60 YEARS AGO/56: WHEN YOU SEE PHIL ORTEGA'S NAME IN THE BOX SCORE...

 ...it does not bode well for the outcome of the Dodger game in question during 1962.

To be fair to Phil Ortega, he was put in an impossible position that year: he was a wild, 22-year old righty with a live arm who was rushed to the majors in order to be a mop-up man--a position that doesn't really exist in MLB today, despite teams carrying four (and sometimes five) more pitchers on their roster than they did in 1962.

So Ortega inherited all the garbage time. The Dodgers lost 15 games by seven or more runs in 1962 (which is kind of a shocking number for a team that won 102 games--we're writing a note to ourselves to check into where such an "achievement" ranks compared with other 100+ win teams). Of those 15 mega-losses, Ortega appeared in 12 of them. The Dodgers' won-loss record in 1962 when he appeared in a game (as mentioned awhile back in a previous post...) was 2-22.

Ortega was a man with his own sense of principle: when he first arrived in LA in 1960, he dug a hole for himself with management when he insisted on identifying himself as a Native American, when the Dodgers preferred that he go with their front office PR lie that he was Hispanic. For reasons known only to the Dodger brain trust, they left an older pitcher with more experience and better control (Howie Reed) at Spokane in 1962 (and, indeed, for two additional seasons) instead of Ortega, who had great stuff but lacked experience and polish.

The rust and the desperation just hurl themselves out of Ortega's 1962 game logs--where, out of 24 appearances, he manages to walk no one in exactly three (3) of them. (An exaggerated windup was retooled in the minors in 1963, but it took Phil until 1966 to bring his pitches fully under control. By the following year, he was the best pitcher on an overachieving Washington Senators team led by his ex-teammate Gil Hodges. An arm injury in spring training the following year forced Ortega into delivery adjustments that undermined his control again, and brought his career to a premature end.)

So back to June 9, 1962 in Houston: Stan Williams started vs. the Colts' Bob Bruce--a pitcher who, by the way, absolutely thrived at Colt Stadium (20-10 record with a 2.59 ERA over nearly 300 IP from 1962-64). Stan gave up three in the first, but settled down and the score was 3-1 Colts entering the fifth. 

But Williams unpardonably walked Joey Amalfitano and fell behind in the count to Roman Mejias, who hit Stan's 3-1 pitch for a home run, making it 5-1 Colts. Walt Alston, not knowing that Bruce was going to become the equivalent of Don Drysdale whenever he pitched in Colt Stadium, decided to bring in Ed Roebuck in hopes of keeping the score right there, to make a comeback more likely.

But if you've read the previous post, you'll likely recall that there is no entry in the "heroic lengthy relief appearance" log for Roebuck on 6/9. Not hardly. Ed proceeded to get lit up for five runs in just a third of an inning (surrendering a single, a homer, and two triples). It was 10-1 when he was removed--and, of course, it was now Ortega Time. 

Phil coughed up Roebuck's inherited runner, but otherwise got out of the fifth, making it 11-1 Colts. He served up the Colts' third triple of the game (be still, my heart) in the seventh--the hapless Amalfitano, of all people, who scored, making it 12-1. And a couple of hits and an RBI ground-out in the eighth got Houston to the 13-run pool and left the Dodgers all wet. Final score: Colts 13, Dodgers 1. 

UP in St. Louis, the Giants got back-to-back homers again (Willie Mays and Felipe Alou) to score three in the first...but a two-run double by Carl Sawatski off Jack Sanford got the Cards even in the bottom of the inning. Bill White homered in the fifth, putting the Cards in front 5-3, then Al Dark got tricky and made a double-switch in the sixth, bringing in "Young Gaylord Perry," who hadn't pitched in a couple weeks. It worked for an inning, anyway, and the Giants made it 5-4 in the seventh on a run-scoring double by Harvey Kuenn. 

But young Perry (sorry, those words still don't seem to belong together...) coughed up a homer to pitcher Ray Sadecki to start off the bottom of the seventh. After retiring Curt Flood, he then surrendered back-to-back doubles to Julian Javier and White before Dark could get Bobby Bolin warmed up in the bullpen. The Cards wound up with three runs in the inning, and a couple of days later Gaylord was sent back to AAA, where he'd remain until September. Final score: Cards 8, Giants 4.

SEASON RECORDS: LAD 41-19, SFG 40-19

60 YEARS AGO/55: HOW DO WE SPELL LENGTHY RELIEF?

Earlier in this 1962 Giants-Dodgers retrospective we have run across a phenomenon that we see only rarely these days (and when we do, it's in a modified form)--we speak of the long relief appearance. Today a "long relief appearance" could be defined as any such outing by a relief that's greater than a single inning in length--or is embodied in the Tampa Bay Rays' Ryan Yarbrough, whose "delayed starter" role flourished sufficiently during 2018-19 to place him in the top 100 of pitchers whose relief outings lasted four or more innings. (Yarbrough, by the way, was much less effective as a starting pitcher, and the continued deterioration of his effectiveness has recently prompted the Rays to option him to the minors.)

