Bases on balls were prominent in the pennant-pertinent games of 9/15/62: havoc and destruction are always hovering in the background whenever pitchers issue an outsized number of free passes. On this day the Dodgers survived because "walkitis" infected both teams; the Giants did not, due to the slow drip of an uncharacteristic lack of control from their biggest winner.
The game evolved into a typically tense but highly contrasted pitchers' duel: Friend was mowing down the Giants, while Sanford was showing wobbly control and slipping out of jam after jam. In the top of the fourth, Pittsburgh's 19-year-old rookie third baseman Bob Bailey, coming off a monster season at AAA (28 HRs and a .950+ OPS) made a throwing error that permitted the Giants to take a 1-0 lead. In the bottom of the inning, Sanford's third and fourth walks of the game allowed the Pirates to tie the score, with the Giants escaping further damage when Bill Mazeroski hit into a inning-ending double play.
Sanford "undid" one of his two walks in the mid-innings when he picked off Donn Clendenon to end the sixth, and the game went into the bottom of the eighth still tied. Then two intentional walks ordered by Giants' manager Al Dark helped the Pirates score four runs to break the game open.
Roberto Clemente had already put Pittsburgh ahead with an RBI double; Dark had Sanford walk Clendenon to face Bailey, who promptly tripled in two runs. Undaunted by the backfire of his strategy, Dark ordered Sanford's eighth walk, bypassing Mazeroski in favor of Friend (the pitcher). Friend the hitter, who'd come into the game hitting .099 and had already doubled off Sanford, then slapped a single to left to score Bailey. The Giants mounted a feeble rally in the top of the ninth that fizzled, and they went down to their fourth straight defeat. Final score: Pirates 5, Giants 1.
IN Chicago, things were wilder still. Don Drysdale and Cal Koonce traded walks in the first; Don would settle down into relatively normal control, but Koonce clustered his free passes in alternating innings, creating a kind of soporific effect on the 16,238 folks watching the game. And, apparently, on the players themselves, who contributed seven errors to the proceedings.
The Dodgers got on the boards first with a walk-aided run in the fourth; an intentional walk issued by Koonce in that inning actually worked when Drysdale made the final out. But LA got sloppy in the bottom of the inning, messing up two consecutive infield plays, allowing the Cubs to take a 2-1 lead. Then Walt Alston got into the act, ordering two intentional walks that put catcher Dick Bertell at the plate with the bases loaded. He promptly hit Drysdale's first pitch into right field for a single, putting the Cubs ahead 4-1.
Koonce walked two more in the fifth, sandwiched around Maury Wills' single (and his 92nd steal), allowing the Dodgers to cut the lead to 4-2, but LA squandered their last chance against Cal in the seventh after he'd walked his seventh and eighth hitters when the middle of the order could not put anything together against reliever Don Cardwell.
But it was just a postponement...in the ninth, the Cubs provided the Dodgers with two chances at a rally in the same inning. Andre Rodgers booted a grounder, allowing Tommy Davis to reach base. Ron Fairly singled, putting men on first and second; but Frank Howard hit into a double play. With Davis now at third and showing some aggressive baserunning moves (no doubt encouraged by Dodger third base coach Leo Durocher...), Hobbie contracted his own "St. Vitus" seizure, hitting Tim Harkness with a pitch and walking Roseboro to load the bases.
Whereupon Alston called for the triple steal. Hobbie, completely flummoxed, threw the ball over the glove of Bertell, where it bounced against the brick façade and eluded the suddenly hapless Cub catcher. This not only allowed Tommy Davis to score, but Tim Harkness came in all the way from second as well. Pinch-hitter Andy Carey then struck out, and followed that up with an error at third to open up the bottom of the ninth, but Ed Roebuck got the next three outs as the Cubs tried (in vain) to put the eleven walks they'd given to LA out of their minds. Final score: Dodgers 6, Cubs 4.
SEASON RECORDS: LAD 98-51, SFG 94-55, CIN 93-58
[records the rest of the way: LAD 3-10, SFG 7-6, CIN 5-6]
