MLB: Dennis Eckersley knows how to make an entrance
By Jason Burke
The MLB playoffs are underway, and with three of the four series being snoozers thus far, it’s always nice when a fun story like this pops up.
MLB Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley has had a rough season. A couple of months back, he was in the middle of some controversy with Red Sox lefty David Price. Eck, part of the Boston broadcast team, had a word for the stat line of Eduardo Rodriguez in one of his rehab starts. That word was “yuck,” which Price took offense to on behalf of his teammate.
Price confronted the Hall of Famer on the team’s charter flight using expletives and acted like a bully while some of his teammates cheered him on.
Eckersley is still calling games this postseason, though not the Red Sox games. Instead, he’s calling the Dodgers and D-Backs series, which is where this story took place. They told the details of the event on-air during the first game of the series on Friday night, but here is a summarized version in tweet form:
We are told Dennis Eckersley identified himself at security entering Dodger Stadium as “the guy who gave up the home run.”
— Jon Weisman (@jonweisman) October 7, 2017
On the air, his broadcast partner set this up by saying (paraphrased), “I was determined to not bring up 1988 the entire series. We weren’t going to play any video packages of the last time the Dodgers won the World Series or anything. Then this guy (Eck) goes up to the security guard and goes ‘Hey! I’m the guy that gave up the home run.'”
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They went on to talk about how Dennis Eckersley and the man that hit the infamous home run, Kirk Gibson, have been doing some charity work together while Gibson battles Parkinson’s disease.
I have been an A’s fan for as long as I can remember, and while I don’t remember the ’88 Series (I was three), I do remember the earthquake one year later. I don’t recall the emotions from Gibson’s greatest triumph, but in seeing the replay hundreds of times since, I feel that it’s the best World Series moment of all time. The Catch is up there for some, but for me it’s this home run.
So if Eckersley, a recovering alcoholic and a Hall of Famer can team up with the guy that is responsible for what at least one person considers the best World Series moment in the history of baseball at his expense, then my guess is it’s pretty safe to say that David Price is too thin-skinned, as are the Sox players that cheered his comments.
I’m a fan of the A’s and I will say that they have stunk for a couple of seasons. I would even say that their seasons have been yucky. That doesn’t mean that I wish them ill will or think less highly of them. It’s a blip on the radar, and I know that things will be better in time. The word yuck doesn’t imply too much, honestly.
In summation, Dennis Eckersley can sure make an entrance.