60 YEARS AGO/136: HALF-GAME SEPARATION/1

With the Dodgers now down to a half-game lead after their late-inning meltdown on 9/7/62, we now enter a period where they and the Giants "play chicken" for a few days, staring each other down from 400 miles away. Over the next four games, the two teams keep winning--and keep the tension building.

On 9/8 (a Saturday), LA gets Pete Richert's finest start as a Dodger--the young lefty limited the Pirates to just four hits and struck out eight. It was, in fact, a Koufax-like performance. 

His opposite number, Al McBean, was 5-1 with a 2.38 ERA in his last seven starts, but the Dodgers got to him in the second inning for two runs (a single from Ron Fairly; a triple by Doug Camilli, in the lineup to give Johnny Roseboro a rest; and a double from Andy Carey, getting the splinters removed from his rear end after having not started a game since June 10th). 

They scored four more in the third, knocking McBean out of the game and cruising home on Richert's gem. Final score: Dodgers 6, Pirates 1.

EARLIER that afternoon, the Giants and Cubs had a scoreless duel underway between Billy Pierce and Don Cardwell into the fifth, but SF scored four times in the fifth thanks to three hits, three walks and an error by ex-Giant Andre Rodgers (as he was invariably referred to in the SF press' game accounts). 

Pierce walked a tightrope in the fifth and sixth innings, giving up six hits and two runs, but the Giants scored three runs in the eighth (including a steal of home by Felipe Alou--someone should ask the octogenarian if he remembers doing that...) to make things easy-peasy for Bobby Bolin in the ninth. Final score: Giants 7, Cubs 2.

SEASON RECORDS: LAD 92-51, SFG 91-51