Destiny’s Team

All of it seems to exist in shaky focus now, captured on unsteady videotape and in heart-pounding memories.

Did an earthquake rumble here for a whole baseball season in 1988, scrambling all of our senses and snapping the bonds of logic?

Look, there’s Kirk Gibson emerging from the Dodger clubhouse back onto the field one last time on wounded legs, plucking a ball a foot off the ground, sending it soaring into the right-field pavilion.

Remember the way the earth shook the instant of impact, cracked open, and swallowed the Oakland A’s whole?

There’s Orel Hershiser, pitching 59 innings of zeros, singing hymns on the mound, throwing darts when everything trembled around him.

And there’s Mickey Hatcher hitting .368 in the World Series, there’s Mike Scioscia out-thinking Dwight Gooden in the last of the ninth, and there

are Jay Howell and Brian Holton, Alfredo Griffin and Franklin Stubbs and Jeff Hamilton and John Shelby . . . a magic mishmash of talent and willpower.

“There was just something about ‘88,” says Howell. “We were just this hodgepodge. You know, it was truly impossible that we won.”

Study the tapes. Play back the rattling images.

It was a season that culminated with the Dodgers’ sixth, and--barring a thunderbolt next season--final World Series championship of the 1900s.

Rick Dempsey caught Hershiser’s last strike in Game 5 of the World Series in Oakland, Oct. 20, 1988, and in the ensuing 10 years, the Dodgers have not won another postseason game.

“The way it looks now, that’ll be the last Dodger team to win it for about 50 years,” says Mike Marshall, looking back on a decade of Dodger misses and ahead to the possibility of the team’s new owners tearing down Dodger Stadium for renovation. “It might be like a Boston Red Sox-type curse.

“And I’ll tell you what. If they tear down that stadium, like I know they will, they might never win another one. That’ll be the curse.”

Ten years later, the thousand quirky little moments, the hidden heroes, the pounding momentum of the journey, the bond among teammates, and the high drama seem to sum up all that’s treasured about the Dodgers of our time.

“At the time, it’s so easy,” Marshall says. “Everything just kind of flows. But after it’s over, you realize how hard it is, how many amazing things had to happen--Scioscia’s homer off Gooden in the ninth inning, that was incredible. Gibby hitting that home run off [the Mets’ Roger] McDowell. . . . It was wild. I mean it really was an incredible season.

“Hey, we might’ve used it all up. Who knows?”

Cracks and Repairs

Think back to a time when the Dodgers were family-owned, when the stadium was not being teed-up for a tear-down, when Tom Lasorda managed, and when 25 home runs qualified as a successful season, not just a particularly good month.

When team chemistry involved blending personalities and egos, not the proper mix of growth hormones and supplements.

Now, it seems almost quaint.

As the 1988 season dawned, the Dodgers were coming off successive 73-89 seasons, after having averaged 90 victories in the previous 16 non-strike seasons. Al Campanis, the team’s longtime general manager, had been fired in April of 1987 for racial remarks he made on national television.

So the roots of 1988 were planted in the first days after Campanis’ firing in 1987 by owner Peter O’Malley, who then handed the reins to a front-office executive named Fred Claire.

There was a powerful need for a Dodger detonation, and fate handed the franchise its trigger man.

“We had to make a major change, and if those changes were going to cost me the chance to continue in the job, then so be it,” Claire says now. “Because I was going to flip it over.”

On the third day of his tenure, Claire decided he wanted the hyperkinetic Mickey Hatcher, who had been waived by the Minnesota Twins. Hatcher had come up as a Dodger in the early ‘80s and was known for his high enthusiasm and low batting averages.

“I went in to see Peter, told him I wanted to release Jerry Reuss, a player that we owed a million dollars,” Claire recalls. “And I wanted to sign a player who had just been released by the Minnesota Twins.

“He said, ‘Fred, say that to me again?’ ”

But O’Malley eventually signed off, Hatcher signed on and, that day, got an at-bat against the San Diego Padres and hit a ground ball through the legs of Kevin Mitchell that helped tie the game.

So, it started with Hatcher, and like many things, symbolically and with a quirky flourish.

