Kirk Gibson was at a cabin in the woods in northern Michigan at 11:37 p.m. ET on Friday. He and a few friends didn't have a television. They were listening to Game 1 of the World Series on one of their phones.

“Like old times, huddled around a radio,” Gibson says with a laugh.

He heard Fox announcer Joe Davis say the New York Yankees had intentionally walked Mookie Betts to load the bases and pitch Freddie Freeman with two outs in the 10th inning.

“Get ready,” Gibson said loudly. “Here it comes.”

At 8:37:50 PT, New York Yankees pitcher Nestor Cortes threw an inside fastball to Freeman, who hadn't hit a ball hard in three weeks after spraining his right ankle, causing him to lagged in the games he could play.

Freeman, the limping left-handeras the Dodgers reached their last out, hit a home run into the right field pavilion Turn the loss into a win in Game 1. The ball landed at 8:37:55 p.m

Thirty-six years and ten nights earlier, with the Dodgers going to the last out, Gibson, the walking-challenged left-hander, hit a home run off Oakland A's closer Dennis Eckersley into the same right field pavilion to turn the loss into a Game 1 victory. The baseball landed at 8:39 p.m

“What I want to know,” Gibson says, “is did he see all the taillights leaving the parking lot as he circled the bases?”

It's one of Gibson's clearest memories of his historic home run: As he looked across right field as he rounded first base, he saw the red taillights of those who had lost faith and decided to place more value on it , to defeat traffic than to the hope of history. (The stadium traffic pattern has since changed.)

“Sparky Anderson taught us a long time ago,” Gibson said of his former Tigers manager. “It’s never over until the end.”

Kirk Gibson is 67 years old and struggles with Parkinson's disease. “I’m fine,” he says when asked about his health. Thirty-six years after he became the first player to hit a walkoff home run in the World Series until his team's last out, the memories and physical sensations of that night came flooding back when Freeman batted second in a World Series game finish this way.

“I just had a premonition,” Gibson said of the Freeman home run. “Is it the Dodgers? Is it Dodger Stadium? What is that? It's scary. It's scary. I'm not sure I can find the right words to explain it.

“It was the last out. I had a feeling it was going to happen. Then I heard it go down. And I heard, “Gibby, say hello to Freddie.” And then all those feelings come back. Walking around the bases, seeing the bottoms and then the joy of seeing all your teammates there at home plate. That's the best thing about it. However, I had to tell them: “Go easy!” Don't jump on me.' ”

Gibson had injured both legs so badly that he was no longer expected to play and never had another shot in the series.

“Bob Costas wanted to talk to me on the field,” Gibson said. “But we had something special as a team. We enjoyed victories. So I said, “I’ll be right back.” And we had this routine. I shouted to the boys, “What a damn team!” And everyone replied, “Oh, how sweet it is!” The fruits of victory!' ”

Gibson says he knows Freeman “a little bit.” He knows Freeman is “a great guy, a great hitter, a great ambassador” for the game and has a swing that Gibson finds unique. He says Freeman should also know that the home run could be life-changing. For Gibson, there is “before” and “after” the home run.

“Freddie has no idea what it means to the game and the story of the game,” says Gibson. “It's big. The home run is shown again and again. It's really part of the game and part of its story. It's really, really cool. Just deal with it. Honor it.

“In some ways it can make you feel like you’re getting too much attention. Because I always think about all the teammates and people on the team that it took to get to this point. Without them it doesn't work. About six weeks ago I was back at Dodger Stadium. And I was sitting at the podium and they wanted me to speak. I wanted to hear from my teammates.”

The impact of that Freeman home run is not yet known, according to Gibson. Game 2, he says, will go a long way in determining whether the Yankees can recover.

“Now what?” Gibson says. “How do you react? When you saw the pictures of (Oakland manager) Tony LaRussa, you knew they had just been hit hard in the jaw. I saw the same look with (Yankees manager) Aaron Boone. It's hard to stop the momentum. It will be talked about forever.”

There was one more detail Gibson wanted to share. The night before Game 1, he suddenly heard the yowling of a pack of coyotes near his cabin. He's heard it before. Sometimes they even playfully approached his tractor while he worked the fields on his ranch. But something about that plaintive call startled him. It was so loud. It was so close.

He went to a back door and opened it. There was the pack of coyotes, closer to him and the cabin than he had ever seen them. They looked directly at him. It was as if they wanted to tell him something.

“It makes you think,” Gibson says, “there’s more at work than we know.”