60 YEARS AGO/6: A DUO NOT QUITE READY FOR THE HOF

WHO are the Hall of Famers on the 1962 editions of the Giants and the Dodgers? 

For San Francisco, you have Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal; for  Los Angeles, you have Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. 

But you have four pennants and three World Series titles for the Dodgers in the years 1959-1966, as opposed to one pennant and no World Championships for the Giants.

That's the long-standing context for why Koufax, with just 165 lifetime wins, and Drysdale, with only 209, are in the Hall. More evidence for that can be seen in the table below that shows the top 20 pitchers in the National League from 1959 to 1966 (minimum of 750 IP, sorted by ERA+):

(Pitchers in the HOF have orange shading; those who pitched for the Giants or the Dodgers in time frame have yellow shading. Pitchers shown in grey ink did not pitch for either team in 1962. Probably everyone but Brock Hanke has forgotten that prolific reliever Lindy McDaniel pitched for the Giants in 1966; and many have forgotten about Bob Miller, who was rescued from the Mets after a 1-12 season in '62 and became a solid swingman for the Dodgers the next year. Stan Williams, who was traded after the '62 season due to his erratic performance, still managed to rank #20 on this list.) 

As you can see, over those eight years, Koufax is #1 in ERA+ and #3 in IP; Drysdale is #7 in ERA+ (#5 for those with more than 1000 IP) and #1 in IP by a wide margin (over Larry Jackson). Jim Bunning, arriving in the NL in 1964, burnished his case for the HOF with some stellar pitching for the Phillies, which drops Juan Marichal to #3 in ERA+.

ON SUNDAY, APRIL 15, however, neither Marichal nor Koufax were in Hall of Fame form. (It would be interesting to track the number of times that the two of them pitched on the same day, and how many times they both lost when they did so--yet another research project.) In San Francisco, Marichal's first-inning wildness put two runners on ahead of Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson, and the Reds scored twice; in the third, two errors behind him resulted in Marichal surrendering two unearned runs. 

Cincinnati's Bob Purkey, who would go on to post a 23-5 record in 1962, stranded Giants baserunners heroically for seven innings, but finally gave way in the eighth; Frank Robinson and Roy McMillan saved the game for the Reds when they caught Jim Davenport taking too wide a turn at first after singling and threw him out, capping the Giants' rally at just three runs. In the bottom of the ninth, Cepeda's towering fly ball just stayed in the park and was caught at the wall by Marty Keough for the final out. Final score: Reds 4, Giants 3.

Down in LA, Henry Aaron (who entered the game hitting .056) finally awakened in the fifth inning as the Braves took it to Koufax, who'd thrown four innings of one-hit, six-strikeout ball to that point and took a 3-0 lead into the inning. As it was, though, Aaron's single was a tapper in front of the plate that came to rest on the chalk of the foul line; Eddie Mathews followed with a two-run single to tie the game. Aaron would homer off Koufax in the seventh, driving him from the game. 

Meanwhile, the Dodgers, who'd gotten three runs early off young lefty Bob Hendley, managed just one more hit over the final six innings as the Braves finally got into the win column for the first time in 1962. Final score: Braves 6, Dodgers 3. (Koufax and Hendley would have a much more memorable matchup three years later when the two lefties combined to allow only one hit in an entire game--that game, of course, which occurred on September 9, 1965, was the one in which Sandy orchestrated his fourth no-hitter, his perfect game against the Chicago Cubs.)

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 5-1, LAD 4-2.