60 YEARS AGO/109: TWO TRIPLES IN AN INNING...AND TWO BOB MILLERS!

With a big weekend rematch in San Francisco looming the next day, the Dodgers and Giants kept pace with each other while experiencing the type of oddities that continued to cluster around the two teams as they continued to hurtle through a roller-coaster pennant race. 

In LA, two young wild lefties--the Dodgers' Pete Richert, making his first start since being recalled from AAA--and the Phillies' Dennis Bennett (about to embark upon the best skein of pitching in his mercurial career) faced off and kept things tight for six innings (a 2-2 tie). In the seventh, Richert issued his fifth walk and then nearly had his head torn off by a line drive back through the box off the bat of Roy Sievers. The ball barely missed Pete and sizzled its way into center, sending Ted Savage to third. Walt Alston decided that Richert had been through enough and brought in Ed Roebuck, who promptly served up a double-play grounder off the bat of Don Demeter.

Except that--Dodger third sacker Darryl Spencer had trouble getting the ball out of his glove, giving Demeter enough time to beat Jim Gilliam's relay to first...allowing Savage to score the go-ahead run.

In the Dodger half of the inning, Bennett allowed a leadoff single to Ron Fairly but struck out Spencer and Johnny Roseboro and seemed to be sailing along. But then the walls closed in--literally. As in Lee Walls, who'd played with the Phillies in '61 and found his way to the Dodgers in a roundabout trade over the off-season. The big (6'3) lumbering (215 lb.) Walls was not the biggest Dodger, but he might have been at the second most unlikely Dodger to hit a triple...but that's just what he did--with some help from left fielder Savage, who backpedaled awkwardly on Walls' fly ball and was seemingly pulled to the ground by alien forces as the ball one-hopped the fence. After he retrieved the ball, he then threw wildly to third, where the ball escaped as if in the grip of (see previous sentence), allowing Walls to score.

Having witnessed this, Bennett suddenly became possessed as well--and not in a divine way, surrendering three straight singles. Gene Mauch brought in his all-purpose reliever Jack Baldschun in an attempt to keep the game close (at this point it was 4-3 Dodgers, with two out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh). 

But Jack was wild, walking the notoriously free-swinging Tommy Davis force in a run.

Then it was Hondo time--Frank Howard, who made Lee Walls look like a tree stump. Baldschun went 3-2 on Frank, delivered his payoff pitch, and promptly fell down in front of the mound. Which was unfortunate, because he didn't see just how Howard rifled the ball over the head of Johnny Callison in right field, the ball hitting the wall with an audible crack. By the time Callison had retrieved the ball and the dust had settled. Baldschun had managed to get up in order to back up third base, and got a great view of Big Frank lumbering into third base with a triple.

Yes, two triples in one inning, from two guys who weighed nearly a quarter ton. Two three-baggers in an inning must be relatively common, at least in the context of triples--but hit by Lee Walls and Frank Howard? Something seriously strange was afoot in Chavez Ravine that night...but Ed Roebuck wasn't fazed: he pitched a third of an inning and got credit for his eighth win of the year without a loss. Final score: Dodgers 8, Phillies 3.

THINGS were not quite so strange in SF, as Jack Sanford had one of his best games of the year, shutting down the Mets on just three hits. The Giants chased Mets' starter Bob Miller (who would become the Dodgers' fourth starter in '63) in the sixth when Orlando Cepeda and Tom Haller hit homers. 

Two innings later, however, they found themselves facing Bob Miller again. Not the same Bob Miller, of course (though we shouldn't put anything past the Mets, a team in one of the most desperate situations ever foisted off on a baseball franchise) but a weird mirror-image, a left-handed Bob Miller, who'd been acquired from the Washington Senators (who gotten him on waivers from the Reds earlier in the year, where "Lefty" Miller had posted a 10.17 ERA in 25 April innings).

You may be disappointed to discover that this wasn't the first time it was "double Miller time" for Mets' opponents. It was actually the third time that it occurred after lefty Miller had joined the team in late July. It would happen three more times before lefty Miller's ERA for the Mets began to approach the ERA he'd had for the Reds. Casey Stengel had the best take on the whole thing, as you might suspect. "It was good that they didn't throw with the same hand, because if they had I would've had to force one of 'em to change hands. And maybe they should've switched hands."

Casey would have to find something else to be confused about in '63, as GM George Weiss got rid of both Bob Millers over the off-season. Final score: Giants 6, Mets 1.

SEASON RECORDS: LAD 79-37, SFG 73-42