Just yesterday in Buzzy’s Country Store I had a visitor who was wearing a Detroit Tigers hat. After talking some Magnum PI stuff about Tom Selleck being “semi-broke,” we of course talked some baseball.
I told him how my son Brady and I had visited the old Tiger Stadium before they tore it down.
The visitor then told me that his greatest sports memory came when he and his dad were sitting in the right field upper deck when Gibson hit the home run off of Goose Goosage in the 84 World Series. As he smiled at the memory, I was a little confused because I had absolutely no recollection of Gibson hitting this home run.
I did recall Gibson hitting a World Series walk off homer as a Dodger against Dennis Eckersley and the A’s. However, I definitely did not want to rain on my visitor’s parade by admitting that I couldn’t recall what for him was his fondest sports memory.
So, instead of confessing my ignorance, I played dumb (something I do well when I have to) by saying “Oh yeah, I remember that, and it was great the way he did that fist pump thing around the bases.”
My visitor then responded, “No man, he did that when he was a Dodger against the A’s in the 88 Series.” I nodded in agreement with him and then moved the conversation along by asking him how the Tigers are doing today. (Answer – not so good as they are 35-41 and 14 games back in the AL Central Division.)
First up, check out the 84 Gibson Tiger, home run that I did not remember.
Next is a video of the Gibson’s 88 walk off home run. Gibson, with two classic World Series homers off of two Hall of Fame relievers is quite a feat. And even though Gibson himself is not in the HoF, in a way he is, because when Goose was inducted in 2008, his induction speech contained the comment “I should have walked Gibson.”
Music-wise, when I went looking for the song “Talking Baseball” the other day, I found a reference to this parody, so I wanted to pass that along too:
Hawaiian shirt Sunday at Buzzy’s. Pat knows the drill as seen here in this photo that Karen took of him last week.