So from all that, let's stick with the idea that four innings is the minimum requirement for our conception of the "lengthy relief appearance." In 1962, such things were still relatively commonplace (as the table at right will demonstrate). For purposes of comparison, note that the average number of relief appearances per team of ≥4 IP in 2021 was...four (4). And there's this: the Rays' MLB-leading total of 17 such "lengthy" relief appearances was lower than the average number of such occurrences in 1962. 

As you can see from the table, the Dodgers and Giants are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to such appearances. And as we'll see, the "heroic" variant of the lengthy relief appearance--the one where the reliever holds off the opposition to give his team a chance to rally and win the game after being behind early--is one that the Dodgers relied upon from their bullpen in 1962. The game of June 8, 1962--Dodgers vs. Colts in LA's second trip to Houston--is one of ten games in which one of three Dodger relievers--Ed Roebuck, Larry Sherry and Ron Perranoski--notched a win as a result of a relief appearance of ≥4 IP.

Space doesn't permit us to do more than scratch the surface of the "lengthy relief appearance" as it evolved from the early days of the game; but, as you'll suspect from the above account, the trend line is one of decline. As starters threw fewer innings, and as managers began to juggle their pitchers more, "lengthy relief appearances" rose above 20 per team per year in the middle of the Deadball Era, and intermittently exceeding 25 per team per year through the 1920s and 1930s (as the chart at left shows).

Those numbers stayed constant until the early 60s, when we see a precipitous decline during the Era of the Strike Zone (1963-68), where the MLB average drops down to 12 per team. There's a recovery in the 70s thats briefly into the 80s, in large part due to certain teams re-adopting the usage pattern as a conscious strategy--most prominently the late 70s/early 80s Red Sox--remember Bob "Snapper" Stanley? Or Tom Burgmeier, his teammate on the Sox from 1978-82? These two lengthly relief specialists accumulated enough such appearances to wind up #3 and #4 on the all-time list, behind all-time leaders Lindy McDaniel (80) and Hoyt Wilhelm (78).

But then the decline is swift and dramatic, pushing toward zero in a way that presages what happens to complete games during the 2010s. There's a brief blip due to the "opener" fad initiated by the Rays in 2018-19, but the average seems to have bottomed out at 4. (Thus far in '22, there have been 41 such appearances, which tracks to a season total very similar to what we saw in 2021, when there were 116, or just slightly under four per team.)

Roebuck (37 such appearances), Sherry (33) and Perranoski (30) have fairly modest lifetime totals compared to the leaders mentioned above. But these were guys who specialized in the "heroic" kind of lengthy relief appearances. In '62, the three of them combined for ten such appearances, resulting in ten precious wins salvaged from defeat. Larry Sherry's four-inning stint on June 8th, in innings ten through thirteen, in a road game where every scoreless inning that keeps you alive means that there's still another scoreless inning needed to win or stay alive, is just the second of these ten outings that the Dodgers received in 1962. And as it turned out, they needed every one of them to get to that star-crossed October playoff series.

OH yes--in St. Louis, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey hit back-to-back solo homers, but the Cardinals took it to Juan Marichal in the fifth inning, with Ken Boyer's three-run homer the decisive blow. Lindy McDaniel didn't add to his MLB leading total of  "lengthy" relief outings in his late-inning support of Bob Gibson, but he did retire eight straight to hand the Giants their third consecutive loss. Final score: Cardinals 8, Giants 4.

SEASON RECORDS: LAD 41-18, SFG 40-18

60 YEARS AGO/54: A SINGULAR DUALITY? PROBABLY NOT...

Have you been keeping track of how many times the Giants and Dodgers lost on the same day? How often they lost games by one run on the same day? If you can rattle off this information at the drop of a hat, you are clearly a "glass half-empty" type, and need either a good dunking in the pool or a visit from El Kabong.

June 1962, as noted is a much crueler month for both Giants and Dodgers than they've experienced previously. And June 7, 1962 is only the sixth time that the two teams have lost on the same day--but as you can see, they'll be doing that a good bit more in June (and we've only shown you the first half of the month, which doesn't even cover the full extent of the Giants' "swoon").

June 7th is also only the second time in '62 where the two teams lost one-run games on the same day (but see above!).

The matchup at Wrigley Field certainly didn't look promising for the Chicago Cubs on June 7th: they sent Don Cardwell (1-6) to the mound against the Giants' Billy Pierce (8-0). Truth told, however, Pierce had not been pitching particularly well for the Giants: after posting a 1.07 ERA in April, he'd gone 5-0 with a 5.02 ERA ever since, coasting on the lusty run support provided to him (the Giants had scored an average of 8.6 runs in his last five starts).

Cardwell, who'd had his first winning season in 1961, started catastrophically for the Cubs (in keeping with their 4-16 stumble out of the gate) and was still not pitching all that well (a 5.45 ERA since May 1st). He'd recently had a couple of good games, however, so they was some hope that he was coming out of what had essentially been a season-long funk.

The Cubs broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the fourth, scoring three runs on that increasingly rare post-modern phenomenon: the long-sequence rally. #3 hitter Billy Williams kicked things off with a single; #8 hitter (and ex-Giant) André Rodgers completed it with a two-run single. 

