Dennis Eckersley

They're down 4-3.

In comes Dennis Eckersley, almost untouchable at that time.

About an inning before, and this is what was so great about this, both from NBC's standpoint and Vin Scully's, perfect marriage of the truck and the booth.

It was the last World Series that Harry Coyle ever directed, who practically invented how baseball is directed on TV, going back to the first World Series-

Yeah.

Start with Dennis Eckersley.

I d- yeah.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Start with Dennis Eckersley.

I d- yeah.

[laughs] There you go.

Yeah.

You know, you get the lead after eight innings, do you wanna mess it up? You know, Dennis Eckersley said that fear used to motivate him.

Uh, you know, um, so there, so everybody, everybody has a little different stuff, but I, I don't understand, I don't under- understand how the bullpen guys do it, because you have to come in and, you know, you have to have the scouting report.

You gotta know...

They were all starting pitchers.

Jeff Reardon.

Um, you know, Dennis Eckersley had, what, 390 saves, 190 games as a starter, which is why he was a first ballot Hall of Famer.

Um, but the bottom line, a lot of guys start out starting, uh...

Espinosa getting behind on Del Unser, three and 0.

The Red Sox play in Chicago, Dennis Eckersley against Francisco Berrios.

Both pitchers won 14 games last year.

Strike call is three and one.

Jerry Garvin, 10 and 18 last year against Jim Slayton, 10 and 14 last year.

Boston against the White Sox in Chicago.

Dennis Eckersley making his debut for the Boston Red Sox.

Next pitch, a fastball, fouled back out of play, one and two.

And here's my co-host Robin to jump into today's highlights.

October 15th, 1988, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, Kirk Gibson hits a pinch-hit home run off Dennis Eckersley to give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over the Oakland Athletics in Game 1 of the World Series.

Gibson, who injured himself making a game-saving catch in the National League Championship Series, never came out for Game 1 introductions and never took batting practice, spending the entire game on the trainer's table receiving treatments with Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda checking in on him between innings.

Inning after inning, Lasorda checked and was given the thumbs down each time until the bottom of the ninth with the A's leading 4-3 when the clubhouse boy told Lasorda that Gibson wanted to speak to him.

He takes a breaking ball down low.

[trumpet flourish] He hit a three-run homer off Dennis Eckersley in that game.

He's the first Royal player to be named player of the week this year.

He's a good fastball hitter, Frank.

They take on an added luster to them.

Like I've gone through all these things and, and, one card that that has sustained is is the uh pmg dennis eckersley right i could have moved that and gotten value of pmgs and all this sort of stuff but it's like you know what this survived this is central credentials 97 vladimir guerrero survived and that's that that makes them in a way where it's like oh this is infinitely cooler because amongst the universe of things that i could trade it's like i left you put in in in the collection and that's something that's really really fun um but yeah no consolidating it's oh man it's it's it's a rush and it's an adrenaline rush and then you know it's and then you have to go through the process of waiting forever uh for the people in brown outfits to try to um get it out of louisville

you know

it's a struggle to get out of louisville ask muhammad ali