Revisit the Impossible

He talks about the baseball. Seventeen Octobers ago, it disappeared into history, never to be seen again.

“I’ve got a photograph of a lady with a big ol’ black and blue mark on her leg, the ball must have hit her there,” Kirk Gibson says.

“But nobody has ever said anything about the ball.”

He talks about the bat. He keeps it in a darkened room, perfectly preserved, its scars beyond decay.

“It’s cool,” he says. “Where the ball hit the bat, it chipped a piece right out of it.”

He talks about the game-winning homer in the 1988 World Series opener against the Oakland Athletics, the greatest moment in Los Angeles Dodger history.

“When I got out and heard the crowd, I programmed myself to say, ‘I won’t hurt,’ ” he says.

But Kirk Gibson will not relive the fist pump.

He can’t explain it. He will not repeat it. He never has. He never will.

“All the time guys are saying, ‘Gimme the pump, Gibby,’ but I can’t do it,” he says. “You gotta feel it. You can’t be phony about it.”

As he limped between first and second base on that cool night long ago, the thrust of Gibson’s right arm mirrored the thump of a city’s heart.

He felt it. We felt it. It was so quick, so stunning, it captured our breaths and challenged our faith.

A two-strike, two-out, two-run home run? On one leg? Against one of the best relief pitchers in baseball history?

Watch the replay, check out the brake lights glaring over the right-field pavilion as the ball leaves Gibson’s bat, folks driving away from the memory of a lifetime.

We didn’t believe it then. Many of us still don’t believe it now.

Gibson returned to Dodger Stadium in uniform Monday for the first time since leaving the team 15 years ago, and we can’t wait to ask him.

He spends the early afternoon shagging balls as bench coach of the Detroit Tigers. He walks into the dugout. Two of us approach him.

Looking back, how did it happen? Why did it happen?

He pauses. He smiles.

“I’m still trying to figure out how the damn thing went out,” he says.

And that is that.

No explanation. No secrets. No fist pump.

Perhaps it’s better that way.

“I know I did it,” Gibson says. “I guess I just put a really good swing on it. But it was ugly.”

So ugly that, a couple of hours earlier on that night, Gibson, suffering from severe leg injuries, met his wife behind home plate and told her he wasn’t playing.

“I told her to go home, so she went home,” he says, smiling. “To this day, I tell I her I can’t believe she didn’t stay for my home run.”

So ugly that the hit, against Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley, wouldn’t have been possible without a mantra of desperation.

“I got two strikes on me and I’m like, ‘You are not striking me out,’ ” Gibson recalls.

So ugly that the hit would not have been possible without a scouting report that detailed the exact pitch -- a backdoor slider -- that Eckersley would throw with two strikes.

The tip was given to Gibson by the great Dodger scout Mel Didier.

Gibson still has the actual report in a book at home.

“For me to step out of the box and say that ... then for that hit to happen ... and for that ball to go out ... that report had to have something to do with it,” Gibson says.

It was a hit so shocking that, even though it was just Game 1 of the series, it essentially toppled the favored Athletics on the spot, the Dodgers eventually winning four games to one.

It was a hit so compelling, many in town can tell you exactly where they were when it happened.

I was climbing on a press and handicapped elevator, prepared to conduct postgame interviews with the winning A’s. The weak-hitting Dave Anderson was coming to the plate for the last out.

The A’s led, 4-3. With Eckersley pitching, the game was over.

But an elderly lady in a walker shuffled toward the elevator doors just as they were closing.

The operator held it open for her. Just in time for the announcement that Gibson would be pinch-hitting for Anderson.

I ran from the elevator and returned to my seat just in time to see him hobble to the plate and make history.

Gibson hears stories like that in every town. He sees that fist pump on every giant video.

You might think he tires of it. Maybe once, but no more. At age 48, he has learned to embrace it.

“Three weeks ago I was walking through my kitchen and they were showing it on ‘Beyond the Glory’ and I’m like, that’s pretty cool,” he says.

He was given a standing ovation when introduced in the second inning Monday. When he played, he might have given a surly wave.

This time, he stepped out of the dugout and tipped his cap, allowing the cheers to wash over his balding head.

“I was all about the game, to win the game,” he says. “Good or bad, that was all I was about. That message got through that year to that team.”

How much did that home run typify his season? Consider that he was voted MVP despite hitting only 25 homers with 76 runs batted in and a .290 average.

How much did that home run cement his legacy? Many think he is one of the biggest impact players in baseball history, yet he never played a full season in which he hit .300, or had 30 homers, or 100 RBIs.

“I was very, very average in many aspects,” he says. “Let’s be honest.”

What he had, for that one extraordinary season, was exactly what the Chavez Ravine clubhouse required.

What he had was enough pride to storm out of a spring training session when teammate Jesse Orosco painted the inside of his cap with eye black and enough punch to score from second base on a wild pitch.

What he had, the Dodgers haven’t had since.

“My gift was my determination,” he says. “I guess I wasn’t afraid to fail. I pushed others.”

He shakes his head.

“There were personality defects in the deal, it’s what made me who I was,” he says. “Some people didn’t like it. But they didn’t take the time to understand it.”

I was one of those people. I covered the Dodgers as a beat reporter during Gibson’s era, and I blanched at his crudeness, his bullying, the way he treated life as if he were breaking up a double play.

I understand it now. He behaved that way because it was the only way he felt he and his team could succeed.

He couldn’t have remodeled the Dodgers without a hammer and nails, and by the time that ball sailed over the right-field fence, everyone forgot the mess.

He has long since mellowed, except when it comes to joking about his former boss Tom Lasorda, who is looking for Gibson in the Tiger clubhouse Monday afternoon.

“I can’t hear him so he can’t be that close,” Gibson says from the dugout with a smile.

Earlier, Gibson and former Dodger bullpen catcher Todd Maulding, who now works with the Tigers, stand in right field trying to figure out the exact seat where the ball landed.

Gibson later laughs when pitcher Nate Robertson imitates his fist pump and limp as he circles the bases during batting practice.

“I’ve matured,” Gibson says. “I tend to think things out a little better. It’s not important for me to be who I was. I don’t have to intimidate second basemen anymore.”

Not that the Tigers don’t still look at him with a bit of awe.

“Around here, you’ve got an ache, you look over at him and you say, ‘Well, it’s not that bad, you can play,’ ” Dmitri Young says. “There’s a little spirit he brings to this team.”

A little spirit for them, a lifetime swing for us.

Gibson doesn’t have to do his fist pump anymore, of course. He is reminded that somewhere, every day in this city, someone else is doing it.

A kid who aces a spelling test. A lawyer who wins a case. A writer -- OK, me -- who makes a tough deadline.

“Really? That’s cool,” he says, his eyes wide, his heart humbled, his home run forever.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.