Meanwhile Cardwell had stymied the Giants for five innings, allowing only one hit until San Francisco finally rallied for two in the sixth, with Harvey Kuenn's RBI triple the key blow. Willie Mays created a different kind of excitement after he drove in Kuenn with a single: he stole second and third off Cardwell, who managed to retire Orlando Cepeda on a ground out to end the Giants' threat.

Rodgers took it to his ex-mates again in the bottom of the sixth, hitting a long home run to make it 4-2 Cubs. Cardwell, who'd held the Giants scoreless in the seventh and eighth, was touched for a homer by Felipe Alou to open the ninth, but he retired the side in order to hand Pierce his first loss of year. Final score: Cubs 4, Giants 3.

AT Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, the starting pitcher matchup was particularly intriguing, a "battle of southpaws" (as they used to say): the Dodgers' Johnny Podres vs. the Pirates' Harvey Haddix. (We've linked to their pages at bb-ref so you can revisit their records, while you consider which of them had the better career.)

On this night, it was clearly a pitcher's duel, with both men holding the opposition to just four hits in eight innings. Unfortunately for Haddix, one of those four hits had been a two-run homer by Willie Davis, so the Dodgers took a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth. Podres proceeded to allow singles to Dick Groat and Roberto Clemente, and was replaced on the mound by Larry Sherry, who would pitch with the platoon advantage against mercurial slugger Dick Stuart.

Sherry threw a fastball that Stuart swung and missed for Strike One. He followed with the same pitch--and Stuart hit it deep into the left-field bleachers for a game-winning three-run homer. (After the game, in the Dodgers' stunned clubhouse, Podres offered some mordant solace: "At least it was quick.") Final score: Pirates 3, Dodgers 2.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 40-17, LAD 40-18

60 YEARS AGO/53: THE GIANTS BLOW A GAME--THE DODGERS DON'T...

It was the eighteenth anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 1962, and the game between the Giants and Cubs at Wrigley Field that day proved that Al Dark was no Eisenhower. He and his hapless foot soldier, Jose Pagan, likely ran the Giants out of a ball game. 

Here comes the swoon!

In a tight contest between the Giants' Mike McCormick and the Cubs' Dick Ellsworth (who would lose 20 games this year but turn around and win 22 the next season), Pagan made three baserunning errors in the same game: he was caught attempting to steal second twice, and was doubled off second base when Cubs' left fielder Billy Williams made a lunging, shoestring catch of a sinking liner by Tom Haller.

Pagan mitigated his baserunning gaffes by collecting three hits and driving in a run in the top of the ninth to tie the game 3-3. But he ran on a 3-2 pitch delivered by Ellsworth to Haller, and catcher El Tappe (who, contrary to rumor, was not the inspiration for the character of "El Kabong" on the Quick Draw McGraw cartoon series...) threw him out--again. 

Ultimately, though, it was Dark (the ex-Marine) who brought the "kabong" down on the Giants this day, by sticking with reliever Don Larsen when he had reinforcements ready to replace him. Larsen had already pitched two innings when he stayed in the game for the bottom of the ninth; but he lost the bubble quickly, walking two batters and uncorking a wild pitch to put Lou Brock on third. Dark called for an intentional walk to former Giant André Rodgers, loading the bases. But Larsen then proceed to walk pinch-hitter Don Landrum on four pitches, forcing in the winning run. Final score: Cubs 4, Giants 3.

IN Pittsburgh, it was the battle of the two Joes: Pirates' lefty Joe Gibbon and the Dodgers' gangly teenage monster Joe Moeller. The tenacity of youth somehow managed to prevail in this game, as Moeller faced 39 batters (a lot even for a veteran, much less a 19-year-old), walked seven, and gave up eight hits, and on this evening seemed to thrive in escaping innings with men left on base. Ultimately the Pirates would strand 12 runners, breaking through only in the ninth inning after the Dodgers had built up a 5-1 lead, in part due to errors from the Bucs' fabled middle infield combo of Dick Groat and Bill Mazeroski (two damaging unearned runs). Ed Roebuck and Ron Perranoski were brought in to douse the Pirate rally, which had gone far enough to bring the potential winning run to the plate in the ovular shape of Smoky Burgess, hitting .364 at the time.

But Perranoski dispatched the pesky, corpulent Burgess on a grounder to third, and youth was served (in the form of a win for the teenage monster). Ka-bong! Final score: Dodgers 5, Pirates 3.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 40-16, LAD 40-17

60 YEARS AGO/52: FULL STEAM AHEAD, BUT--SEA CHANGE COMING!

On June 5, 1962, the Giants had a game similar to most of those they'd had to date: the offense was plentiful, with all five of their .300+ hitters (Harvey Kuenn, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou, Jim Davenport) contributing to another eventual rout. It took until the eighth inning, after starter Billy O'Dell had given back most of their early 5-1 lead, for them to knock out Cubs' starter Bob Buhl, but they did so convincingly, easily overcoming a double play turned against them in the inning and taking advantage of a crucially-timed error to score four unearned runs. Their season record was now 40-15 Final score: Giants 11, Cubs 4. 

