They Are Going Wild at Dodger Stadium — No One Wants to Leave

I was just going through the entirety of this Joe Posnanski rundown of some of the great sports announcing calls -- which is well worth your time -- and with another quick search I realized that some good soul has disdained the Express Written Consent of Major League Baseball and placed the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series on the web.


1988 World Series - Game 1 - Bottom of 9th - Kirk Gibson

We didn't watch that game when we were kids. I do remember coming downstairs the morning after and Dad lovingly recounting Kirk Gibson's at-bat for the sake of its sheer baseball gloriousness. Watching it now, I don't know what you say: just watch Gibson, from when they first show him in the dugout through to the end. If that's not the greatest plate appearance in the history of baseball, I don't know what is.

The sound goes a bit out of sync in that video, but it's there when it counts. That's Vin Scully doing the play-by-play. And that's organ music you can hear through the crowd noise as Gibson rounds third base: god bless pre-1990s baseball.

Note also Scully's now-quaint description of Dennis Eckersley's pitching role, and observe a surprisingly proportionate Mark McGwire holding Mike Davis on first base for the A's.

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My favorite of the baseball calls on Posnanski's list is also Vin Scully, on the radio for Sandy Koufax's perfect game on September the 9th, 1965. (Start about 5 minutes into that clip.) Couldn't call that twenty-seventh out any more perfectly.