You talk about the roll of the dice…

Baseball season is here again.  I barely care since MLB doesn’t give a shit about competitiveness.  Still, it’s March and I’m sure as hell not going to make a post about college basketball.

It’s that time of the year once again.  The days are getting longer, snow is melting and anabolic steroid sales are up about 130%.  That’s right, it’s baseball season!   In honor of this occasion I’ve decided to recollect upon Major League Baseball’s long, storied history and share some of my favorite moments.  Keep in mind, however, in an effort to help convey the magic of the moment I’m going to forego the use of any other outside references to these events other than my own sometimes alcohol saturated memory. Although I can’t quite claim that this will be totally accurate in a historical sense, moments of this magnitude have a way of living with you for years.  It’s possible that I will screw up a few details here and the there but, like I said, this is about capturing the essence of the moment.  I ain’t writing a fucking text book here.

So, here we go.  This blog’s installment:  Kirk Gibson’s legendary World Series home run.

The date:  October 15, 1988.  The place:  Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California.  The Dodger Dogs:  delicious.  It’s Game One of an all-California World Series pitting theOakland A’s versus the Los Angeles Dodgers.  The A’s had finished the regular season with a staggering won-loss record of 152-10.  Their opponent for the American League Championship Series, the Boston Red Sox, figured history was just going to take a big, steamy shit on them once again and decided to forfeit the series Oakland before it even started.  The Dodgers, on the other hand, didn’t travel such an easy path.  After finishing the regular season well below .500 (mostly due to a series of catastrophic injuries and drug and gambling suspensions and tragic player deaths and such) the Dodgers were only allowed to represent the National League in the Fall Classic after several of the teams ahead of them in the standings all perished in separate and unrelated plane crashes.  Basically the Dodgers didn’t stand a chance in hell of beating the heavily favored A’s.  How heavily favored you ask?  Vegas odds makers placed the odds on the Dodgers winning the Series at approximately 8,000,000,000 to 1.  It didn’t help matters that the A’s had found a loop hole in Baseball’s rule book allowing their best hitters, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, to each get an extra at bat during the batting order. Essentially the rule stated that if you had a coked up Cuban refugee and a red haired giant with popeye-esque forearms in your lineup they would be allowed, on the condition that both of their blood streams were filled with enough human growth hormone to kill a large horse, to pinch hit for other players in lineup while still keeping their original spots in the batting order.  This rule had devastating effects during the regular season as the so-called “Bash Brothers” combined for an unheard of 186 home runs and 531 runs batted in.  The Dodgers were simply outclassed.  To their credit, however, they decided to show up and take their nationally televised beating like men.  They shouldn’t have even been there in the first place so what do they have to lose?

As Game One was beginning to draw to a close, the unthinkable was happening.  The Dodgers were still in the game!  Heading into the bottom of the ninth inning the A’s were only up by a score of 4-3!  Miraculous!  But those smiles throughout Dodger Stadium were about to turn to frowns as Oakland went to their bullpen and called upon their ace closer, Dennis Eckersely, to finish off the game.  And just like that the hopes and dreams of Dodgernation went up like so much Southern California smog.  You see back in ’88 “Eck” was on top of his game like no reliever has ever been.  He pitched 200+ innings that year and had yet to give up a single run.  Earned or otherwise.  In fact, he was so fucking good that year that his ERA for the season was -0.05!  That’s right, it was below zero. During a game that past August against the Angels Eck was so completely dominant the score keepers actually took away a run from them.  What chance did the Dodgers have against this baseball god that walked with human feet?  None it would seem.  The first two batters up for Los Angeles each lasted exactly one pitch before they sat their asses back on the bench.  Amazingly enough both outs were strike outs!  Facing the very immediate possibility of going down a game to this Oakland A’s juggernaut, Dodgers manager, Tommy Lasorda, decided it was time to gamble a bit.  The Dodgers’ best hitter, Kirk Gibson, was forced to sit out that game.  Kirk was an emotional and physical mess. Aside from having to deal with 7 different types of face cancers Kirk learned earlier in the day that his entire family, parents and grandparents included, had just died.  To make matters worse right before the game began both of his severely damaged legs were amputated.  And replacements weren’t going to be available until Game 3 at the earliest. So with an utterly stunned nation watching at home, Tommy Lasorda sent Kirk Gibson to the plate.  Well, he sat him on a small cart and rolled him to the plate.  And then he had to set him on a 3 foot stool at the plate so he would actually have a chance to hit something. Anything other than a home run would do no good here.  Even if Kirk could hit one to the farthest part of the field he still wouldn’t have time to fall off the stool and roll to first before the ball got there.  It was home run or nothing.  And Eck was throwing heat right from the get go too.  But much to his amazement, Kirk fouled it off.  The next pitch too.  In fact, Kirk was able to foul off pitches for an incredible 45 minutes!  Pitch after pitch after pitch after pitch were fouled off!  An then, just as if it were written by one of L.A.’s multitude of unemployed screen writers, Kirk finally found a pitch to hit.  With a mighty crack of the bat as if the ball had been hit by Jesus himself, Kirk sent the ball racing towards the right field wall!  As a matter of fact the ball was hit so hard that it went through the wall itself!  But it still counts the same.  Home Run!!!!  Baseball Commissioner Peter “Mountain” Ueberoth was so impressed by Kirk Gibson’s heroics that he awarded him an extra point for the homer giving the Dodgers an improbable 5-4 come from behind win!  Kirk proceeded to somersault his way around the bases.  When he reached home plate, 13 minutes later, he was mobbed by his overjoyed teammates.  Lasorda’s gamble paid off.

After that the A’s were not the same team.  Fearing the Dodgers were now riding an all most unstoppable wave of emotion and momentum, the A’s quit playing their game and wound up losing the Series 4 games to 1 to the miracle Los Angeles Dodgers.  And their legless, cancer ridden hero, Kirk Gibson.