But that was about to change...for a period of seventeen days, San Francisco would be mostly helpless: they'd lose 12 of 16 and fall into second place. It wasn't unexpected; it seemed to have become part of the team's innate makeup. Since moving from New York, the team had established a pattern of starting strongly, being at or very near the top of the standings through May, and then stumbling in June, followed by a protracted period of inconsistent play that left them as bridesmaids in October.

As the chart at left shows, it wasn't quite an article of natural law that the Giants would "swoon" in June, but it took root in the hearts of Giants' rooters during their first years in San Francisco because the Giants seem to keep doing it. In five of the six years since moving, they would have a protracted period of poor play in June: over the course of those five years, June would be the month in which the Giants had their worst overall record (69-75). In the only year they avoided a "June swoon"--1959--they merely postponed it to the end of the year, falling out of the pennant race in the last two weeks with a thud.

Of course, it eventually dissipated, but the term lingered for years, until the Giants went through a rough patch from the mid-1970s until the late-1980s and a "swoon" had become more akin to an entire season.

The normal characteristic of a "swoon" was not a hitting drought, but more frequently a pitching meltdown. That's what we'll see is the case with the Giants' 1962 version, as charted in the statistical summary of their pitching from June 6th to June 22nd (data at right). As you can see, Giants' pitchers combined for an unsightly ERA of 6.01 during this stretch--a figure that may seem more familiar when encountered in team summaries from clubs at the other end of the standings (e.g. the Mets and the Phillies, which we saw earlier.) The obvious problem is that only one starting pitcher (Juan Marichal) had an ERA under four over this stretch. But possibly more catastrophic was the meltdown in San Francisco's bullpen--specifically Stu Miller, the pivotal member of the relief corps on which most every serious late-inning scenario depended. 

In the data we've borrowed a statistic developed by David Pinto called "Cy Young Points" (CYP), which gives us an opportunity to summarize performance in a form that mimics the often-troublesome concept of "replacement level." While the measure has its limitations, the fact that it works reasonably well for both starters and relievers is particularly useful--and especially so for a year like 1962, when a considerable amount of "mixed usage" for pitchers was still quite common. We like showing the "Cy Young points" within smaller snapshots, as we do here, because it gives us a closer look at the "health" of a pitching staff and which pitchers are contributing something positive. When we look at "Cy Young points" as a rate stat (per nine innings, the column marked "Cy/9"), we can see roughly where the ERA/WHIP breakpoints are in terms of the "Cy Young points" stat--which, like WAR but without the level of calculation distortion in that measure, can go negative. 

What we get from that in a snapshot such as this is a breakout showing us how many of the innings pitched during a particular time frame were contributed by pitchers whose CYP and Cy/9 are positive. In the case of the Giants, they are underwater, with only 39% of their IP coming from hurlers whose performance is above "replacement level." We cluster the data into two categories, pitchers whose ERA for the frame is below 4, and those who are above it. (We'll see a different configuration when we look at the performance of the Dodgers' pitchers a bit later.)

SO let's get back into the other relevant events on June 5, 1962. The Dodgers were back in Pittsburgh, where they played a doubleheader (Game Two being a make-up for the washed-out game scheduled for May 6th). In game one, the Pirates did Stan Williams a big favor and mostly swung at his deliveries that were early in the count--thus making it less likely that the erratic righty would against manifest the control problems that had beset him thus far in '62. The pesky Pirates made a lot of hits off Stan, but they were all singles--and in the sixth, Bill Mazeroski swung at a pitch outside the strike zone--low and away--on an 0-1 count that took one big hop and landed in Williams' glove. Stan's throw to second was true, and Maury Wills' relay to first was as well--double play, inning over.

The Dodgers' offense came mostly from Willie Davis, who homered in the first, doubled home Wills in the sixth, and then scored on a single by Tommy Davis. Three runs were just enough: Alston got Stan out of the game in the seventh when he allowed two hits and a run, and Larry Sherry rode in for 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief to clinch the game for the Dodgers. Final score: Dodgers 3, Pirates 2 (first game).

Game two was tied 2-2 through six innings, but the Dodgers broke through in the seventh when Wills (who had four hits in this game and seven in the doubleheader) singled, stole a base, and scored on another RBI single from Tommy Davis. Pirates reliever Diomodes (Methuselah) Olivo, a 43-year-old rookie, made a gargantuan throwing error later in the inning, permitting the Dodgers to score two more unearned runs.

In the eighth, Dodgers' starter Don Drysdale was thrown out at the plate trying to score on Wills' double, but LA just kept slapping hits off Olivo, and eventually scored two more runs. All of this action had pushed the game to the point of curfew in Pittsburgh, and the game was actually suspended in the top of the ninth with the Dodgers ahead, 7-3. The following day, before the regularly scheduled game, Alston sent Sandy Koufax to the mound after the Dodgers had scored another run in the ninth; it was Sandy's day to throw in the bullpen, so Alston figured he could get his work in by pitching in an actual game. Sandy and his bluish finger came in and retired the Pirates in order, striking out two. Final score: Dodgers 8, Pirates 3.

