60 YEARS AGO/8: A MORE PEDESTRIAN SLUGFEST

April 17th occurred on a Tuesday in 1962, and for the Dodgers and Giants it was a day game in San Francisco following a night game where run scoring had gotten seriously out of control (27 total runs, as noted in our previous installment). This Tuesday afternoon would see a more pedestrian, commonplace slugfest, where the teams combined to score 15 runs.

That total seems rarely paltry in comparison, to be sure, but just how "commonplace" are such games? We know that 25+ total run games are exceptionally rare, accounting for just two-tenths of one percent of all games played (that's not 2%; it's 0.2%). Games where 15+ runs are scored turn out to be much more common, but are still relatively rare; as our patented "time-grid table"™ at right shows, the percentage of such games since 1900 (122 seasons' worth) is 11.7%.

That figure, of course, has oscillated over time based on the ebb and flow of run scoring levels. The chart shows us that the 15+ total run games mostly correlate to periods of high offense (1920s/1930s, 1990s/2000s), and it shows us how such games nearly vanished in the 1960s due to the strike zone change.

It also shows us that 1962's percentage is almost identical to the one for major league baseball history as a whole.

Oddly, the Dodgers played in more 15+ run games in '62 than the Giants (24 to 20). That would change in the years to follow...

But back to our daily game. Don Drysdale and Mike McCormick both make brief appearances in the 1962 thriller Experiment in Terror, but this is not the game that was filmed for its frantic denouement. (For one thing, those scenes were from a night game; for another, McCormick didn't stick around long in this one enough for any filmmaker to get much footage.) Drysdale was the one who was scored on first, however, as he ran into the buzzsaw named Felipe Alou, who tripled in two runs in the bottom of the first. (Alou would go 2-for-4 in the game with 3 RBI, and would raise his early-season BA to .484).

Drysdale and McCormick pitched poorly in their outings on 4/17/62,
but not this poorly...

But Walt Alston had some potent tea leaves that he was sifting over the Dodger dugout. Opting to leave Willie Davis on the bench against the lefty McCormick, he shifted Tommy Davis to center, put righty-hitting Lee Walls in left, and decided that he'd liked the way rookie Tim Harkness had swung the bat the night before in his pinch-hitting appearance (despite the fact that Harkness was a lefty swinger).

His hunch paid off in the top of the second when Harkness hit a two-run homer off McCormick, tying the score. The Dodgers added one more run that inning when Maury Wills tripled home Drysdale; in the third, Frank Howard's first homer of the year (he'd wind up with 31 to lead the team), a mammoth shot to center, knocked McCormick out of the game and gave the Dodgers a 5-2 lead. They'd add three more in the fourth off Jim Duffalo when Tommy Davis hit a bases-clearing double after Orlando Cepeda's throwing error had extended the inning.

But Drysdale soon began to fritter away that 8-2 lead. Ed Bailey hit a solo homer in the bottom of the fourth; Alou's infield single in the fifth brought in another run. And when Cepeda hit his own bases-loaded double in the bottom of the seventh, the Dodger lead had shrunk to 8-7.

Cepeda had made a baserunning gaffe on the play, however, and was put out--which proved decisive when Jim Gilliam made an error later in the inning, putting the go-ahead run on base. Reliever Larry Sherry needed just two outs instead of three--but had to face two familiar names as pinch-hitters: Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. Sherry struck out Mays, and induced McCovey to fly out to left, ending the Giants' threat.

Giants' manager Al Dark, so concerned about conserving his pitchers the night before, did a 180 and had reliever Don Larsen pinch-hit to start the eighth. (This wasn't as wacky as it might sound: Larsen was an excellent hitter, having hit .311 the previous year.) Sherry struck him out anyway. In the ninth, the Giants had the potential winning run at the plate with two out: the batter was Mays, who'd stayed in the game after his unsuccessful pinch-hitting experience. Sherry, in his third inning of relief, still had his stuff, however: he induced Mays to pop up to third baseman Daryl Spencer. It may have been a "more pedestrian" slugfest, but the outcome had been in doubt until the very last pitch. Final score: Dodgers 8, Giants 7.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 6-2, LAD 5-3