The Future Ain't What It Used to Be

October 20, 1988, 35 years ago: The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland Athletics 5-2 in Game 5 of the World Series at the Oakland Coliseum. This gives the Dodgers the World Championship in a tremendous upset, sparked by Kirk Gibson's home run that won Game 1.

Now, imagine that you could go back to that, and that you could tell someone that, eventually, the following things will have happened:

* Kirk Gibson will never appear in another World Series.

* Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco of the defeated A's will appear in the next two World Series, but that will be it for them.

* The next time Orel Hershiser, the pitching hero of this World Series and, indeed, of the entire season, appears in a World Series, it will be as a Cleveland Indian.

* The next time Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden of the Mets win a World Series, they will be playing for the Yankees.

* The next time the Yankees win a Pennant and a World Series, not only will they have Darryl and "Doc" on their roster, but they won't have Don Mattingly on it. But they will have Wade Boggs on it. And their manager will be Joe Torre. And George Steinbrenner will be cheered at the subsequent ticker-tape parade.

* Bo Jackson will never play football again after the 1990 Playoffs.

* Pete Rose will be banned from baseball.

* Boggs and Torre will get into the Baseball Hall of Fame. None of the other guys I mentioned will ever get in.

* Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Troy Aikman (then in his senior year at UCLA), Bill Walton, Charles Barkley and John Davidson will all become better known as broadcasters in their respective sports than they are as players. Same with Jimmy Johnson, Digger Phelps and Barry Melrose as coaches.

* Within 9 years, Major League Soccer and the Women's National Basketball Association will be founded, and New York will be among the founding teams in both, but, through the 2023 season, neither will have yet won a single league title.

* Rose, O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson and Bill Cosby will all go to prison. (I could add Martha Stewart, but she wasn't all that famous yet.)

* Betty White, 36 years older than both Michael Jackson and Prince, will outlive the former by 12 years and the latter by 5 years.

* Keith Richards, 13 days older than John Denver, who had a much cleaner image, will outlive Denver by at least 26 years.

* Gay people would get the right to serve in the military and get married. 

* A Governor of Arkansas would get elected President -- as a liberal Democrat. And get impeached over a sex scandal. And be acquitted.

* Not only would Vice President George Bush win the upcoming election, but he would lose the next election, to the aforementioned Governor, and then that next President would be succeeded by Bush's son, who didn't go to Vietnam, but would bring America its next "Vietnam," and would bring its worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

* That President's replacement would be a black man with an Arabic name.

* Rudy Giuliani, who made his name prosecuting organized crime bosses under the RICO Act in federal court, would be indicted under the RICO Act in federal court.

* Al Sharpton would become a respected elder statesman of civil rights.

* New York City would elect a Mayor who was both black and a former cop.

* Arnold Schwarzenegger would get elected Governor of California. Twice. And would get the Delegates at the Republican Convention to do something they hadn't done since 1972: Cheer the mention of Richard Nixon.

* Great Britain would have a Prime Minister who was both Indian and Muslim.

* Prince Charles would both get divorced and remarried, and would still be allowed to become King.

* Israel would have a Prime Minister who could, in terms of governing style if not in terms of the number of people he killed, legitimately be compared to Adolf Hitler. And he had gone to the same high school, at the same time, as Reggie Jackson.

* Within 2 years, on back-to-back days, Yankee Stadium will be sold out -- by Nelson Mandela and then Billy Joel. Remember: Mandela was still in prison in 1988, and the Reagan Administration had been treating him as a Communist, a terrorist, and a pariah. Congress had passed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid government, Reagan had vetoed them, and his veto was overridden. And the Yankees, in 1988, were not in the habit of hosting standalone concerts at The Stadium. (Only the occasional postgame show.)

* Donald Trump will soon go bankrupt, and go on to recover, host a game show, become President without previously holding any public office, elective or appointive, crash the economy, let over one million people die because he threw away a contingency plan because it was written by the previous President, who was black, cave in to the Russian dictator, get impeached (but not removed) because of it, and lose his bid for re-election.

* And he would lose it to Joe Biden, a guy who had to drop out of this year's race because of his health and a minor scandal -- and would now be President of the United States at the age of 80, and have at least a 50-50 chance of being re-elected.

* And, by the way, in 2023, we still don't have flying cars!

Your man on the street in 1988, especially if he's a New Yorker and a sports fan, won't believe any of that.

As Yogi Berra put it, "The future ain't what it used to be."