BUT somewhat like the Giants, LA was getting ready for a bit of a slump. It wasn't anything like the Giants' swoon, but the bats drooped a bit, Johnny Podres slumped, and Stan Williams reverted to his wild man of Borneo form. The Dodgers would tread water during the Giants' period of desperate struggle, playing .500 ball (8-8). A look at their pitching performance using the same data and stats from David Pinto's Baseball Musings site shows us that Koufax was utterly brilliant in this phase (but you already knew that); Drysdale was very good; and two of the Dodgers' relievers, Larry Sherry and Ron Perranoski, were very strong throughout the period. Teenage monster Joe Moeller was considerably less effective but managed to win a couple of games anyway. 

Thanks to Koufax, the Dodgers' Cy Young points were a net positive, though their ERA during the 6/6-6/22 stretch was mediocre (4.01). They were a net positive in Cy/9, and the number of innings pitched by hurlers making positive contributions to the team in this time frame totaled 55% of all their IP in these games--not great, but significantly better than the Giants. 

So the sea-change is coming--our two teams will struggle, but they'll still be the two teams at the top of the league when we get into the last week of June. 

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 40-15, LAD 39-17, CIN 29-19, PIT 28-22, STL 25-24, MIL 24-28, HOU 22-29, PHI 19-31, CHC 16-35, NMY 12-34

60 YEARS AGO/51: IF YOU HIT ONLY ONE HOMER IN YOUR CAREER... + THREE-DAY JUNE UPDATE

June 4, 1962 was the first of seven starts (and one relief appearance!) by Sandy Koufax during the month that proved to be the defining moment in emergence of his "Left Arm of God" identity. 

The Quality Matrix (QMAX) diagram (at left) gives us the most dramatic visual confirmation of his rise to dominance: Koufax' control would improve the following year, in some part doubtless due to the strike zone change, but what is clear that this is the flashpoint for the achievement that propelled him into the Hall of Fame. Batters hit .122 against him during this month; his ERA was 1.23.

(Of the 153 months in which starting pitchers threw at least 50 IP and had an ERA of 1.25 or lower, Koufax' total of 73 strikeouts is still the highest sixty years later. His SO/9 ratio of 11.26 seems a bit prosaic in the post-modern age of "fan-o-rama," but keep in mind that present-day pitchers never even approach 40 IP in a month, much less 50--or nearly 60, as was the case for Koufax in June 1962. We'll investigate this area further at a later date...)

The final score of the game between the Dodgers and the Phillies doesn't quite reflect the utter dominance on display by Koufax on June 4 (which, oddly enough, is the exact day two years later when he would return to Philadelphia and throw a no-hitter against them). We've buried our lede per our blog entry title because it distracts from that dominance, but we'll get to it eventually, as the flukish, singular event it pinpoints is more human interest than any form of rigorous analysis.

Koufax' chances at a no-hitter on this day were dashed by the very first batter he faced--Tony Taylor, who singled to left on the very first pitch. But Taylor was quickly caught stealing, and the Dodgers got back-to-back homers from Wally Moon and Johnny Roseboro in the second to open up a 3-0 lead. Koufax then proceeded to allow no more hits all the way into the ninth inning, while striking out 11 Phillies along the way. 

At this point, 26-year old rookie outfielder Jacke Davis enters the picture. Davis was a slightly built (5'11", 160 lbs) lesser prospect who'd put together a solid year at the Phillies top farm team (Buffalo) in 1961, though he was seriously overshadowed by the year turned in by Ted Savage. He'd made the big club as a spare outfielder in '62, and had been used mostly as a platoon player against lefties with middling success thus far (.289 BA). Phils manager Gene Mauch did not start him against Koufax on this day, nor had he done so nine days earlier when Philadelphia had played the Dodgers in Los Angeles: Davis did face Koufax on that day as a pinch-hitter--and was one of his 16 strikeout victims.

So, now it's June 4th, it's the ninth inning, the Dodgers have a comfortable 6-0 lead; but there have been some tiny cracks in Sandy's dominance in the inning prior to Davis' second pinch-hit appearance against him. After Tony Taylor became Koufax' 12th strikeout victim to open the inning, Johnny Callison singled--the first hit off Sandy since the first inning. Ted Savage hit a foul pop that was caught by first baseman Ron Fairly for the second out. Koufax then had a lapse of control, walking Roy Sievers to put men on first and second. 

Up comes Davis. He swings and misses at Sandy's first delivery. But Koufax is high with the next two pitches, and digs at the mound with his cleats. The rookie flails at Sandy's curve ball for strike two. Koufax goes with the heater with the next pitch...

...and Davis launches a long fly to left-center that Willie Davis starts toward laterally, not initially sensing how the ball is carrying--and then he backpedal frantically toward the fence, trying to outrun the ball, which is still carrying, carrying...Willie leaps at the left-center field wall, but the ball sails just over his glove and into the first row of seats for a home run.

