Kirk Gibson Recalls 1988 World Series Home Run After Freddie Freeman’s Heroics

Kirk Gibson was at a cabin in the woods of Northern Michigan at 11:37 p.m. ET Friday. He and a few friends did not have a television on. They were listening to Game 1 of the World Series on one of their phones.

“Like old times, huddled around a radio,” Gibson says with a laugh.

He heard Fox announcer Joe Davis say the New York Yankees intentionally walked Mookie Betts to load the bases to pitch to Freddie Freeman with two outs in the 10th inning.

“Get ready,” Gibson said aloud. “Here it comes.”

At 8:37:50 PT, New York Yankees pitcher Nestor Cortes threw an inside fastball to Freeman, who had not hit a ball hard for three weeks after spraining his right ankle, causing him to limp through the games he was able to play.

Freeman, the hobbled left-handed hitter, with the Dodgers down to their last out, pulled a home run into the right field pavilion to turn defeat into Game 1 victory. The ball landed at 8:37:55 p.m.

Thirty-six years and 10 nights earlier, Gibson, the hobbled left-handed hitter, with the Dodgers down to their last out, pulled a home run off Oakland A’s closer Dennis Eckersley into the same right field pavilion to turn defeat into a Game 1 victory. The baseball landed at 8:39 p.m.

“What I want to know,” Gibson says, “is did he see all the taillights leaving the parking lot as he rounded the bases?”

It’s one of Gibson’s clearest memories of his historic home run: looking beyond right field as he rounded first base to see the red taillights of those who had lost faith, choosing to put a premium on beating traffic than the hope of history. (The stadium traffic pattern has changed since then.)

“Sparky Anderson taught us a long time ago,” Gibson says of his former Tigers manager. “It’s never over until the last out.”

Kirk Gibson is 67 years old and battling Parkinson’s disease. “I’m doing O.K.,” he says when asked about his health. Thirty-six years after he became the first player to hit a walkoff home run in the World Series when down to his team’s last out, the memories and the physical sensations of that night all came flooding back to him when Freeman became the second hitter to end a World Series game in that manner.

“I just had a premonition,” Gibson says about the Freeman home run. “Is it the Dodgers? Is it Dodger Stadium? What is it? It’s freaky. It’s spooky. I’m not sure I can find the right words to explain it.

“It was down to the last out. I had a feeling it was going to happen. Then I heard it go down. And I heard, ‘Gibby, say hello to Freddie.’ And then all those feelings come back. Going around the bases, seeing those taillights and then the joy of seeing all your teammates there at home plate. That’s the best part. Though I did have to tell them, ‘Take it easy! Don’t jump on me.’ ”

Gibson had injured both legs so badly he was not expected to play and never took another at-bat in the series.

“Bob Costas wanted to talk to me on the field,” Gibson says. “But we had something special going as a team. We savored victories. So, I said, ‘I’ll be right back.’ And we had this routine. I yelled to the guys, ‘What a f—ing team!’ And they would all respond, ‘Oh, how sweet it is! The fruits of victory!’ ”

Gibson says he knows Freeman “a little bit.” He knows Freeman is “a great guy, a great hitter, a great ambassador” for the game and with a swing that Gibson finds unique. He says Freeman should also know that the home run could be life changing. For Gibson, there is “before” and “after” the home run.

“Freddie has no clue yet what it means to the game and the history of the game,” Gibson says. “It’s big. The home run will be shown over and over. It really belongs to the game and a part of its history. It’s really, really cool. Just take care of it. Honor it.

“In a way, it can make you feel like there’s too much attention on you. Because I always think about all the teammates and people on the team it took to get to that point. It doesn’t happen without them. I was back at Dodger Stadium about six weeks ago. And I was on the dais, and they wanted me to speak. I wanted to hear from my teammates.”

The impact of that Freeman home run, Gibson says, is yet to be known. Game 2, he says, will go a long way in determining whether the Yankees can recover.

“Now what?” Gibson says. “How do you respond? Seeing the pictures of [Oakland manager] Tony LaRussa, you knew they had just taken a solid punch in the jaw. I saw the same look in [Yankees manager] Aaron Boone. It’s hard to stop the momentum. It’ll be talked about forever.”

There was one more detail Gibson wanted to share. On the night before Game 1, suddenly he heard the yelps of a pack of coyotes near his cabin. He has heard them before. Sometimes they would even playfully approach his tractor as he worked the fields of his ranch. But there was something about this plaintive call that startled him. It was so loud. It was so close.

He went to a back door and opened it. There was the pack of coyotes, closer to him and the cabin than he had ever seen them. They looked right at him. It was as if they were trying to tell him something.

“It makes you think,” Gibson says, “there is more at work than we know.”