2) Mike Scioscia
Mike Scioscia was an unexpected hero for the Dodgers in Game 4 of the 1988 National League Championship series.
Doc Gooden was cruising along with a 4-2 lead heading into the bottom of the 9th inning. The Mets were on the verge of taking a 3 games to 1 lead in the series and he should have breezed through the bottom part of the Dodgers order. Today it would be an automatic no-brainer to bring in your closer for the save. But this was still Doc that we are talking about.
Doc began the inning by issuing a lead-off walk to weak-hitting John Shelby. And then he quickly got ahead of Scioscia 0-2. And then the Shea Stadium crowd…went from electric to a power outage…as Scioscia, a career .180 hitter against Gooden, hit a dramatic homer that would change the course of the series.
Although Kirk Gibson hit the game-winner later on in the 12th to even the Series at two games a piece…it was Scioscia’s homer in the bottom of the 9th inning off of Gooden that got them there in the first place.