Davis seems as stunned as everyone by the turn of events, and he has a wide-eyed look as he travels the bases. Sievers rubs him on the top of his cap as he crosses home plate. Koufax looks a bit glazed, but snaps to attention when he hears some words shouted at him by catcher Roseboro. He nods, takes one look back toward left-center, and then strikes out Tony Gonzalez looking--on a curve ball.

It was Jacke Davis' first--and only--major league home run. After hitting it, something seemed to happen to him. He stopped hitting altogether. He went 2-for-29 after his homer off Koufax, in increasingly infrequent appearances. He did start against Sandy on July 4th in Los Angeles--and went 0-for-4. On July 20th, now hitting just .213, Davis was sent back to Buffalo. He never returned to the majors: his hitting fell apart even at AAA in 1963-64, with sub-.200 batting averages., and he was a "civilian" again in '65.

But as we intimated in our teaser title, if you are only going to hit one homer in the major leagues, it might as well be against Sandy Koufax. Davis died last year at the age of 85: one can imagine that over the years, he had many, many conversations about his singular achievement. (Final score: Dodgers 6, Phillies 3.)

[NOTE: Giants were off on 6/4. SEASONAL RECORDS: SFG 39-15, LAD 37-17

***

SPEAKING of fluky occurrences, we can't resist sharing the first three days of June 2022's hitting results, which take the ongoing disparities between the two leagues and blow them up into an astonishing fireball. So far, the NL is hitting .258/.331/.444, is averaging 5.4 runs/game, and has a HR/G ratio of 1.47. The AL, by contrast, is hitting .238/.309/.397, is averaging 4.2 runs/game,  and has a HR/G ratio of .105. 

Some of this, of course, is due to the fact that the NL has Coors Field, and the weather is warming up; so on the days when games are played in Denver, NL offensive totals generally get a sizable boost. Even with the shocking fact that the Braves and Rockies played a low-scoring game at Coors last night (Braves won 3-1), there have been four games at Coors Field in June already (there was a doubleheader on June 1st), and the run scoring has been prodigious even with last night's anomaly: a total of 63 runs, for an average of 7.9 runs per team per game. 

So, in the NL at least, June is indeed busting out all over. Between Coors, the baseball, warming weather, the imponderable factor of the various "humidors," and who knows what else, the "chicks" (and the apparatchiks, too, no doubt...) are digging the long ball now more than ever. 

May the saints--and the agonizingly slow-moving long arm of the law--preserve us...

60 YEARS AGO/50: THE WIN THAT GOT AWAY

Certain games in any season will prove to be haunted in one way or another; that was the case for the Dodgers on June 3, 1962, when they blew an early 4-0 lead and lost their second straight game in Philadelphia. Given that they'd ultimately wind up in a tie with the Giants at the end of the regular season, this game was one of several that could have clinched the pennant for them.

The Dodgers still led 5-2 going into the bottom of the fourth, thanks in large part to three run-scoring hits from Tommy Davis (who'd regained the league lead in RBIs by doing so). But Johnny Podres came undone, plagued primarily by timely hits from left-handed batters. After Don Demeter walked to open the inning, Tony Gonzalez (lefty) slugged a homer, making it 5-4. Backup catcher Bob Oldis drew another walk, and Bobby Wine's sacrifice bunt was well-placed enough to go for a base hit. After pinch-hitter Jacke Davis struck out, Tony Taylor hit a grounder to Jim Gilliam at third, whose throw to first was wide, pulling Ron Fairly off the bag. That loaded the bases for Johnny Callison, the Phils' 23-year-old lefty-hitting right fielder, who was having a breakout season and who'd already doubled in a run off Podres earlier in the game. 

Walt Alston stuck with Podres, keeping the left-on-left matchup; Callison slapped a 1-2 pitch into center field, however, scoring Oldis and Wine and putting the Phillies ahead, 6-5. Willie Davis' throw from center came home in a fruitless attempt to get Wine, allowing both Taylor and Callison to move up, leaving runners on second and third. Podres then left the game in favor of Larry Sherry, who would give up a scoring fly ball to Roy Sievers for Philadelphia's fifth run of the inning.

In the top of the fifth, Mauch brought in Paul Brown, his failed starter from earlier in the series. Brown proceeded to throw five scoreless innings against the Dodgers to clinch the win for the Phils. Along the way there was an odd decision by Alston: in the fifth, with two on and one out, he left Sherry into bat. Larry promptly hit into a double play to end the inning. Perhaps Alston figured there was plenty of time for his offense to mount a rally; but they never did. Final score: Phillies 7, Dodgers 5.

Brown got stronger as the game went on, and was awarded a save for his five innings of work. The Philadelphia press second-guessed the game's official scorer the next day, suggesting that Brown's performance was such that he could have been awarded the win (a decision that was in the purview of the official scorer). As it turned out, Paul Brown never did win a game in the big leagues, finishing his career (as noted earlier) with an 0-8 record. For Brown as it was also for the Dodgers, 'twas a precious, elusive win that got away.

