Destiny's Boys

How in the world did it happen? How did a team with a lineup resembling that of the Albuquerque Dukes trounce a team reminiscent of the 1927 Yankees? How did the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland Athletics like a drum, four games to one, in the 1988 World Series? How come manager Tommy Lasorda and the rest of his Dodger Glue team get to go to the White House this week to shake hands and schmooze with the Prez, while Tony La Russa and his Abashed Brothers have gone home, shaking their heads?

Lasorda kept telling his players about David and Goliath—"The first time the underdog won," he said—and, given the relative strength of the combatants, this was an upset of Biblical proportions. The Dodgers jumped on NBC sportscaster Bob Costas for calling their Game 4 lineup perhaps the weakest in World Series history, but. truth be told, he was right. One would have to go back to the 1906 Chicago White Sox, known as the Hitless Wonders, to find a worse Series team, but it's interesting that the Sox beat the crosstown Cubs that year.

Not even the Dodger faithful had much faith. On the afternoon of Game 1 comedian Don Rickles was talking with Lasorda when the Dodger skipper excused himself to go give his players a pep talk. "You're not going out there and feed them some line of bull about how they're gonna win this thing without [Kirk] Gibson, are you?" asked Rickles.

"Yup," said Lasorda.

Even with Gibson, the 1988 edition was not quite up there in the Dodger Blue Pantheon with the '55, '59, '63, '65 or '81 world champions. Let's put it this way—among the following groups, which names don't belong: Hodges, Parker, Garvey, Stubbs? How about Robinson, Gilliam, Cey, Hamilton? Or Snider, Willie Davis, Guerrero, Shelby? Reese, Wills, Russell, Griffin?

The Dodgers themselves helped build up the Athletics' stature. "My God, they tote those 36-ounce bats and big biceps to the plate," said pitcher Tim Belcher. " Cy Young would be scared." Said centerfielder John Shelby, "We're just a bunch of has-beens, no-names and little-names trying to make names for ourselves." And in the end, they did.

The A's won Game 3, the first of three in Oakland, 2-1 on a ninth-inning homer by Mark McGwire off Jay Howell, but that was the A's only ascendant moment. With Orel Hershiser scheduled to start Game 5 for L.A., Oakland had to win Game 4, and it didn't, making two crucial errors and losing 4-3. Before Game 5 the Oakland Coliseum speakers blared out Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy, as they had before the previous two games, but the whistling on McFerrin's pop hit was so much whistling in the dark. The A's had every reason to worry and nothing to be happy about. Hershiser pitched a four-hitter, and Mickey Hatcher and Mike Davis hit two-run homers as the Dodgers won 5-2 for their first world championship in seven years. The Dodgers rubbed it in a little by doing mock A's-style forearm bashes in the dugout following the home runs.

As the champagne flowed, owner Peter O'Malley compared these Dodgers with the 1959 team that beat the White Sox in six games. But the result of that Series was nowhere as big a surprise as this year's was. One man in a Los Angeles uniform did know the proper historical precedent for the victory: Third base coach Joe Amalfitano was a 20-year-old reserve infielder for the New York Giants when they beat the Cleveland Indians four straight in the 1954 World Series. "Same thing as '54," said Amalfitano. "We didn't have a chance against Cleveland." The Indians were considered a great team; they had won 111 games in the regular season. But in the first game of the Series, Willie Mays made his famous back-to-the-plate catch off Vic Wertz—a deed that had much the same disheartening effect on the Tribe as Gibson's Game 1 homer had on the A's—and the Giants went on to sweep the Indians. Little-used outfielder Dusty Rhodes, who hit two homers and drove in seven runs in the '54 Series, was the Hatcher (two homers, five RBIs) of his day.

So how did the 1988 Dodgers pull this off? There are all sorts of theories, both silly and serious. One suggestion, fresh out of one of Hollywood's recent body-switch movies, had the injured Gibson magically transferring his talents to L.A.'s other former college wide receiver, Hatcher. Even Gibson, who spent much of the Series angling for another at bat, admitted, "Mickey steps in and fills my role, and I filled his." Another theory had the Dodgers kidnapping Jose Canseco and replacing him with his identical twin brother, Ozzie, who hit .222 for the Huntsville ( Ala.) Stars of the A A Southern League. Then there was this to ponder: Before Game 3, the only one the A's won, members of the Oakland grounds crew wore tuxedos, but after that they switched back to their regular attire. "You might be right," said one groundskeeper when asked before Game 5 if the tuxedos could have been a good-luck charm. "But did you ever try to bend over and clean second base in a cummerbund?"

There are other explanations, of course. In I Samuel 17:40 it's written that David "chose him five smooth stones out of the brook" before he went up against Goliath with a sling. With that in mind, here are five smooth stones the Dodgers used to knock off the A's: