60 YEARS AGO/10: TWO ONE-RUN GAMES + ELSEWHERE IN THE NL

Baseball schedules were much more ramshackle in the 1960s than is the case today. Teams had longer road trips and homestands--a relic of the game as it had existed in the years prior to the Giants and Dodgers moving from New York to the West Coast. 

And the frequency of doubleheaders was much, much greater than today as well. Later in the season (late May to mid-June), the Dodgers will have a 19-game road trip that will feature four doubleheaders. They will have a total of ten doubleheaders during the 1962 season; the Giants will have nine.

On April 19th (a Thursday in 1962), both teams would carve out one-run victories. In Cincy, the Dodgers scored another early KO on Moe Drabowsky (still years away from his successful conversion into a relief pitcher), taking a 3-0 lead in the second. However, Sandy Koufax was still not quite the fully anointed "Left Arm of God" (that would come to pass in June) and he gave back two runs in the third via four straight hits. 

This was the only game in Dodger history where rookie Tim Harkness batted third, and to make it doubly unique, he was followed in the batting order by the increasingly fragile veteran Duke Snider, giving the Dodgers a lineup where their 3-4 hitters amassed just over 200 plate appearances for the season. It managed to work, however, as Harkness singled in a run and Snider greeted reliever Sammy Ellis with a homer in the top of the fourth, making the score 4-2. 

The Dodgers would hold on as Koufax settled in, blanking the Reds from that point until weakening in the eighth. Ron Perranoski would strike out Gordy Coleman in the eighth to quell Cincinnati's last rally, and he'd close things out in the ninth by striking out the Reds' ace pinch-hitter Jerry Lynch. Final score: Dodgers 4, Reds 3.

IN Milwaukee, Al Dark continued to dish out workload to his starters, allowing Juan Marichal to face 41 batters as he fashioned a most ungainly complete game. The Giants overcame an early 3-0 deficit with a five-run fifth thanks to Lew Burdette's control deserting him. They would tack on two more runs in the seventh thanks to more hot hitting from Felipe Alou (RBI single, 2-for-4 in the game, now at .464 for the season) and Ed Bailey's sacrifice fly. 

Marichal gave up three HRs in the game (shades of 2019!), including two by Eddie Mathews (who drove in five runs in a losing cause) but he had just enough gas in the tank to get the Giants over the finish line. Final score: Giants 7, Braves 6.

SEASON RECORDS: PIT 8-0, STL 6-0, SF 7-3, HOU 5-3, LAD 6-4, PHI 3-4, CIN 4-6, MIL 2-7, CHC 1-8, NYM 0-7.

The very early going in 1962 featured hot starts from the Pirates and the Cardinals, who had the good fortune to each play two teams--the Cubs and the first-year Mets--who staggered out of the box. The Pirates, who started the year 10-0, would have an extremely streaky season, with many winning and losing streaks in excess of four games; one of these streaks, down the stretch in September, would be pivotal in keeping the Dodgers in the race. The first-year Colt .45s (later, of course, the Astros) started well, but they would endure a brutal 6-29 streak starting in late June that would bring them crashing back to reality. They would give the Dodgers some trouble late in September, however, adding to the spiky drama that played out in the last ten days of the season.