THINGS ultimately did not get away from the Giants up at the Polo Grounds, though Bob Miller took a 1-0 lead into the sixth against Juan Marichal. Miller struck out the side in the sixth, upping his total of K's to eight, but he also gave up a game-tying homer to Willie Mays. Then he simply fell apart in the seventh, and Stengel could not be roused from the bench to take him out until Miller had allowed five hits, a walk and a hit batsman: he was finally driven from the game when benchwarmer Ernie Bowman singled in the Giants' fifth run of the inning. (Bowman hit .190 in '62 and in his brief three-year career appeared in more games as a pinch-runner than he did in the Giants' starting lineup.)

Miller's record fell to 0-3, and it would extend to 0-12 as the season "progressed" for the Mets; he'd finally "get off the schneid" in the Mets' final game of 1962, beating the Cubs 2-1 for his only win of the year. (Proving again that he was no stranger to wins, Marichal went all the way for the Giants. upping his season record to 8-3.) Final score: Giants 6, Mets 1.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 38-16, LAD 36-17

NL OFFENSIVE LEADERS: 

BA--B. Williams CHC .359, Gonzalez PHI . 347, Cepeda SFG .341, F. Alou SFG .340, Groat PIT .336, T. Davis LAD .330

OBP--Fairly LAD .457, B. Williams  CHC .432, Mays SFG .424, Dalrymple PHI .419, Gonzalez PHI .419, Kuenn SFG .395

SLG--Mays SFG .682, Pinson CIN .521, Thomas NYM . 620, B. Williams CHC .616, Cepeda SFG .605, Gonzalez PHI .580, T. Davis LAD .566

HR--Mays SFG  19, Cepeda SFG 15, Banks CHC 14, Thomas NYM 13, Pinson CIN 13, Altman CHC 12

RBI--T. Davis LAD 55, Cepeda SFG 52, Mays SFG 47, Pinson CIN 40, F. Alou SFG 39, White STL 36

Runs--Mays SFG 53, Wills LAD 46, Cepeda SFG 45, B. Williams CHC 43, Hiller SFG 40, T. Davis LAD 39

Hits--Cepeda SFG, 75, B. Williams CHC 71, T. Davis LAD 69, Flood STL 68, Groat PIT 68, Mejias HOU 65

2B--F. Robinson CIN 20, Brock CHC 13, T. Davis LAD 12, Callison PHI 12

3B--Virdon PIT 6; B. Williams CHC  5, T. Davis LAD 5, Boyer STL 4, Callison PHI 4, Brock CHC 4, Fairly LAD 4, Burright LAD 4

SB--Wills LAD 27, W. Davis LAD 12, Taylor PHI 10, Boyer STL 7, F. Robinson CIN 7, Javier STL 7

60 YEARS AGO/49: ROLLING ON + APRIL-MAY 2022 R/G UPDATE...

June 2, 1962 was certainly a day that the fledgling New York Mets would like to forget. The Giants from swept a doubleheader from the Mets on this day, and it began with a bang when San Francisco scored five runs in the first: Met's starter Jay Hook was forced to walk the plank after retiring only one batter.

(The Mets had actually played five doubleheaders prior to this one, and had held their own in the early going: they'd split with the Cubs in April, and actually swept two doubleheaders in May--both times victimizing the Milwaukee Braves. The Giants and Dodgers had gotten them into the mode of "play two-lose two" a week earlier, however, and they were about to embrace their destiny, playing twenty-three more doubleheaders over the rest of the season (who says you didn't get your money's worth in the "good old days," eh?) with a painful ledger to show for it: they swept one more, split nine, and were swept  thirteen more times the rest of the way. The Mets' overall record in doubleheaders in '62 was 16-48--a .250 WPCT that exactly matched their overall season record. Amazin' indeed...)

Willie Mays had jump-started the Giants' five-run first with his 18th home run of the year, and San Francisco did not look back even though there was no one gaining on them. The Mets had scored a lone run off Jack Sanford in the first, and simply surrendered to the rhythm of being the men working on the chain gang. Final score: Giants 10, Mets 1 (first game).

For the nightcap, Al Dark reached into the bullpen and gave Jim Duffalo a start, to problematic results. Staked to a 4-0 lead in part due to Tom Haller's two-run homer, Duffalo faltered in the bottom of the third, and Dark brought a quick hook, replacing him with Don Larsen. The Mets pushed over an unearned run in the fourth off Larsen to tie the game, 4-4, and that's how it remained until the eighth, when Harvey Kuenn hit a two-run homer off Craig Anderson (now firmly in the midst of his sixteen-game losing streak). Stu Miller pitched two innings for the save, and the Mets had lost their fourteenth straight. Final score: Giants 6, Mets 4.

IN Philly, Walt Alston had to reach into the back end of his bullpen for a starter: Phil Ortega. That did not augur well for the Dodgers' efforts to extend their current thirteen-game winning streak, and it only took moments for that premonition to become reality. Ortega was knocked out of the game in the second inning, which ended with the Phillies ahead 6-0. Rookie southpaw Dennis Bennett channeled a bit of Koufax as he stifled the Dodgers, hurling a four hit shutout, striking out eleven. After catching the Giants on the first of June, LA was suddenly a game and a half back. Final score: Phillies 7, Dodgers 0.

