60 YEARS AGO/27: CUTTING THINGS A BIT TOO CLOSE...

Tuesday, May 8, 1962 saw both the Giants and Dodgers in action, with SF invading St. Louis and LA continuing its series in Houston. Both games were hotly contested affairs, with the Giants facing off against a team that gave them the most trouble during the '62 season (they could only split their eighteen games against the Cardinals that year). 

In Busch Stadium (renamed from Sportsman's Park when beer magnate August "Gussie" Busch purchased the Cardinals in the 1950s), it was Juan Marichal vs. Larry Jackson. The Giants got two in the first thanks to an Orlando Cepeda double; Marichal kept the Cards blanked until the bottom of the fifth, when they scored a run on a bizarre play in which Curt Flood's sacrifice fly turned into an inning-ending double play. Stan Musial, having his final great season for St. Louis (hitting .388 at this point), homered in the sixth to tie the game at 2-2.

It stayed that way until the top of the eighth, when the Giants knocked out Jackson with three straight hits (Cepeda's second double of the game, followed by another double from Felipe Alou, and a single from Ed Bailey), making it 4-2. Marichal struggled a bit in the ninth (and this is where '62 baseball diverges radically from today's game...) but was allowed to stay in even after giving up a homer to Carl Sawatski and allowing the potential winning run to come to the plate. Marichal brought the game to a close with a flourish, however, by firing a called third strike past Flood. Final score: Giants 4, Cardinals 3.

DOWN in Houston, the Dodgers must have felt that they were seeing themselves on the field when they looked at the Colts personnel--no fewer than seven ex-Dodgers would play against them on this night. Despite that, things were cruising along well for the boys from LA, as they took a 6-1 lead into the sixth behind Sandy Koufax. (This was the beginning of the short-lived "Larry Burright era" for the team; manager Walt Alston played a hunch in this game, shifting Jim Gilliam to third and inserting Burright at second base--who responded by slapping out a single, double and triple and suddenly found himself in the starting lineup...for a while, at least.)

But Koufax faltered in the sixth, and had to be relieved by Larry Sherry--who had another rough outing in relief, allowing two of Sandy's bequeathed baserunners to score (in part due to an untimely error by shortstop Wills). Sherry would allow the game to be tied 6-6 when Bob Aspromonte tripled home a run and another ex-Dodger, Norm Larker, brought him in with a sacrifice fly.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers were being frustrated by virtue of another appearance from knuckleballer Bobby Tiefenauer; the aggravating part was that they were getting men on base against Bobby, but they'd find a way to come up with nothing by hitting into double plays or having a runner picked off. (We're reminded of the smaller size of the average pitching staff in '62 when we discover that the man who got picked off second base by Tiefenauer was none other than Larry Sherry, who was allowed to bat in this inning despite having just coughed up the lead!)

The Dodgers survived another surreal threat in the ninth, when Sherry struck out Carl Warwick, but Warwick wound up on first when the third strike got past catcher Doug Camilli. After Sherry walked Aspromonte (probably a good thing, given how he was hitting against them), Alston finally replaced him with Ron Perranoski, who retired the next two hitters to send the game into extra innings.

And in the top of the tenth, the Dodgers finally got to Tiefenauer, with an improbable two-out rally that began with Burright's bunt single. Pinch-hitter Frank Howard followed with a single, and Maury Wills did the same, scoring Burright to make it 7-6. LA added two surreal insurance runs when ex-Dodger Dick (Turk) Farrell, relieving Tiefenauer, uncorked a wild pitch to Jim Gilliam that proved so disruptive that it allowed both baserunners to score. (The play went like this: Farrell's 3-2 pitch to Gilliam, with both baserunners on the move, was wild. Catcher Merritt Ranew retrieved the ball, and made an even wilder throw to the plate that eluded everyone, allowing both pinch-runner Dick Tracewski and Wills to make it home safely.)

Ed Roebuck, who'd logged four innings the night before, came in and retired Houston in the bottom of the inning to put a stake in the Colts' "hand from the grave" antics. And speaking of "retiring": this game would signal a major shift in the appearances of Duke Snider, who up to this point had been playing regularly and batting in the middle of the Dodgers' order (an OPS of 1.052). After this game, the Duke was relegated to pinch hitting, and would start only three more games until late August, returning when Alston attempted to address the team's ongoing sinkhole at third base by shifting Tommy Davis there from left field. (Though it was never called that while it was happening, it was the official and irrevocable end to the "Boys of Summer era.") Final score: Dodgers 9, Colts 6 (10 innings).

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 21-6, LAD 16-11