Nostalgia creeping in as Dodgers ready for playoffs

Twenty-six years.

The last time the Dodgers won the World Series I was living in North Florida and my little girl was three years old.

Hannah is now 28 and the mother of the two best grandchildren in the world.

In 1988 Kirk Gibson “hit the miracle on one leg homer” and Orel Hershiser earned the nickname Tommy Lasorda strategically placed on him, “Bulldog.”

With apologies to Cubs fans, we have been waiting a long time.

The Dodgers have been a part of my life as long as I can remember. They arrived in Los Angeles for the 1958 season and promptly won the Series in 1959, beating the Chicago White Sox in six games.

Crowds for each of the three games at the Los Angeles Coliseum exceeded 92,000, setting a World Series attendance that will never be broken.

I was two years old at the time and do not remember one pitch of that series.

The Dodgers won it all again in 1963 and 1965, taking down the Yankees and the Twins.

Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale were in their primes and I was eight years old in 1963, experiencing my first games at Dodger Stadium where my Mom would take me and a few buddies to sit in the 75-cent seats in the left field pavilion.

The first time I walked up those steps and gazed out onto the field I was amazed at how green the grass was. We didn’t have grass like that on our Little League field in Bell Gardens.

Though making it to the Series three times in the Seventies, the Dodgers came up dry until 1981 when they took down the Yankees with Fernandomania in full bloom.

I was living in Utah at the time, still a newlywed after marrying in 1979.

The World Series drought lasted 11 years until the 1988 championship and now in 2014 the Dodgers have a shot.

Twenty-six years later.

It could happen.