SEASONAL RECORDS: SFG 38-15, LAD 36-16

Now, briefly, back to the present. The cone of silence has descended on tracking the state of baseball's offense: after the 6/1 games, the aggregate MLB batting average has reached .240, a significant psychological boost for everyone in the industry, as it moves the needle away from the dreaded specter of 1968. 

As the table at right demonstrates, it's the NL that's leading the way, possibly due to the still-controversial implementation of the "universal DH." Home run levels jumped sharply there in May, less so in the AL; but MLB has gotten its HR/G average back to one per game, which also seems to be something that many folks now take as its own form of psychological comfort. Of course, never mind that the invidious trends continue and are left unaddressed. Naturally, we'll continue to track this over the course of the year--stay tuned...

60 YEARS AGO/48: DIFFERENT PARTNERS, A VARIATION OF THE SAME RESULT...

As has happened several times previously during our recap of the Giants-Dodgers melee in 1962, the teams swapped opponents on June 1, with SF going to the Polo Grounds and the Dodgers invading Philadelphia. 

This likely created a certain lingering dread for the Mets and the Phillies, whose combined record against the west coast behemoths in 1962 was 15-57--which works out to a WPCT of .208, even lower than the Mets' stultifying .250 mark (40-120) in their--well, amazin'--inaugural year.

DREAD may have been spreading all across Roger Craig's face on that Friday evening, when he found out that Willie McCovey was starting against him and playing left field. As a result, Craig suffered from what his manager called "odd inning fever" after the game--which referred to the fact that Roger the ex-Dodger served up homers in the first, third and fifth innings before departing with another of his 24 losses in '62. 

McCovey hit two of them. (Surprisingly, these are the only HRs McCovey hit off Craig, but the second one was hit over 450 feet to right center, which may have been why Roger started walking Willie at an accelerated pace from that point on.) 

Willie Mays--you may have heard of him--hit the other one. And another ex-Dodger, Willard Hunter (but whose tenure on the Dodgers had lasted about two one-thousandths of Craig's) followed on the mound for the Mets, and served up another homer--a grand slam, no less, to Jim Davenport.

Hunter's poor performance (five runs in three innings) pushed the Giants to a 9-1 lead, which they wound up needing when Billy Pierce faltered in the eighth. Al Dark, who knew he had a shaky bullpen, did his Stengel imitation in the Giants' dugout, awakening only after the Mets had scored three runs. His pick to replace Pierce, righty Bobby Bolin, immediately served up a gopher ball to Felix Mantilla, but the shower of hits then passed suddenly like a capricious summer squall. 

In the ninth, Bolin and Stu Miller managed to put two runners on and get the Mets' HR leader, Frank Thomas, to the plate representing the tying run, but Frank's bid for a base hit was snapped up at third by a lunging Davenport, who threw to second for the game-ending out. 

It was another premonitory post-neo-sabe game, with six homers. (Though we should not always tromp down so hard on our semi-brethren: this is the Polo Grounds, after all--you may remember our 1962 ballpark chart that showed us that the Giants' old stomping grounds allowed the most homers of any park that year--213, to be exact.) Final score: Giants 9, Mets 6.

DOWN in Philly, the Dodgers had already played a day game (on Friday!) and had enjoyed the natural sunlight immensely, taking Paul Brown downtown and knocking him out in the fourth inning. (Brown, by the way, was on his way to a lifetime 0-8 record in the major leagues, so he wasn't around long enough to gain the nickname "Downtown" that was assigned later in the decade to the Giants' Ollie Brown.) The Phillies probably swallowed hard, knowing that there was another game to play after this one.

Stan Williams was, of course, semi-feckless as usual, serving up homers in the fourth and fifth--the latter to banjo-hitting shortstop Bobby Wine. This prompted Walt Alston to bring in his closer, Ron Perranoski, in the sixth inning. Having ridden Ed Roebuck for five innings the day before, Alston saddled up his lefty and let him run free for four innings. It was a bit of a bumpy ride--Perranoski gave up six hits, but only one run; and the Dodgers put the game away in the eighth when the man who replaced Brown, lefty Chris Short, suddenly went wild, walking four men in the inning. A couple of well-timed hits brought in five runs, and that (as they say) was that. Larry Burright's supernova lived to shine for one more day, as he smacked two triples (be still my heart...) and every starter in the LA lineup had at least one hit. Final score: Dodgers 11, Phillies 4 (first game).

And then they went out and did it all over again, with the Dodgers putting their other lanky righthander, Don Drysdale on the mound. Phillies starter Jim Owens, pitching his way off the team, came up lame in the second inning, and was replaced by future Phils manager Dallas Green, who was roughed up for 10 hits and seven runs in what amount to an emergency start. Drysdale had a three-run double off Green in the sixth, putting the game away for LA. Big D would weaken in the eighth, but Larry Sherry came in and locked things down with 1 2/3 innings of scoreless relief. The Dodgers had finally drawn even with the Giants (at least for now). Final score: Dodgers 8, Phillies 5 (second game).

SEASON RECORDS: SF 36-15, LAD 36-15