Kirk Gibson 1988 Topps Traded

On June 8, 2016, I received the above card in my mailbox. That same day I wrote this on Facebook:

Look who showed up with the mail today, the patron saint of Michigan: Kirk Gibson. Aside from hitting one of the most notable home runs ever, since retirement Gibson has defined himself as baseball's answer to Mike Ditka. 

So you'll hear a lot from Gibby about "playing the game right", "unwritten rules" and bullshit like that. Even though a 14-year-old Byron Magrane woke up just in time to see that dinger--and it was pretty epic--if I knew that he'd be around this long yelling at kids to get off his lawn, I'd have just as soon as seen Eck strike him out. 

Thank you BCB for sending over one of baseball’s most annoying hard asses.

Before we get into the post, you know what's bananas? That Kirk Gibson Topps Traded card, looks almost like his regular card. Only the uniform is different. Uncanny!

(Maybe not exactly the same, but pretty close!)

Even when I was a kid, I didn’t really like Kirk Gibson very much. He always struck me as a man who wasn’t very pleasant, took things way too seriously and was probably just kind of a mean guy to be around. Not only that, but I was pretty sure that Kirk Gibson probably wouldn’t have liked me too much either.

Gibson was the type of player that sports writers loved and they always used words like “gamer” or “hustler” or “intense” when they wrote these loving stories about him. Like Gibson was some sort of hulked up avatar for themselves. Like if they were athletes, they would be Kirk Gibson: clutch, tough, not afraid to call out a teammate for being lazy, stuff like that. Kirk Gibson was a real man.

Though I could be just projecting. Who knows. 

Kirk Gibson looked like the type of guy who lived in the woods. The only time he came out to pleasant society is when it was time to hit some cowhide with a hunk of wood real far. He had a permanent scowl to go along with his perpetual five o’clock shadow and longish hair. His hair wasn’t long because he was a hippie, it was long because it appeared that he hadn’t had the wherewithal to find a barber. So he cut his shaggy mane with a pair of rusty scissors so that the damn stuff didn’t get in his eyes when he tried to mash homers at the most opportune times.

If Kirk Gibson was a state, he’d be Michigan. It wasn’t just the fact that he went to the University of Michigan (what the hell did he major in there? Did he just hang around the anthropology department as proof of the ‘Missing Link’?) and played for the Tigers. As a kid, when I heard Michigan I didn’t think of Motown or Detroit, those were civilized areas of another place. I thought of Gibson. I thought of woods. Hunting and fishing. I’m not sure why, but I did.

So when Gibson left the Tigers for the Dodgers, that was a real shock to me. Kirk Gibson is going Hollywood? Oh, this is going to end really poorly for the Dodgers. Why would they make such a dumb move? They just picked up Jay Howell and Mike Davis and Alfredo Griffin. I had a weird sense of who really was a good baseball played back when I was a kid. BTW, weird meaning bad. They have Orel Hershiser and Steve Sax and Mike Scioscsca. Why do they need Kirk Gibson?

Like Andre Dawson, Gibson was also a victim of ownership-based collusion in the mid 80s. Unlike the Hawk, an arbitrator decided the Gibson and some other players were automatically free agents due to owners being jerks and trying to destroy free agency. The contracts they signed were voided. He went to L.A. and immediately became their team leader.  The Dodgers imported veteran reliever Jesse Orosco from the Mets. He thought that it would be a funny idea to put eye black in Gibson’s hat. It’s kind of a lame prank, mostly because baseball players have lame senses of humor, but Gibson went fucking crazy.

He said that the Dodgers sucked, they were a bunch of clowns, this is why they were in fourth place the year before, they weren’t professional and more. He pretty much had a hissy fit and normally most people would be like, “Man, this asshole is wound a little tight.” But this is sports and people loved this. They thought that this was the greatest thing in the world. People were lauding Gibson from coast to coast, saying that baseball needed more people like him and other things that sportswriters write when an athlete rips another athlete.

Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda love this too. He thought it was great because he can be the cool guy and Gibson could be the hard-ass. That worked well for Lasorda. 

(Hello Katarina Witt!) 

The thing is, it worked. The Dodgers won the west, beat the heavily favored Mets in the playoffs and then shocked the mighty Athletics in the World Series. As I wrote above, he hit one of the most dramatic and famous homeruns of Dennis Eckersley in the ninth inning of Game One. I know that these things tend to get blown out of proportion, but this was a huge homer.

Eckersley was on another level that year and he was mowing down people left and right, he had 45 saves, a 2.35 ERA (which seems high, to be honest), he struck out 70 guys and walked five. All year. He wasn’t THE Dennis Eckersley yet (he’d get better in subsequent years) but he was pretty damn close. The fact that Gibson took him deep, just like he did to another Hall of Famer Rich Gossage in the 1984 World Series albeit in a less dramatic fashion, says something about Gibson.

I recall where I was when he hit that homerun. I was home, asleep with the TV on when I woke up after Mike Davis walked. Then Gibson came up as I was rubbing sleep from eyes. This seemed big and I wanted to watch it. Gibson wasn’t even supposed to play that night, and in fact, it was his only at bat of the Series – Gibson got hurt a lot. I was a big time A’s fan back then and I couldn’t believe it when Gibson hit that dinger.

The great thing about that moment is that no one believed it could happen. You can see cars pulling out of Dodger Stadium in the background, just beyond the bleachers, as Gibson is rounding the bases.

Gibson won the National League Most Valuable Player that year, though the award should have gone to Mets outfielder Daryl Strawberry. If only Strawberry pulled a shit fit at the beginning of Spring Training that year, perhaps he’d have that award on his mantle today. Interesting trivia: Kirk Gibson is still the only MVP who never played in an All-Star Game. Not one. Ever. It wasn’t because he wasn’t invited, he made sure everyone knew that he wasn’t playing. He was using the three days off to go home and rest.

Gibson was never the same player as he was in 1988. Injuries took his toll, aside from playing 132 with the Royals and 116 in a second go-around with the Tigers, he never played more than a 100 games in a season again. He bounced from the aforementioned Royals to the Pirates back to the Tigers and then called it quits. He managed a couple of years in Arizona, winning the Manager of the Year in his second season, but I don’t remember him being very good. Maybe he was too much of a hard-ass, maybe the players didn’t give a shit what he had done, maybe he just couldn’t manage a pitching staff. I don’t know. But as of this writing, he’s been unemployed for three seasons and I’ve never heard a rumor of him being considered for a job.

Whether that’s because that’s his decision or the baseball world’s, is unknown.