Stumbling home, then, the Giants continued to stumble on this evening, playing against a team that had been the NL doormat in 1961 (a 47-107 record). After surrendering two singles to start the game, Mike McCormick was victimized by a dropped throw on the part of second baseman Chuck Hiller, nixing what might have been a double play. The Phillies parlayed that error into a three-run first inning.
McCormick settled down after that, however, and Willie McCovey (getting a start in right field while Willie Mays got a rare night off) homered off the Phils' Art Mahaffey to close the gap to 3-1.
But the often-embattled lefty, originally signed as a bonus baby at age 17 and who'd led the NL in ERA at age 21 in 1960, would soon find himself in trouble again in the fifth. (His injury-plagued 1962 would trigger another panic response in Giants' owner Horace Stoneham, who would discard him over the 1962-63 off-season in one of SF's worst trades.) Tony Taylor singled, stole second, and rode home on a double by the Phillies' hot rookie Ted Savage (who'd drawn comparisons to Mays and Jackie Robinson after a superb year in AAA in '61; he'd soon show a weakness against right-handers and become the 60s version of Harry "Suitcase" Simpson).
Al Dark pulled McCormick and brought in young Gaylord Perry, who in '62 was at least as unprepared to be an effective major league reliever as he was ready to be a successful starter (4.82 ERA in six games from the pen, 5.35 ERA in seven starts). He grooved one to Don Demeter, who just missed hitting it out of the park in left: it hit the top of the fence and caromed back in for a double. Savage scored, making it 5-1 Phillies.
The hole got deeper in the seventh when Bobby Bolin gave up more hits to Taylor and Savage, followed by a double by Roy Sievers, settling to earth at age 35 after a great late-blooming half-decade of stardom in the AL (157 homers, 146 OPS+ from 1957-61).
But Phils' manager Gene Mauch gave the Giants a shot in the bottom of the inning by pulling Mahaffey in favor of the fading Frank Sullivan (9-32 in his last two seasons, split between the Red Sox and the Phillies: later in '62, he'd be released on Bastille Day). The Giants' lesser lights mounted a rally that got them back to within three runs before Mauch brought in Jack Baldschun in order to face Orlando Cepeda (who fouled out to end the threat).
Jim Duffalo came in for San Francisco to pitch the eighth and promptly handed back three runs to the Phils, saved only from further damage when Savage was thrown out at the plate. Down 10-4, the Giants had a wacky rally in the bottom of the inning when McCovey reached first on a strikeout, helping them to load the bases (Baldschun deciding to "unintentionally" walk Willie Mays, who finally showed up as a pinch-hitter) and plate three more runs thanks to singles from Harvey Kuenn and Chuck Hiller. But Dark let Matty Alou bat when he could've brought up his big brother to hit for him; Baldschun induced the littlest Alou to pop out to left and the Phils wriggled off the hook.
After all that, the ninth inning was uneventful, and the Giants had their third consecutive loss. Final score: Phillies 10, Giants 7.
IN Los Angelels, the Dodgers drew the New York Mets, still a "respectably bad" team at this point but now in the early throes of what would become a 17-game losing streak. This one was a tight little affair, barely over two hours in length (as opposed to the 3+ hours of lumbering baseball played 400 miles up the coast). Jim Gilliam doubled in Maury Wills to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead in the third, but Joe Christopher singled home Richie Ashburn to tie the game in the fourth.
Don Drysdale gave up just his fourth hit in the ninth--a blooper from Chacon--but Wills and Gilliam converted Joe Christopher's grounder into a game-ending double play, bringing the Mets' soon-to-be-legendary losing streak up to three. (There was a long, long way to go...) Final score: Dodgers 3, Mets 1.
SEASONAL RECORDS: SF 28-14, LAD 26-15
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*As with a number of series in the 1962 schedule, this one started on Wednesday and concluded on Friday, destabilizing our present-day expectation that series are generally designated as "weekday" (Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday) and "weekend" (Friday-Sunday) events. These irregularities were more prominent in pre-expansion baseball, when the 154-game schedule created an 11/11 series split between teams, and the later April start to the season also contributed to a more generally anarchic schedule.
