1988, Game 1
It’s a wondrous moment that shines high above an otherwise unremarkable World Series won by a relatively unremarkable team. This time, you see, baseball didn’t come to the movies. The movies came to baseball. For it was the game’s best reliever, Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley, protecting a one-run lead with a runner on against the Dodgers’ ailing MVP, Kirk Gibson, who volunteered to pinch-hit despite a ravaged knee that was supposed to keep him out of the Series. Gibson looked anything like the NL’s best player as he worked the count to 3-2, before serving an Eckersley slider into the right-field seats. Bedlam. To this day, no one has summed up the event quite like radio announcer Jack Buck, who said, “I don’t believe what I just saw!” It was Gibson’s only at-bat in the Series.