It played out like a movie script. Game 1 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers was a back-and-forth affair for most of the night, but now it was the bottom of the 10th inning with the home team down one and megastar Shohei Ohtani at the plate. The announcers and the crowd realized that they might be witnessing baseball history.
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But then Yankee outfielder Alex Verdugo made a spectacular catch on Ohtani’s foul ball, and the air left the building.
Then this happened:
It was the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history.
Remind you of anything? It was eerily similar to Game 1 in 1988, also played at Dodger Stadium, when an injured Kirk Gibson became a Dodgers legend against the Oakland A’s:
Like Gibson, Freddie Freeman was also playing injured:
Freeman has been playing visibly hobbled all postseason after spraining his ankle in the last week of the regular season. He didn’t post a single extra-base hit in the NLDS and NLCS and sat in certain games to rest the ankle, then hit both the grand slam and a triple.
The play was highly reminiscent of Kirk Gibson’s walk-off homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. In both cases, a first baseman hobbled by an injury and delivered a homer. Gibson’s still reverberates through Dodgers history, and this one will too if the Dodgers can get it done in the next few games.
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Not surprisingly, Freeman was ecstatic after the game, even when he got doused with ice water:
This game will instantly go down as an all-time World Series classic. Game 2 is scheduled for Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET with Carlos Rodón scheduled to pitch for the Yankees against Dodgers rookie right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Think I’ll be tuning in.
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