All playoff magic -- at least in our lifetimes -- is measured against one thing and one thing only. Kirk Gibson taking Dennis Eckersley downtown in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Improbable. Impossible. You can’t believe what you just saw. It took the greatest couple of announcers in baseball history to describe it then, so words can hardly begin to describe it now. So we just watch.
I was fifteen years-old, sitting in my living room in Beckley, West Virginia watching it the first time it happened. And no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I have to watch it again.
So let’s watch it again. Here is the entire Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Gibson comes to bat at the two-hour twenty-nine minute mark.
You can bet that Ernie Johnson, Ron Darling and Cal Ripken will mention this a few times tonight.
