It was déjà vu all over again.

Anyone who saw Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman‘s historic walk-off grand slam home run against the New York Yankees in Game-1 of the 2024 World Series at Dodger Stadium on Friday night, and let’s be honest here, what true baseball fan did not, had an immediate flashback to former Dodger great Kirk Gibson‘s historic home run in Game-1 of the 1988 World Series against the Oakland Athletics. If they did not, they are either lying, or they are not a true baseball fan.

“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!” Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully famously said during his call of Gibson’s historic blast.

Freeman’s dramatic, impossible bottom-of-the-10th-inning 409-foot granny, which landed in almost the exact same spot that Gibson’s did 36 years earlier, turned a 3-2 Dodgers deficit into an improbable 6-3 Dodgers World Series Game-1 walkoff win.

Freeman’s dramatic grand slam was historic because it was the first walk-off grand slam home run in the 121-year history of the World Series.

“Oh, really? That’s pretty cool,” Freeman said postgame when told that his was the first walk-off grand slam in MLB history. “When you’re told you do something like that in a game that’s been around a very long time, I love the history of this game; to be a part of it, it’s special,” the extremely popular Villa Park, CA native and second-round draft pick in 2007 by the Atlanta Braves out of El Modena High School in Orange, CA added.

As you might imagine, the very biased Dodger Stadium crowd of 52,394 went bonkers with Freddie’s bomb. In fact, according to former Dodgers infielder and current SportsNet LA analyst Nomar Garciaparra, just moments before Freeman’s grand slam, former Dodger great, fellow current SportsNet LA analyst, and Gibson’s teammate in 1988 Orel Hershiser said, “If they walk this off, this stadium is gonna break.”

Freddie Freeman broke Dodger Stadium.

Play Ball!

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