Baseball — bless its beautiful heart — has a distinct way of messing with you.
For me, one such moment occurred not even a couple of weeks ago, as Justin Turner was rounding the bases following his walkoff dinger in Game 2 of the National League Divisional Series. As Turner, in all of his bearded splendor, was exalting in a moment that helped set the Los Angeles Dodgers down their destined path of returning to the World Series, it was inevitable that the baseball world thought back to that night in 1988. In that sense, I was no different.
Because exactly 29 years before Turner’s titanic blast, it was a gimpy Kirk Gibson who won the night with his inexplicable dong to right field off Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley. That was the last time the Dodgers jockeyed for baseball’s ultimate prize, and that was the event everyone thought to recall.
Not me.
Let me set the scene. On October 15, 1988, I was six weeks shy of turning 8 years old and had just become what you might consider a full-throated sports fan. I loved baseball but specifically the New York Mets. I also loved collecting baseball cards — the 1987 Topps set, with the wood-grain paneling, remains perhaps the finest design ever approved by a card manufacturer — and after a few months, I already had hundreds, mostly procured through packs purchased at our local Queens deli on Sunday mornings.
I had also started reading through newspaper box scores. And over the course of the 1988 season, what I learned, above all else, was that Jose Canseco was good at hitting home runs. He’d launched 42 of them during the regular season. He was on his way to winning the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. He was also juiced out of his gourd, but there’s no way a 7-year-old can know that. All I knew then was (a) home runs were cool and (b) that Canseco hit a crap-ton of them.
On the night of Game 1, I came downstairs from the converted attic bedroom of our Queens apartment. It was about 9 pm or so on the East Coast, and my father was watching the game. I sat down next to him on the couch and asked him what was going on. He explained to me that the bases were loaded and Canseco was coming up to bat. On the mound for the Dodgers was Tim Belcher, the former No. 1-overall pick who had spent three years in Oakland’s farm system and won 12 games in his second full MLB season.
But against Canseco, it could’ve been the second coming of Sandy Koufax and it wouldn’t have mattered. Even I knew this, in the infancy of my fandom.
“He’s going to hit a grand slam,” I told my dad.
On the second pitch of the at-bat, Belcher threw a slider at the outside corner that didn’t slide enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxLrDqpwYn8?rel=0
Oakland never scored again that night, as Belcher was pulled and the Dodgers bullpen threw seven scoreless frames to close out the eventual win. (When I spoke with Belcher years later about this moment, he said he considers his truncated outing that night a “trainwreck.”)
But until Gibson’s dramatics in the ninth, it looked like those four runs would be enough. I sure thought so. Once the A’s were finally retired in the second inning, I went to bed, unaware that one of the most famous World Series dingers ever was about to top my own called shot.
That Jose Canseco grand slam is my earliest clear memory of anything related to professional sports. Before this night, I have, at best, a fuzzy recall of certain happenings. I remember practicing with one of the angled nets that you could throw a ball against and it would come right back to you. I know I went to several games at Shea Stadium (a tough ticket at that time) and one at Yankees Stadium (not so much).
That night did truly instill a love of baseball in me and I think I know why. I have my moment (Canseco) and the world has another (Gibson), but there was so much more to that game than just two pitches. Dave Stewart went eight strong innings and deserved better than a forgotten no-decision. Also, in a game with so many mashers, the cleanup hitters were 28-year-old Mike Marshall (Dodgers) and 38-year-old Dave Parker (A’s).
And if you’re looking for a tangible reason why Oakland would go on to lose in five games — something beyond just the nebulous notion that Gibson’s blast ripped the franchise’s beating heart from its chest — then it might be that Canseco’s grand slam would stand as his only hit of the Series in 19 at-bats.
In time, I would learn that much of baseball lived in those box scores I pored over but that there was so much life along the margins. There was always another level lurking, always more context to be derived. I started watching baseball more regularly. I even forced my stubborn grandfather, who had forsaken baseball decades earlier when the Dodgers departed from Brooklyn, to sit through Mets games on WOR, the sight of Ralph Kiner at least some familiar connection to his own long-lapsed fandom.
It was these weekend afternoon rituals that shaped me most, but I can always trace it back to that night in October 1988, when Jose Canseco, of all people, showed me what a little faith in one’s foresight could produce.
It didn’t work out in the end for his A’s, but I can’t complain.
Erik Malinowski is an editor and features writer based near San Francisco and the author of Betaball: How Silicon Valley and Science Built One of the Greatest Basketball Teams in History.