Still, the 1987 team, led by Fernando Valenzuela and Pedro Guerrero, finished last in National League hitting, was horrendous in the field, and had no bullpen closer.

At the winter meetings, Claire made the big trade, a three-way deal with the Mets and A’s that netted the Dodgers a new shortstop, Alfredo Griffin, a new closer, Howell, and a left-handed reliever, Jesse Orosco.

As he was contemplating the deal, Claire sought the advice of scout Reggie Otero, who knew Griffin well. Claire asked Otero if he’d trade starter Bob Welch if the package included Griffin.

“He said, ‘I make that deal,’ ” Claire recalls.

And the deal was made.

There was one more burst of activity: A few months later, after Claire had already signed outfielder Mike Davis from the A’s, an arbitrator decided that the owners had colluded against free agents in 1987, and awarded several big-name players free-look free agency. One of them was Kirk Gibson, then a little frustrated as a Detroit Tiger.

Gibson told the Tigers he’d rather stay with them but when the Dodgers bid $4.5 million over three years and the Tigers did not respond, Gibson was a Dodger.

Nobody knew it, but the earth was beginning to stir.

Spring Raging

It’s all still fresh and clear in the memory banks.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” says Dave Anderson, still hearing the echoes of the most famous and effective tantrum in Dodger history.

The Dodgers were full of pranksters--Hershiser liked to put petroleum jelly on the telephone, Guerrero clowned around in the clubhouse, Lasorda did a morning stand-up routine. Everybody liked it loose and lively.

So Orosco didn’t think much of coating the rim of Gibson’s cap with eye-black on the day of the first spring game of 1988. It would be worth a good laugh at the expense of the ultra-intense Gibson.

“Gibson was so off the wall, nobody could even believe he was a Dodger,” remembers Dempsey, who himself was new to the team.

When Gibson took off his cap and saw his teammates laughing at him, his blow-up was Vesuvian--he sprinted off the field, straight into the clubhouse, and into Dodger lore.

“It’s no wonder you . . . finished in last place last year!” Gibson screamed at the players straggling in the clubhouse.

“It was kind of comical,” Howell says. “He had eye-black over his face, buttons are flying everywhere as he’s tearing off his uniform. But you weren’t going to mess with him.”

Gibson took a shower, argued with Lasorda for a few minutes, then went home and fumed. He said he wanted to address the team the next morning, and nobody was going to stop him.

“We’re out here practicing bunt plays and Pedro Guerrero’s throwing the ball into right field and everybody’s laughing,” Gibson recalls.

“I kept my mouth shut. But when the whole eye-black incident came down, it gave me an opportunity to stand up in front of the team and say what I had to say. . . .

“I don’t know if I intimidated people into paying attention and concentrating, but I stood up in front of them and said, ‘Hey guys, I think we have to concentrate here. I’ve watched you play for the last couple years and I’ve seen St. Louis just run the bases like they do in Little League, you know?”

Ten years later, the other old Dodgers say the same thing: That moment was the genesis of the 1988 title run.

“Kirk Gibson started it, of course,” Hershiser says. “It was just the definition of what is cool. It’s cool to hustle. It’s cool to care. It’s cool to be intense. It’s cool to show emotion. It’s cool to lay it all on the line.

“That incident defined that, like, ‘No, this is what we’re about. It’s what I’m about, and I’m such a big personality and a big influence here, that if you’re not with me, you’re against me.’ ”

A Strange Mix

Valenzuela was the opening-day starter. Don Sutton, 42 years old, was in the starting rotation until late June. Guerrero hit .375 in the first month of the season.

But the early part of the 1988 season was about the Dodgers discovering that the subtle elements would make them strongest.

Davis stepped in a pothole during a spring game in Puerto Rico, twisted his ankle and never seemed to recover, opening the way for Stubbs, Danny Heep and Hatcher to get more at-bats.

Griffin was having his worst hitting season, but his confidence and pizazz afield steadied a shaky infield, most notably the up-and-down Sax.

Gibson did not put up numbers that compared to the Mets’ Darryl Strawberry or Kevin McReynolds but his energy and intensity stirred up a complacent clubhouse. His game-winning home runs didn’t hurt, either.

