60 YEARS AGO/11: CHANGE PARTNERS

The Dodgers and Giants changed road locations on April 21, with LA moving to Milwaukee to face the Braves and San Francisco invading Cincinnati to play the defending NL champion Reds.

The Giants, what with their loaded lineup, were about to enter a streak where they'd win 12 of their next fourteen games, hitting .306 as a team during that span. The Dodgers would go just 8-6 over that time frame, with a team BA that looks a lot more like 2022 (.240).

On this night, however, both teams won: in Cincinnati, the Giants rallied from a 6-1 deficit with two-run rallies in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, adding an insurance run in the ninth. Overcoming a poor start from Billy O'Dell, the Giants amassed 16 hits (three each from Orlando Cepeda and Harvey Kuenn; two more from Felipe Alou, including his fourth homer, on a night where his 2-for-5 actually lowered his BA to .455, and a sixth-inning homer from  against his former teammates to begin the Giants' comeback).

The Giants used six pitchers in relief of O'Dell, who accounted for 5 1/3 scoreless innings--though there was drama in the bottom of the ninth, when Al Dark used four different pitchers to foil a last-ditch rally. Young lefty Dick LeMay, who'd shown promise in '61 but would soon pitch his way off the major league roster, induced Don Pavletich to ground out with the bases loaded to preserve the Giants' win. (It would be LeMay's only save of the season; despite a good year at AAA after being demoted, LeMay was let go in a trade that also saw Manny Mota depart for Houston in exchange for Joey Amalfitano--another of the questionable Horace Stoneham trades in the 60s: Amalfitano, originally a Giants' bonus baby in the mid-50s, would hit .175 for San Francisco in 1963 and was quickly dumped. Mota, of course, would eventually fashion a notable career with the Pirates and Dodgers.)

The only man who didn't join the Giants' hit parade on this night: Willie Mays (0-for-4, now hitting just .205 for the year). Final score: Giants 8, Reds 6.

OVER in Milwaukee, Johnny Podres had his mojo working, scattering seven hits in a complete game win over the Braves. After spotting Milwaukee a 1-0 lead after four innings, the Dodgers rallied for single runs in the fifth and sixth, and added two insurance runs thanks to back-to-back doubles from Tommy Davis and Frank Howard, and a RBI single from former Yankee Andy Carey (another puzzle piece that Walt Alston would intermittently apply during the Dodgers' strange patchwork season).

Podres would struggle through much of 1962's first half (5.24 ERA, with a particularly disastrous June), but he would be a key cog in their rise to the top of the NL in the second half (12-7, 2.84). Final score: Dodgers 4, Braves 1.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 8-3, LAD 7-4.