Don Drysdale, coming off one of his best starts of the year (a five-hit shutout of the Phillies on 9/2), didn't have anything close to that magic on this evening: a walk to Chuck Hiller, a double by Felipe Alou, and a single from Willie McCovey (batting cleanup ahead of Willie Mays against righties) made it 2-0 Giants before many folks in LA's brand spanking-new park got settled into their seats. In the third, Walt Alston's decision to intentionally walk Mays to load the bases backfired when Orlando Cepeda singled to left, scoring two more runs.
Things quieted down until the eighth, when Drysdale weakened and Alston decided to revisit his intentional walk idea...twice in one inning. After Mays had doubled to put runners on second and third with one out, Alston ordered a free pass for Cepeda and then pulled Drysdale for lefty Ron Perranoski--scheduled to face lefty-hitting catcher Tom Haller.
Al Dark sent up Harvey Kuenn instead, who took a strike, then hit a slow roller to third, where the defensively challenged Tommy Davis was playing. Tommy stumbled as he fielded the ball, throwing to second as he fell down; the throw was snagged by a leaping Gilliam, whose foot touched the bag just ahead of Cepeda, who quickly popped to his feet to argue the call, where he was joined by Dark, who pushed his first baseman away from the umpires lest he be ejected from the game.
That lead lasted about three minutes, when Tommy Davis hit reliever Bobby Bolin's 0-2 pitch into the left-center field bleachers to tie up the game again. (Tommy rounded the bases to the deafening roar of 54,000+ spectators, most of whom had risen to their feet.)
But the ninth proved to be a disaster for Perranoski and the Dodgers. After Hiller's single, Perranoski threw wildly to first on Jim Davenport's sacrifice bunt, putting runners at second and third and prompting Alston to issue his fourth intentional walk of the game (to Felipe Alou). With McCovey out of the game, Perranoski got Willie Mays out twice--first, the lookalike Carl Boles, batting for Bolin, who popped up, and then the "real #24," who slapped a hopper to Jim Gilliam (moved to third earlier in the ninth), who threw home for the forceout on Hiller.
The Dodgers mounted a rally of their own in the bottom of the ninth, getting the tying run to the plate twice, but Tommy Davis used up a second out getting home a run, and Frank Howard looked sadly perplexed by Stu Miller's deliveries, eventually fouling out on a 0-2 pitch that was clearly out of the strike zone. (By winning three out of four in the series, the Giants climbed back to within 1 1/2 games of the Dodgers, and evened the season series between the two clubs at 9-9.) Final score: Giants 9, Dodgers 6.
SEASON RECORDS: LAD 91-50, SFG 89-51
