Baseball is funny this way. Sometimes it seems to go out of its way to create these absurd scenarios. It was, after all, on Oct. 15, 1988 that a hobbled Dodgers star walked to the plate at Dodger Stadium, Game 1 of the World Series, with his team trailing, 4-3. His name was Kirk Gibson. His legs were ruined. He was the only thing standing between L.A. and a quick 0-1 hole in the World Series against the Oakland Athletics.
And here we were all over again, exactly 13,160 days later. A hobbled Dodgers star walked to the plate at Dodger Stadium, Game 1 of the World Series, his team trailing 3-2, bottom of the 10th inning rather than bottom of the ninth. His ankle was throbbing. He was the only thing standing between L.A. and a quick 0-1 hole in the World Series against the Yankees.
Dennis Eckersley was on the mound for Oakland.
Nestor Cortes was on the mound for the Yankees.
Gibson worked his way through seven pitches. And on the eighth, he somehow smoked a ball over the right-center field fence. Dodgers 5, A’s 4. On the radio Jack Buck said: “I don’t believe what I just saw!” On TV Vin Scully said: “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!”
Freeman went to the plate with one idea in mind:
“Just be on time for the heater,” Freeman would say.
It was a heater, 94 miles per hour. It was the first appearance Cortes had made since Sept. 18. It was hard, but it was straight. And Freeman didn’t miss it. He socked it far and deep to right center, and by the time it landed, it didn’t just land just a few rows away from where Gibson’s landed 36 years earlier, it sent the sellout crowd of 52,394 into a frenzy.
hitting a game-winning two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to
beat the Athletics 5-4 in the first game of the World Series at Dodger
Stadium on Oct. 15, 1988. AP
“That’s the backyard right there,” Freeman said. “Dreams come true.”
It’s a dream if you’re wearing Dodger blue. It’s less so if you were wearing Yankees blue. There will be plenty of things that Yankees manager Aaron Boone will to have to answer for, and with cause. There will be plenty of small things the Yankees players are going to answer for. That’s what happens when you get 29 of the 30 outs necessary to win a World Series game, especially Game 1.
Boone will be bludgeoned for choosing Cortes — inactive for those 37 days — instead of Tim Hill, who’s become something of a southpaw folk hero in these playoffs. Gleyber Torres will have to think about the ball he let bleed by him in the eighth after Shohei Ohtani had doubled off the wall; he took third when Torres let the ball get by him. The Dodgers tied the game a few moments later. There is no need for a 10th inning at all if that doesn’t happen.
No need for Boone to ask: Cortes or Hill?
And no chance for Freddie Freeman — lifetime Mets killer — to add the title of “Yankees killer” to his résumé. No chance for Freeman — who had to sit out a few games of the NLCS, who sometimes looked in that series like he could barely walk — to go to the plate, two outs, bases loaded, bottom of the 10th, hunting a fastball.
“Pretty gratifying,” said Freeman, who earlier this season also had to miss some time when his son had health issues. “This ranks up there pretty high, pretty incredible. It’s been a long three months and I’m glad to be able to reciprocate tonight.”
For Cortes, it was a brutal exam of extremes. On the first pitch he threw in 37 days, he threw a terrific 94-mph fastball that jammed Ohtani, a twisting pop that Alex Verdugo made a brilliant play on. He never threw a pitch to Mookie Betts, whom Boone opted to pass intentionally. And then he threw another fastball, to Freeman. That one vanished. Tough gig.
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“I was just trying to pick up the boys,” Cortes said quietly in the still of a losing clubhouse. “I tried to seal the deal for them and couldn’t.”
Instead it was Freeman, his son better and his ankle better, who sought his father out after hitting the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history.
“I was screaming in his face,” Freeman said. “He’s been there since I was a little boy, throwing batting practice every day. This wasn’t my moment. It was my dad’s moment.”
The Yankees will spin this the way they always spin it, which is to say exactly as they should. This was just one game. The Dodgers merely held serve. If Carlos Rodon can follow Gerrit Cole’s strong start with one of his own, there’s a fair chance the Yankees can go back to Yankee Stadium with home-field advantage.
The A’s, after all, came back to win Game 3 in ’88. It wasn’t just Game 1 that did them in, no matter how strong the folklore is. Hell, the Yankees lost as bad a game as you can lose in Cleveland last week, Game 3 of the ALCS. Came back strong the next day, and even stronger the next.
“We’ll be ready to roll,” Boone said.
They will. But the first moment and the first memory goes to L.A. A memory that looked an awful lot like another one that turned 13,160 days earlier.
