60 YEARS AGO/100: SHOWDOWN IN LA, PART 3 + THE 40-RBI BARRIER (HONDO!)

It was, of course, John Wayne who played Hondo, but the strapping one-time fullback was dwarfed by the man who inherited his name--Frank Howard. If ballplayers of the time had shown a bit more genre flexibility in their movie watching, they'd have pinned an even appropriate nickname on the mammoth Howard: the Amazing Colossal Man.

At any rate, "Hondo" was at the center of the Dodgers' desecration of Billy O'Dell and the Giants in the final game of the three-day showdown at Dodger Stadium on Sunday, July 29, 1962. 

--He was in the conga line of Dodger hitters who put together seven hits and six runs off O'Dell (who lasted but two-thirds of an inning) and his third RBI knocked out Don Larsen in the second inning (after Larsen had also lasted just two-thirds of an inning). 

--He homered off Stu Miller in the seventh. 

--He had another RBI single in the eighth when the Dodgers added three more to the bloodletting they'd provided to four Giant pitchers. (Don Drysdale allowed only a solo homer to Willie Mays as he improved his season record to 19-4.) Final score: Dodgers 11, Giants 1.

Howard's five RBI put him high up on the all-time leader list for most RBI in a month: he totaled 41 RBI in July. This is not anywhere close to a record: Hack Wilson and Joe DiMaggio are the top men for this stat, having each driven in 53 runs in a month (Hack in August 1930, and Joe in August 1939). In that age of higher batting averages, there were more "RBI men" in the game generally, so there is a preponderance of players from before WWII who are high on the list. As you might expect, the incidence of the 40+ RBI in a month feat fell off sharply after WWII, as shown in our patented "time grid chart"™ at right. (You can pick out Frank's slot on the grid because we've colored in the square in something akin to Dodger blue.)

As you can see, 40+ RBI in a month has become an extremely scarce feat since Frank accomplished it in 1962; it was 23 years before anyone did it again (Don Mattingly, in September 1985). The last hitter to do it was Troy Tulowitzki in September 2010.

But there's another way to measure this that will show us just how impressive Howard's achievement in July 1962 really was. (It will also give the lie to some of the lingering neo-sabe bias against the RBI stat, which we'll explain shortly.)

When we measure monthly RBI totals and calculate a RBI/G stat for them--and then apply them to the most RBI in a month leader board, so it's sorted by RBI/G, we find out that Frank Howard's RBI skein in July 1962 ranks fourth all time. Howard's 41 RBI in that month came about in just 26 games played (a low total because  there were two All-Star games--and thus two All-Star breaks--in July 1962). That works out to an average of 1.58 RBI/G, which trails only Wilson, DiMaggio and Rudy York (in August 1937)--all of whom, of course, who pulled off this feat during the higher-scoring 1930s.

Note also the high batting averages achieved by most of these guys. "RBI guys" are usually thought of in seasonal terms, and it is quite possible to drive in 100+ runs while hitting for a low average--particularly in a time like the present, when low-average sluggers can pretty much found on any street corner. That creates a lingering, not-so-latent bias against RBI guys, since they are not necessarily "the best hitters." To push back a bit on that, we included the monthly RBI/G leaders' OPS+ as part of the output--and note that everyone has an OPS+ figure in excess of 200 for the month. All of these boys were raking--even Pie Traynor, the lone man on this totem pole in terms of homers. But what a month...hitting .460! This is peak performance across the board: no one here had a gimmicky path to a high RBI count.

Of course, given "Hondo's" excessive size (6'7", 255 lbs.) it's not surprising to see him on a list with some of the biggest hitters of all time. When we teased this info previously, we suggested that it was a preview of the deadly slugger Howard would become later in the decade when he was with the second coming of the Washington Senators. In some ways, it's actually more impressive--and it certainly was a boon for the '62 Dodgers, who rode Howard's bat to a 20-6 record in July.

SEASON RECORDS: LAD 71-35, SFG 67-39