Orel Hershiser, pitching in 1999 for the famous Mercury Mets
Years ago, my friends and I used to play midnight baseball for fun. Midnight baseball is like regular baseball, but it's played at night-time. Since baseballs are very small, to play midnight baseball you need to have a lighted area. That's why we played at Fern Bell park, the home of Huntsville's little league version of the American League:
Fern Bell had lighting, and our friend Evan was very tiny. He also happened to be an umpire at the park, and therefore knew his way around. Evan knew where the light switches were for the whole park, and he would shimmy through a window in order to get them lit. With the lights on, not only could we see, but we could play our games as late as 1 or 2 am without being molested by the cops (our illumination apparently lended us an aire of legitimacy). One day, Evan found a box full of old jerseys in the clubhouse, and he let us all in so that we could root through them and take what we wanted. I didn't really want any shirts, mostly because I was already 6'2" and way too tall to be able to properly wear any of them.
There was something I wanted, though, and that night at Fern Bell I felt compelled to steal it: a framed biography of Orel Hershiser, complete with pictures of him not only in his heroic days as a pitcher for the Dodgers but also decked out in his little league uniform at the age of 7 or 8. The print had been badly faded by the sun, and had obviously been hanging in that office for a long time before I took it as my own. Typing this now I kind of feel bad (perhaps someone was very sad the next morning when they found out that Orel was missing!), but at the time I was quite proud of myself... I think my dad was kind of proud, too... he helped me to hang it in a place of honor and now it's one of the only things in my bedroom at my parents' house that is the same as it was back when I lived there.
Anyhoo...
Orel Hershiser is my favorite baseball player of all time, and he has held that position for most of my baseball life (albeit there was a prolonged period of timed during which Ken Griffey Jr. reigned supreme). I like "Bulldog" because he is firmly ingrained in my mind as a symbol of my childhood... I was almost six when the Series happened, and that year the Fall Classic coincided with my family's trip to Walt Disney World (I must say that two decades later I have a firmer remembrance of the Series than I do Disney World). My father is from Los Angeles, and so he had an emotional attachment to the boys in blue. Their opponents were the Oakland Athletics, who were stocked up with offensive giants who had spent their minor league days hitting home runs out of Huntsville's own Joe W. Davis stadium.
It had to have been a tough choice for me, but I ended up siding with the Dodgers. After all, family ties are more important than hometown ones. And it was a great year to be a Dodgers fan! Behind the arm of Orel Hershiser, the Dodgers shocked the A's, who everyone had assumed would use their bats to overpower Los Angeles. The A's lost in 5 games though, and Hershiser got the Series MVP award for his absolutely heroic efforts in overtaking Oakland.
A lot of people think about Kirk Gibson and his hobble-off home run when they think of that Series. Hershiser, though, was the real hero. He pitched two complete games, and one of them was a shut-out. Not only that, but he went three for three as a hitter and got an RBI!
The '88 World Series happened after Hershiser pitched one of the greatest single seasons in Major League history, and at one point he threw 59 scoreless innings in a row, one more than Don Drysdale's 1968 record (according to Tom Lasorda, Hershiser was committed to stopping at 57 because he didn't want to break the record of a former Dodger, but Drysdale gave him the nod and he ended up beating the record by one as a courtesy). This season alone would be good enough for me to vote him into the hall of fame, but apparently that isn't very likely. Hershiser had a good season in '89, but after that he got injured and wasn't really same. He had a few good seasons with the Indians in the mid-nineties (most notably in 1995, when he won the ALCS MVP on the way to the Indians World Series loss to the Braves).
What's more important about Orel Hershiser, however, is the fact that he seems like a genuinely nice fellow. I have this commemorative tape of the '88 series, and it features interviews with all of the players and managers... all of them come off kind of like louses, especially the A's players. Canseco looks rough, and Lasorda looks worse (you certainly wouldn't want to meet either in an alley!) Orel Hershiser, on the other hand, is a model American! Appearing almost ego-less, Hershiser comes off kind of like an excited kid, untouched by the spotlight, as he describes the Series with words like "swell." Unfortunately I couldn't find this interview on youtube, so I had to settle for a latter-day interview from a poker tournament. The poker interview doesn't really do him justice, mostly because he uses too much jargon. Nonetheless, we can tell how sweet of a man he is. Check out at the end when he talks about having all the other poker stars sign a baseball for him!!!! What a class act:
Anyway, the point is that Orel Hershiser isn't only a great pitcher but a grade-a charmer, and that's why he's my favorite player ever. If you have any doubt at all about the charm, I suggest you watch this:
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