The Dodgers got out quickly, moved into first place May 26, and never seriously faltered--even after Griffin was hit by one of Gooden’s fastballs, breaking his right hand, when the Dodgers were leading the NL West, with a 22-16 record.

“When Griffin got hurt, I thought we were dead,” coach Joe Amalfitano says. “He was a great shortstop. But then Dave Anderson stepped in and played just terrific. He really saved us.”

Valenzuela, eventually, would be lost after shoulder surgery. Sutton was injured, then sent down to the minors for rehabilitation, then released. Guerrero hurt his neck along the way, and sat for 52 days.

Suddenly, an already-thin starting lineup had a lot of holes. And there was no choice but to turn to a far different Dodger cast of characters, best described, as always, by Hatcher.

They were the group Hatcher called “the Stuntmen.” They were Hatcher, Heep, Anderson, Dempsey, Stubbs and Tracy Woodson, the players who went into the game and made things happen. They won more than their fair share with pinch-hits, defensive plays and generally scrappy baseball.

They were players who celebrated their ordinariness, and their willingness to gut out the tough moments.

“It was a working-class team,” Hamilton says with pride. “It’s not like it is now.”

It was, also, a seat-of-the-pants team. On Aug. 13, when Lasorda ran out of hitters, he sent pitcher Tim Leary up to pinch-hit in the bottom of the 11th. Leary lined a game-winning single.

“We got to the seventh, eighth and ninth innings, we believed we were going to win,” Hatcher says. “No matter how many runs we were down, we knew something magical might happen, because it was happening all year for us.”

Clubhouse Showdown

Every good drama needs a conflict, and the 1988 Dodgers had theirs.

Gibson versus Guerrero: It was inevitable, and combustible.

Along with 11 other Dodgers, among them Sax, Griffin, Alejandro Pena, Howell and Marshall, Guerrero would be a free agent at the end of the season. He wasn’t having a banner year, and he wasn’t impressed by Gibson’s rules of clubhouse etiquette.

It all came to a head one day in St. Louis, after a Dodger loss. Several Cardinal players came over to the Dodger clubhouse to chat with Guerrero.

“Gibson stands up,” recalls Howell. “And he says, ‘Well, look at this! What the . . . are they doing in our locker room? Get the . . . out of here!’ And Guerrero says, ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’

“And Gibson says, ‘Let me tell you something. If you want to go, get your little buddies together and I’ll take all of you on, right now!’

“Guerrero kind of made a move at him, and then a couple guys held him back. But nobody wanted any part of Gibson, I’ll tell you that. And pretty soon, Guerrero was traded.”

Indeed he was, and to the Cardinals. On Aug. 16, Guerrero was sent to St. Louis for John Tudor, a veteran left-handed starter whom the Dodgers hoped would complete their rotation.

But maybe most important, the clubhouse was clearly Gibson’s domain. He, and no other, led the victory screams and the post-defeat rages.

After every late-season triumph, the whole clubhouse waited for him to bark out one line, which he always did: “What a . . . team!”

The Leader

Gibson is calling from his car phone, and he is rushed.

“I’m really busy,” he says immediately, “I’ve got a couple minutes. Hold on.” Then, he crystallizes it all by yelling out his window, “Hey, I don’t have much money on me, stop at $20!”

He works as a television commentator on Tiger games now, and laughs that he’s part of the media. But he’s the same man. Ten years later, he is still impatient--and still calling the shots.

His teammates remember the night he scored from first against the Reds on an infield hit and a throwing error to tie the game, or the day he scored from second on a wild pitch to win a game, accurately foreseeing that Expo pitcher Joe Hesketh, who had recently had knee problems, wouldn’t hang in for the crash at the plate.

Gibson had been an All-American wide receiver at Michigan State and it showed.

“I’ve never seen a big man run like that,” Stubbs says.

If Gibson was storming around the bases like that, and out on the field hours before the game working on his defense, who could dare to play halfhearted baseball in his presence?

