60 YEARS AGO/31: HALL-OF-FAMERS IN EXTRA INNINGS

OK, we're going to bury that lede and cover the items pertinent to Saturday, May 12, 1962 in ascending order of noteworthiness. First, in Houston, the Giants returned the favor by shellacking the Colt .45s (who'd shut them out the previous evening). Juan Marichal tossed a four-hit complete-game shutout as his teammates gave him ample support, scoring four times in the second inning and adding six more runs in the fourth. Lusty hitting from Felipe Alou (3-for-5, back up to .352 for the year) and Orlando Cepeda (2-for-4, .322) was capped by Jim Davenport's three-run homer; even Marichal got into the act, slapping a couple of singles and driving in a run. Final score: Giants 11, Colts 0.

In St. Louis, Maury Wills' evolving assault on Ty Cobb's single season stolen base record shifted into second gear as the Dodgers' shortstop swiped two bases in three consecutive games for the first time in the 1962 campaign. 

The table at right gives you a day-by-day overview of Wills' unprecedented stolen base activity. Read it column by column from the left, where we begin with April, the slowest month for Maury (he hit only .214 for the month).

The days of the month are shown from top to bottom, and we go back up to the second column to view May, where Maury begins a skein of games where he steals more than one base per game (data that's collated in the second summary row at the bottom of the graphic, the one marked "1+"). As you'll see, he has only two such games in April, but he has seven in May, a figure that he matches again in August and September when the race to chase Cobb shifts into high gear.

The grey cells represent off-days for the Dodgers; the red dots at the top right edge of many of the cells represent games that the Dodgers won. The cells colored in orange show the games in which Maury was caught stealing; the darkest of these, occurring on June 4, is the only game during Wills' trailblazing '62 where he was caught stealing twice. All in all, Maury stole 104 bases and was caught only 13 times, which is truly a remarkable performance.

The "1+W" row at the bottom (just above the cumulative total row) shows the correlation between multiple-steal games and Dodger wins. That correlation is virtually perfect from April to August: the Dodgers are 18-2 in those games. In September and October, however, when the Dodger hitting elsewhere in their lineup takes a nosedive, that correlation breaks down: the Dodgers are only 3-5 in Maury's "run wild" games.

And May 12 was the first time when Maury had multiple steals in a Dodger loss. It was a notable game because it represents one of the latest occurrences where Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitched in the same ballgame (they'd do it again in early July). Koufax, facing a tough-hitting Cardinal lineup in their home park (a haven for hitters), was not able to dominate: he was victimized by the Cards' rookie shortstop Julio Gotay, who would wind up going 4-for-4 in what surely was his greatest day offensively (he would fade badly after the All-Star Break and be traded to the Pirates in a deal for Dick Groat, who would help them win a pennant and the World Series in 1964). 

Koufax left after six trailing 4-3; they trailed 5-3 in the top of the ninth, when the (temporarily) unsinkable Larry Burright hit a two-run homer to tie it up. They nearly lost the game in the bottom of the inning, needing Frank Howard to throw out Bill White at the plate to send the game into extra innings.

And that's where we finally get to our teaser. In the eleventh inning, Bob Gibson entered the game for the Cardinals. While 1962 proved to be the first top-flight season from Gibson in a career whose arc would rise sharply upward, this particular game did not feature him in his dominating mode--he put men on base in four of the five innings he pitched (walking five batters) and was forced to work his way out of jams, including one with the bases loaded in the twelfth.

Two Dodger rookies--Pete Richert and Joe Moeller--managed to keep pace with Gibson through the fourteenth. At which point Don Drysdale, the Dodger ace, was brought into the game--giving us two Hall of Fame pitchers in the same game as relievers in extra innings (and three total Hall of Famers, of course, when one includes Koufax).

But Drysdale didn't have it that night. He immediately gave up a single to backup outfielder Doug Clemens, and proceeded to hit Gotay. Then, in a truly memorable moment, he faced Bob Gibson, who was batting because there were no other pinch-hitters available for the Cardinals. In the midst of that Drysdale-Gibson confrontation, Big D suddenly whirled around and picked Clemens off second. 

And then he proceeded to walk Gibson. Which proved to be his ultimate undoing, for after he struck out Curt Flood, the Cards' weak-hitting Julian Javier worked the count to 3-2 and then looped a fly ball to right that neither second baseman Burright nor right fielder Howard could reach: fittingly enough, Gotay came chugging around third with the winning run. Final score: Cardinals 6, Dodgers 5 (15 innings).

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 23-8, LAD 19-12