s famous fist pump from ’88. “We’ll wait until the World Series to do that,” he said.7 Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times wrote that “the noise inside the stadium felt volcanic.” Minutes after the homer, McCullough added, “the aisles at Dodger Stadium still were packed.”8

Maddon answered some pointed postgame questions from reporters. Why, for instance, did the skipper call on Lackey for the second straight game rather than his three-time All-Star closer Wade Davis? “I liked (Lackey) a lot on the first guy, Taylor,” Maddon said. “Once that walk occurred, all bets were off against Turner. Nobody is a really great matchup against Turner.”9

About the pitch, Lackey said, “Bad location, bad selection. You want to be in those games. It’s not typical (a starter being called to relieve), but you still have to try to get the job done.”10

Turner’s heroics put the Dodgers within one victory of going to the World Series for the first time since that magical year of 1988. “The most important thing was helping us get another win,” Turner said. “But (the homer) is something down the road, hopefully many years from now, I will get to tell stories about.”11

Keith Hupp, a longtime Dodgers fan and a retired police officer, caught Turner’s home-run ball. He traded the souvenir for some memorabilia. Turner said, “He actually told me, ‘This ball means so much to me, you have no idea. I said, ‘Yeah, it means kind of a lot to me, too.’”12 The Dodgers went on to beat the Cubs in five games in the NLCS before losing the World Series to the Houston Astros.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN201710150.shtml

Video of Turner’s home run is available on YouTube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKyto7CIgU

Notes

1 Mike Puma, “Justin Turner Makes Dodger Stadium Explode with Thrilling Walkoff,” New York Post, October 15, 2017.

2 Andy McCullough, “Turner Joins Gibson in Dodgers Lore, Homers for 2-0 Lead,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2017: D1.

3 McCullough.

4 McCullough.

5 Mark Gonzales, “It’s a Smash Ending,” Chicago Tribune,” October 16, 2017: 3.

6 McCullough.

7 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=358714688513764.

8 McCullough.

9 Dylan Hernandez, “Maddon’s Bullpen Call is Costly,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2017: D2.

10 Gonzales.

11 Puma.

12 Eric Stephen, “Justin Turner Got His Home Run Ball Back From the Dodgers Fan Who Caught It,” truebluela.com, October 16, 2017. https://www.truebluela.com/2017/10/16/16485998/justin-turner-home-run-ball-fan-great-catch-dodgers-nlcs.