“When I would come out from the bullpen, Kirk would be standing in left field,” reliever Brian Holton once told Claire. “I was actually fearful. Gibson would be standing in left field and he’d have his arms folded, he’d say to me, ‘You better get their asses out!’ I had to, he would’ve killed me.”

But, as Gibson--he finished with 25 home runs and 76 runs batted in, and the most-valuable-player award--points out, he was not all rage and fury.

“I got along awesome with them,” Gibson says of Hatcher and the other lighthearted Dodgers as the gallons pour into his car. “There was a middle ground, and they helped me in chilling out at times. But when we got between the white lines though, we were on the same page.”

Then the tank is full, the interview is over, and Gibson is gone.

A Time of Milestones

The year of 1988 was not just about the Dodgers.

It was a time of epic sporting moments and milestones, all occurring between opening day and the World Series: The Lakers’ last championship, the Seoul Olympics and Ben Johnson being stripped of his gold medal, Wayne Gretzky being traded to the Kings, Mike Tyson overwhelming Michael Spinks. . . .

After the World Series, Pete Rose would be banned from baseball for gambling.

Amid all this, in retrospect, the Dodgers’ journey to the championship may seem to have been predestined, a piece of a cosmic mosaic. “We didn’t fall into anything,” Howell says, bristling at the suggestion. “Don’t even think about writing that we happened into it. I’m telling you what, guys put their careers on the line. It was no ‘happen into it.’

“There was just a phenomenal amount of balance. Hatcher doing what he did in that series. Look at how Anderson played in those 60 games he was in there with Alfredo out. How did he do that? Hamilton, did he ever do anything else?”

There was one Dodger, though, who did seem to travel on a higher plane, and who seemed to both earn and receive the benefit of higher powers.

Ten years later, Hershiser’s record-breaking scoreless innings streak, begun on Aug. 30 and completed in the 10th inning of his final start of the regular season, seems as untouchable as Drysdale’s streak of 58 2/3 innings was a decade ago, and as unexplainable.

To get there, Hershiser needed umpire Paul Runge to rule that Brett Butler, then a Giant, had run out of the baseline on an apparent scoring play in the third inning of the second-to-last game of his streak.

To get there, Hershiser not only needed to shut out the Padres on Sept. 28, he needed a scoreless tie through nine innings, so he could break the record by going 10 scoreless innings. Which he did.

“The thing I remember about the streak is, they were all close games and they were all important games. And close and important games really raise my interest and give me a hyper-focus,” Hershiser says.

“And still, when I watch the tapes, I think somebody’s going to score a run. I get nervous when it’s first and third, one out, and I know I get a double play, or I know it’s a pop-up, and I still watch it and go, ‘Oh, my God, this guy’s going to score.’ ”

Says Lasorda, “I thought that wasn’t him pitching. That couldn’t have been him pitching. That was God who came down and got into his body and started pitching. I never saw anything like it. I probably will never see anything like it, again.”

The Playoffs

The legacy of 1988 might be the World Series title, but the meaning of it all, almost every member of the team says, was evoked in the seven-game league championship series against the strutting New York Mets, who had won 100 games, to the Dodgers’ 94.

“I’ve managed in about 63 playoff games,” Lasorda says, “but those seven had to be the toughest--the atmosphere, the pressure, everything about them was tough. Every single game.”

Says Marshall, “Those games were the most fun I ever had in baseball.”

There was agony: The Mets won Game 1 on Gary Carter’s blooper in the ninth.

There was controversy: The Dodgers crushed David Cone in Game 2 after he was quoted in the New York Daily News as calling Howell a “high-school pitcher,” among other witticisms.

“When David took the mound for his first inning of work, I think, maybe with the exception of me, everybody else in our dugout in uniform was on the top step, just giving him all kinds of hell,” remembers Tim Belcher, who started for the Dodgers and won the game.

There was more controversy: Howell was tossed out of Game 3, a Dodger loss, when umpires found pine tar on his glove, which he used to get a better grip on the ball in the cold weather. He was suspended for two games.

And there was bristling drama: In Game 4 at Shea Stadium, Gooden was ahead, 4-2, and one out away from giving the Mets a 3-1 lead in the series. Shelby was the Dodgers’ last hope. But, after getting two quick strikes, Gooden walked him.

