Homer History: The night a hobbled Kirk Gibson broke my heart

Editor’s note: This is the start of a new daily series called Homer History in which writers will re-tell the stories of memorable home runs from their perspective. We start with Big League Stew’s Mike Oz remember one of baseball’s most famous homers, Kirk Gibson’s walk-off from Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

I’ll never forget where I was at the moment Dennis Eckersley delivered that pitch and Kirk Gibson broke my heart. Many things in my childhood are a blur, but not that one. You don’t forget gut-punches like that.

I was kneeling in front of the TV in the apartment my mom was renting at the time. Of the many places she lived in those years, that one was probably my favorite. Except for the fact that I’ll always remember it as the backdrop of my worst sports memory.

(Yahoo Sports / AP) Eck delivered the pitch and we all know what happened next: Gibson, who had limped to the plate as a pinch hitter for the Dodgers down 4-3 in the ninth with two outs, stepped into Eck’s 3-2 offering, whipping his body around as he made contact and lifting the ball over the right-field fence.

“She is gone,” Vin Scully said on the TV broadcast, and the Dodgers spilled onto the field. Gibson limped around the bases, pumping his fist twice as he rounded second base and arriving to a mob of teammates as he stepped on home plate.

I know all those details now, but only because I’ve re-watched the play so many times over the years. In actuality, in that moment, I had buried my head into the carpet, refusing to look up at the TV.

It was only Game 1 of the World Series, which seems funny now, because in that moment, it felt like the whole thing was over. It wasn’t. There were a couple more close games, but in the Dodgers’ 4-1 series win, history remembers Gibson best.

And how could it not? That homer is one of baseball’s signature moments and one of the great moments of unlikely heroics in any sport, ever.

Gibson, who had a pulled hamstring and injured knee, had slept the previous night with his legs elevated on pillows, hoping for relief. It didn’t come. When he arrived at the stadium, he knew he couldn’t play. As the ninth inning rolled around, Gibson wasn’t even in uniform. He was watching the game on TV in the clubhouse and getting treatment on his leg.

(Getty Images) When Scully said on TV in the top of the ninth that Gibson wasn’t in the dugout and wasn’t even a possibility to pinch hit, Gibson got angry. He started hitting off a tee and eventually yelled at a bat boy to get his uniform. He was going in the game.

When he got to the plate — a small miracle in itself because it didn’t happen without Mike Davis earning a rare walk against Eckersley — Gibson couldn’t keep up with Eckersley’s fastball. But he worked the count to 3-2 and, according to Sports Illustrated’s oral history, remembered something that Dodgers scout Mel Didier had said:

“I started thinking about what Mel Didier told me, that every time Eckersley gets to 3-2, he throws a back-door slider. Here I get to 3-2 and Dennis goes into the stretch position. I call time out and step out. I said to myself, “Pardner, sure as I am standing here breathing, you are going to see 3-2 backdoor slider.” Those are Mel Didier’s exact words to me.”

Gibson saw that slider and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history — fist-bumping, limping-around-the-bases history.

And it still hurts my soul to this day.

• • •

When the A’s made the World Series in 1988, I’ll admit I was lucky. It was my third season as a baseball fan. Some people wait years to see their favorite team play in the World Series. I was a 9-year-old kid, just a few years into a relationship with baseball that would turn into a life-long affair.

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I grew up 20 miles away from the Oakland Coliseum and couldn’t help but fall in love with the A’s of that era. It started with the Bash Brothers. Every kid I knew who was into baseball looked at Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire as superheroes (save the jokes, please). There were so many other characters to love on that 1988 team: Carney Lansford’s bat vibrating like a Shake Weight, Dave Stewart’s death stare, plus Eck and that hair and those saves. Heck, Stan Javier and Storm Davis were on that team — and those are two Grade-A names.

The A’s won 104 games that season and swept past the Red Sox in the ALCS. The Dodgers, on the other hand, had won 94 and took some haymakers in a seven-game NLCS against the Mets. It seemed like everything was lining up for the A’s to take home the World Series trophy.

But then Kirk Gibson happened.

• • •

It’s funny, being a kid. Your life has no perspective, so you don’t know much about heart break or pain. All you know is how you feel in a moment. It’s one hasty reaction after another.

So in the moment that Gibson’s ball cleared the fence, Chavez Ravine erupted and the Dodgers stormed onto the field like Black Friday shoppers chasing a TV, it felt like the worst moment of my life.

(AP) What’s worse than your favorite team losing the first World Series game you cared about in the most heartbreaking way possible?

Well, lots of things actually — some of which had already happened to me at that point if my life. My early years weren’t pretty. My parents divorced when I was 2. I went to four elementary schools by third grade, getting picked on at each one. There’s more, but this isn’t the place.

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The point is: My childhood wasn’t the best, but baseball helped me get through it. Baseball was always the place where I felt like I fit in, where life felt normal.

There have been more than a few times in my life in which I pointed to Gibson’s homer as the first time my heart broke. But as I got older and reconciled my childhood, I realized that wasn’t true. There was pain and heart break before Eck and Kirk. I just didn’t understand it. Maybe because baseball had given me something to be excited about, something to love and something to distract me.

So if I grew up thinking that Gibson’s homer was the worst thing that had happened to me as a kid, that wasn’t so bad. Because it was better than the truth.

Coming Wednesday: MLB Network’s Lauren Shehadi on Cal Ripken’s homer in Game No. 2,131.

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