60 YEARS AGO/4: STRONG "#4 STARTERS" KEEP THINGS ROLLING

IT was Friday the 13th in April 1962, but no bad luck surfaced for the Giants and Dodgers that day. The two teams brought their "#4 starters" into play, creating a quirk that might be unique: the two pitchers in question (Billy Pierce and Don Drysdale) combined to win 420 games in their respective big league careers. 

Pierce had been acquired over the 1961-62 off-season in a trade with the White Sox that also brought them veteran righty Don Larsen (of World Series perfect game fame) in exchange for reliever Eddie Fisher and three now-obscure prospects whose major league careers proved to be negligible (pitchers Dom Zanni and Verle Tiefenthaler; first baseman-outfielder Bob Farley, who'd hit .307 at AAA in '61 but who would hit just .163 in the majors). The 5-10, 160 lb. lefty would be a key to the Giants' success in 1962, posting a 16-6 record despite lingering arm problems necessitating irregular usage throughout the season (including missing a month from mid-June to mid-July). 

But on this Friday the 13th, Pierce was in fine form, allowing only two hits over 7 1/3 innings and supported by a Giants offense that came alive in the fifth inning behind homers from Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda. Light-hitting second baseman Chuck Hiller also contributed three hits and two RBI from the #8 slot. Final score: Giants 6, Reds 2.

IN Los Angeles, the Braves brought their three-game losing streak to Dodger Stadium, suffering from a run drought prompted in part by uncharacteristically slow start from Henry Aaron. The immortal Braves slugger would eventually hit 45 HRs in 1962, but his woes at the plate continued on Friday the 13th as he went 0-for-3, lowing his season mark to .067.

Drysdale, a good hitting pitcher, kicked off the Dodgers' decisive five-run rally in the fifth with an RBI double (he was 2-for-3 at the plate that night, in addition to his 11-strikeout complete game). Tommy Davis began what would be a remarkable season in terms of now-prosaic statistics (batting average and RBI) with a three-run homer to cap the fifth-inning run skein. 

The Dodgers scored their first run in the second inning via means that would become the slogan for their offense later in the decade: Maury Wills walked, stole 2nd (his first steal in a year where he'd eventually set a new record...), went to third on a throwing error, and scored thanks to a sacrifice fly by Jim Gilliam. (It would be interesting to determine just how many of these "runs without a hit" the Dodgers scored over these years--we'll try to research that for you as this retrospective rolls on.) Final score: Dodgers 6, Braves 3.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 4-0, LAD 3-1.

ADDENDUM FOR 2022: We'll see a no-hitter later on in our '62 retrospective...Koufax will do it late in June against the Mets. After this was posted, a certain amount of controversy erupted on April 13, 2022, when Koufax's present-day incarnation, Clayton Kershaw, threw seven perfect innings against the Minnesota Twins and was pulled from the game after 80 pitches. 

Though our "pal" Joe Pose-nanski went on and on about the game at his blog, it was just more hand-wringing and the wordslinger equivalent of two dozen too many carefully posed  (no pun intended) sidelong glances, accompanied by heavy sighing. What Joe P. didn't mention (along with countless other scribes) is that April 13 would have been the earliest date in major league history for a perfect game, and that there are some good reasons why that is so. (To give some credit to "Pose," he did note that the weather conditions at Target Field yesterday were forbidding--something that unquestionably aided Kershaw throughout his appearance, but that also ensured that he'd come out of the game after a prescribed period of time for his own protection.)

There have been two perfect games thrown in April, both of them achieved by pitchers with less than journeyman careers (Charley Robertson of the White Sox in 1922--lifetime record 49-80; Philip Humber, also of the White Sox, in 2012--lifetime record 16-23). While great pitchers have thrown perfect games, only one-third of them have come from pitchers who are in the Hall of Fame.

We talked about Kershaw being protected by manager Dave Roberts--it's a point that hasn't been followed through to its larger context. One can wonder why Kershaw decided to pitch again after what seemed like a career-ending injury at the end of last season. One reason might be another symptom of how the game has changed in the past twenty years--the inexorable decline (indeed, freefall) of starting pitcher wins (along with the now-casual denigration of that stat by "numerate nabobs"). 

Kershaw may have looked at his 185-win career and decided that he might have enough gas in the tank--and a powerhouse hitting team behind him in '22--to take a crack at getting to 200 wins. (It's probably the same thing that motivated a more elderly pitcher, the Cardinals' Adam Wainwright, to keep going into his 40s after having lost several seasons to injury.) Perhaps, in their minds at least, the 200-win barrier has taken on some kind of significance for them and is pushing them to stay out there. 

Rather than denigrate that total (which seems paltry based on what we'd seen just twenty years ago--with Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine continuing the tradition of 300+ winners), perhaps we should salute these two stalwart veterans for making an all-out effort to defy the odds as they've devolved in the past quarter-century and push to join those pitchers with 200+ wins and a .600+ winning percentage--a combination of achievements that is arguably a marker for enshrinement in Cooperstown. Let's forget about perfect game controversies and focus on rooting for the two of them to achieve those goals--'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.