Says Lasorda, “Shelby, you couldn’t walk him intentionally. I used to tell him they could throw a paper plate from the stands and he’d swing at it.”

That brought up Scioscia, who had hit only three home runs in the regular season. Scioscia was looking to pull the ball past Met first baseman Keith Hernandez, and, as he says, “hit a line drive that got up in the air” and over the right-field wall.

“There were 50-plus-thousand people there; they were going crazy, screaming the whole inning,” Scioscia says.

“And as the ball went out of the park, it got so quiet that I could hear my spikes digging through the dirt when I was running. That’s how quiet it got. It was eerie--to just have 50,000 people get so quiet. That’s something I’ll never forget.”

The high drama continued. Gibson homered in the 12th off McDowell to give the Dodgers the Game 4 lead, and Lasorda had Orosco pitching in the 12th, with nobody left in the bullpen and McReynolds coming up. But Hershiser, who’d pitched seven innings the day before, convinced Perranoski that he was feeling good enough to at least warm up.

“I knew adrenaline would carry me to whatever I had to do,” Hershiser says. “I’d have sacrificed my whole career for a world championship. Kirk Gibson gets off his hamstring death-bed to hit a home run for us. That was the mentality of this team. He started it.”

Says Lasorda of bringing in Hershiser to pitch to McReynolds, “I was scared to death. There were no pitchers left. The only pitcher left was Belcher and he was back in the hotel.”

Hershiser got McReynolds to pop out, the series was tied, 2-2, and the momentum turned back to the Dodgers.

When the Dodgers finally won Game 7, they knew they had to face an even more imposing team, the Oakland A’s, who had won 104 games and swept the Red Sox in their playoff series with brute strength and impressive pitching.

But in the din of the playoff celebration, Griffin, a former Oakland player, screamed out a declaration: “We beat the Mets, and the Mets are better than the A’s!”

The Blast

By now, the details seem apocryphal. The moment seems larger than life.

But 10 years later, the event cannot seem any greater than it did then, when a gimpy Gibson went up against Dennis Eckersley, the premier relief pitcher in baseball, and the ball flew out of Dodger Stadium.

Gibson hurt both his legs against the Mets, and didn’t even bother to dress for the ceremonies before Game 1 of the World Series, didn’t sit on the bench for most of the game.

Instead, he sat in the clubhouse, ice packs on his legs, watching the game unfold on television, seeing Hatcher hit a two-run homer to go up, 2-0, then Jose Canseco ripping a torrid line drive off of the center-field camera for a grand slam.

“I was devastated because I couldn’t play,” Gibson says. “I could’ve felt sorry for myself. I could’ve hung my head. But I just took the approach that, ‘OK, me and Mickey Hatcher have switched places. He’s now the left fielder and he’s got to do his job and I’ve now become the guy off the bench.’ ”

In the ninth, with Oakland ahead, 4-3, the NBC cameras roamed the Dodger dugout, and Gibson was not there. Vin Scully, calling the game for NBC, said what was obvious, that Gibson wasn’t going to play.

Gibson heard those words, spouted a few of his own, bolted from his stool, grabbed a bat and started taking cuts.

With two out in the bottom of the ninth, Davis pinch-hit for Griffin against Eckersley, who had walked only 11 batters all season. With Anderson on deck, presumably to pinch-hit for Pena, and no sign of Gibson, Eckersley, working carefully, walked Davis.

And suddenly, Gibson was on his feet, replacing Anderson in the on-deck circle, then wobbling to the plate.

“I remember telling myself that I wouldn’t feel hurt when I heard the crowd roar when I walked to the plate,” Gibson says. “And I was right.”

He couldn’t drive off his left leg and looked overmatched as Eckersley threw fastball after fastball. Gibson barely ticked them for foul balls. Then, with the count at 2-and-2, Davis stole second base, which gave Gibson the comfort of knowing that a single would tie the game.

“I probably could’ve gone a couple pitches before that but I get thrown out stealing at second base, and all of L.A. jumps onto the field to wring my neck,” Davis says. “But Dennis has the highest, slowest leg kick in the world. Tommy could’ve stolen that base.”

