the almost daily dodger - orel hershiser

here we are in october with postseason baseball, and i can't help but think of the bulldog - orel hershiser - who on this date in 1988 beat the oakland a's to secure the dodgers' 1988 world series championship. here's his 1995 upper deck sp championship series october legends subset card

at the time it was issued, hershiser had made postseason appearances only twice even though the card says three times. i think that is because he debuted with the dodgers in september of 1983 and the club went on to the nlcs against the phillies that year. i am not sure if hershiser was on the postseason roster, but either way he did not pitch in the dodgers' loss to the phillies. the two times hershiser did pitch in the postseason as a dodger were 1985 and the aforementioned 'year that was so improbable' 1988.

he would return to the postseason in 1995 with cleveland, winning his first three starts of that postseason as well as game 5 of the world series against the braves. hershiser won his second lcs mvp award that year as well. to finish things off, hershiser pitched in three more postseasons - 1996 and 1997 with cleveland, and 1999 with the mets.

here's another hershiser card from my scanned folder

that's a 1989 msa superstars card from one of the few non-round msa sets.

there was no doubt that hershiser was considered a superstar in 1989, and at one time he was statistically one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time.