Today is the 25th anniversary since Kirk Gibson’s historic home run to beat the Oakland A’s in the game one of the 1988 world series. For SoCal fans, it’s one of those moments where they can recall exactly where they were when the knew of the home run that catapulted the Dodgers to their last World Series championship.
A few celebrities, from within the sports world and out recall their story here written by our own Tom Hoffarth.
My recollection is a pretty good one. I was a student at Cal State Fullerton and slated to cover the Fullerton-Long Beach State football game that night for The Daily Titan. I received a call that morning from my aunt, who has four season tickets. She said they had an extra ticket and wanted to know if I’d like to come. Being the big Dodger fan that I am to this day, I thought about it, but declined. I had given the commitment to cover the football game, and felt I had to live up to that. Now as I look back later, I probably could have called coach Gene Murphy on Sunday and put together a story for our first edition of the week, which ran on Tuesdays. But I didn’t really think that way at the time.
Now fast forward to about 7:30 or so, I can remember being in the Veterans Stadium press box hearing a huge roar from the north side of the box (I was on the South side). I asked someone what’s the commotion and they said Kirk Gibson just hit a game-winning home run. I didn’t know the details behind it that would become legendary, but already know I had made the wrong decision. And the football game, it was one of the most-boring games I have seen, with Long State rallying for a late win.
That’s my memory…what are yours?

– Steve Ramirez

After reading what Steve wrote, it reminds me of this scene in Good Will Hunting. — Freddy