TUESDAY night in LA, and it's Sandy Koufax vs. Lew Burdette as the Dodgers play the Braves. Sandy has been brilliant, but Burdette, who'd won 114 games for Milwaukee over the past six seasons, is struggling to emerge from a very rough start (6.06 ERA entering June).
But Lew was in a stretch of six weeks in the '62 season where he resembled his old self; from June 6th to July 15th, he'd post a 6-1 record with a 2.90 ERA. Koufax had the bad luck to run into him in the midst of this streak. (After mid-July, Burdette would collapse completely, giving up 10 HRs in 35 1/3 IP (1-4, 7.37 ERA) and would be removed from the starting rotation for the rest of the year.
Sandy struck out 13, but he was a bit inconsistent in the early going; in the second inning, with two men on, he threw an uncharacteristically fat pitch on 0-2 to second baseman Frank Bolling, who slapped it into left to score the Braves' first run. Hank Aaron, whom Koufax rated as the toughest hitter in the National League, had two hits off Sandy, but it was his reaching base on an error that set up Milwaukee's second run.
And Burdette flummoxed the Dodgers, allowing only five hits and eliminating most of those baserunners by tossing four double play balls. LA finally got on the board in the bottom of the ninth--but Frank Howard, representing the potential winning run, grounded out to end the game. Final score: Braves 2, Dodgers 1.
AND that set the stage for the Giants' return to first place, as they staged a thrilling comeback after falling behind the Reds, 4-0--Ed Bailey's pinch-hit grand slam got them even in the seventh, but they had to come back with another tying run in the eighth (Jim Davenport went long off Dave Sisler) before they walked off in the tenth on a RBI single by Orlando Cepeda. Final score: Giants 6, Reds 5 (10 innings).
SEASON RECORDS: SFG 48-27, LAD 48-28
Though his Reds lost, Frank Robinson was still in the process of heating up, going 2-for-5 with his 12th homer. He would get red hot (no pun intended...) and stay that way throughout the rest of the '62 season, as you'll see in the NL hitting leaders table for July-September 1962 (shown below). In the second half, Frank led in runs scored, doubles, OBP, SLG and OPS, and was second in HRs and RBI. While Maury Wills' stolen base skein in the second half (as you'll see below, 62 steals in just half a season) netted him the MVP award, by all rights it belonged to Robinson. (But note Frank Howard's RBI total for this time span!)