The count reached 3-and-2, and Eckersley still had thrown only fastballs. But Gibson remembered what advance scout Mel Didier had told all of the left-handed hitters, that Eckersley almost always throws a back-door slider with a full count to power-hitting left-handers.

He threw it, Gibson had just enough bat speed to catch up to it, and then it was airborne. And the Dodgers had won the game, 5-4, as Gibson trudged around the bases, pumping his arm to acknowledge the moment.

“What I remember thinking was, ‘For all you people that have stuck behind me when maybe you shouldn’t have and others didn’t . . . and I’ve always asked them to just keep their mouths shut, our day has come,’ ” Gibson says. “ ‘It’s come.’ ”

Says Davis: “He hit the ball, I knew I was going to score. I didn’t know the ball was going out of the ballpark, but I knew it was going over Canseco’s head. Then the place just erupted.”

The series was tilted for good now--with Hershiser ready to pitch and win Game 2--and get three hits, more than Canseco and Mark McGwire had combined in the Series.

With Eckersley wounded, and Canseco and McGwire suddenly tense and swinging at bad pitches, Oakland got its only victory in Game 3, when McGwire won it with a home run against Howell in his first appearance since his suspension.

But Lasorda went right back to Howell in Game 4, for a grueling 2 1/3-inning stint, and McGwire and Canseco did nothing. Game 5 was Hershiser again, and another home run by Hatcher, replacing Gibson in left field.

“I was Ty Cobb or somebody for five games. I was Babe Ruth for five games,” Hatcher says. “In the previous 140, I don’t know who I was. But for five games, I was right there with the best of them.”

The night of the clinching, Claire says, the same scout, Reggie Otero, who’d recommended the Griffin trade, was at home in the Dominican Republic, watching the Series.

“Do you know that, incredibly, the night the World Series ended and we won the championship, Reggie turned off his television, went to bed, and never woke up?” Claire says. “Passed away that night. He knew that in order to win, we had to have a shortstop. And he got to see it, but that was the end for him.”

A Brief, Shining Season

They knew, even amid the champagne bursts and hugs, that this was not the beginning of a dynasty. The Dodger players knew that this was too special--too dramatic, too dynamic, too pieced-together--to ever be duplicated.

“It was a struggle,” Gibson says of the 1988 season. “The whole year was a struggle.”

Gibson was badly hurt. Sax was set to leave as a free agent. Hershiser could never have a season like that again. Most of them could never have seasons like that again.

“A dynasty is a team that pretty much comes up together and you just put a couple pieces together and then, bam, there it is,” Stubbs says. “We didn’t have that. But for one year, it was a beautiful thing.”

Maybe the truest souvenir of, and tribute to, that season rests in a room otherwise unmarked by Dodger paraphernalia, a lone baseball on a shelf, and no memorabilia merchant will ever touch it.

Dempsey handed Claire the ball after the last pitch of the World Series, and Claire, fired by the new Fox regime earlier this year, has kept it in his house ever since.

“When they have an old-timers’ day at Dodger Stadium, they hang the banners on the wall,” Claire says. “The team has played for what, a hundred years? A lot of great teams, different eras of baseball. And there are only six of those banners.

“And I’ve often thought to myself, ‘You know, the day may very well come when I won’t be here, in that job, but I may walk into that stadium some time on Old-Timers’ Day and [wife] Cheryl and I will be sitting in the upper deck someplace, and look out and say, “Yeah, we remember ’88.” ’ “

See more about the championship 1988 Dodger season, including audio and video clips, statistics and stories from the World Series on The Times’ Web site at https://www.latimes.com/dodgers88

DODGERS BEAT COLORADO, 4-1. C3

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Outnumbered

How did the Dodgers win in 1988? Don’t look for any help when comparing team statistics, where they ranked low in several categories:

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NL Overall Category Rank Rank Record (94-67) 2nd 3rd Batting average (.248) 6th 18th Home Runs (99) 8th 22nd Runs (628) 7th 20th ERA (2.96) 2nd 2nd Fielding (.977) 10th 23rd

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