60 YEARS AGO/33: DRAMA-NO DRAMA...

Tuesday, May 15, 1962 saw the Giants and Dodgers both back at home after completing successful road trips (both teams went 6-3). Surprisingly, the Giants outdrew the Dodgers on this evening by nearly 12,000, but those who attended the Dodgers-Colts game were treated to a notably elevated level of in-game excitement.

First, the "no drama." Veteran Cardinals lefty Curt Simmons came into the game with a 5-0 record and a 1.60 ERA, but past was not prologue for what happened that night, as Harvey Kuenn slapped Simmons' first pitch into the right-centerfield gap for a double, and was immediately brought home on Chuck Hiller's single. The Giants scored twice in the first, once in the second, and three times in the third to knock Simmons out of the game; Billy Pierce scattered ten hits as the Cardinals could only fashion a 1-for-9 performance with RISP. Stu Miller nailed things down for Pierce and the Giants with two innings of solid relief. Final score: Giants 6, Cardinals.

AND now: "drama"--which seemed to gravitate around many of the Dodgers-Colts games in '62. The first few innings were relatively quiet: the Dodgers grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first thanks to a Willie Davis triple and a single from Duke Snider (who would start only two more times before spending the better part of the next three months picking splinters out of the Dodger bench).

Don Drysdale, starting on two days rest after his brief, unsuccessful effort as a reliever on May 12, sailed through the first three innings, but in the fourth he hit a wall of flying hooves when five Colts hitters reached base (four singles and a walk). After retiring Merritt Ranew on a fly ball, Big D then surrendered two more singles (including one by ex-Dodger Bob Aspromonte), permitting the Colts to build a 5-1 lead. 

A very rare 4-RBI game for Maury Wills...

The Dodgers knocked two runs off the Colts' lead in their half of the fourth on Maury Wills' two-run double, but Stan Williams, still struggling, gave a run back to Houston in the top of the fifth. Wills picked up another RBI off Colts' starter Bob Bruce in the bottom of the sixth when he beat out a double-play grounder that permitted Johnny Roseboro to score, making it 6-4 Colts after six.

In the seventh, Larry Sherry took over for Williams and was even more erratic, eventually surrendering a run on a bases-loaded walk (to, of all people, Bob Bruce). The frustrating see-saw pattern of the game seemed to tilting the wrong way for the Dodgers.

But then they staged an "A-team" version of the rally that the Colts had engineered earlier in the game. And, more dramatically, they did it with two outs. After Willie Davis and Snider had made out, Tommy Davis singled. Wally Moon followed with a double to the wall in right-center, scoring Davis. Johnny Roseboro worked the count to 3-2, then walked. After a pitching change (Bobby Tiefenauer in for Bruce), Larry Burright then proved that his "era" was not yet past by singling in another run, cutting the Colts' lead to 7-6.

The unsinkable Doug Camilli then batted for Sherry, hit a very long and loud foul on the first pitch, and then blooped one over Colts' second baseman Billy Goodman for an off-the-end-of-the-bat single, scoring Roseboro to tie the score. After another pitching change for the Colts (Don McMahon for Tiefenauaer), Maury Wills then came up and slapped a 2-2 pitch into right field to score Burright, taking second base when right fielder Roman Mejias played kickball in his attempt to retrieve Wills' liner.  With the Dodgers now ahead 8-7, Jim Gilliam smoked a low liner up the middle that kicked off shortstop Bob Lillis' glove, allowing both Camilli and Wills to score. 

Willie Davis then batted and made out, thus bookending an inning where he went 0-for-2 and the Dodgers scored six runs in the in-between. Seven consecutive hitters reached base: five singles, one double and a walk--a style of rally that was significantly more prevalent in 1962 than in the present day.

Ron Perranoski fended off the Colts in the eighth and ninth to close out what is universally described in journalistic textbooks as "a thrilling, come-from-behind victory." And it most certainly was--but possibly even more so due to the fact that it was accomplished with the ball remaining in play all the way throughout the rally. Final score: Dodgers 10, Colts 7.

SEASONAL RECORDS; SFG 25-8, LAD 21-12

NL LEADING UPTICK IN MAY 2022 OFFENSE

There were no games involving the Giants and the Dodgers on May 14, 1962--hence we zoom back up to the present day to report on the status of offensive levels in MLB in 2022.

We're keeping this extremely simple, as we're not quite halfway through May: we're only displaying batting average (that suddenly significant stat now that it's too close to the dreaded miasma of 1968) and HR/G. 

We've broken it out by team in each league, and averaged the data at the league level to determine if the changes we're seeing in the May data is uniform or if it is skewed in some way.

And what we see in that data is a clear sign that the NL is driving the modest-but-measurable uptick in offense that's starting to manifest as the weather begins to warm and as some of the younger pitchers who were unfamiliar to batters at the outset of the season are starting to be solved.

As you can see in the chart at right, the AL is presently staying very close to its April levels for BA and HR/G.

But the NL has a much more noticeable uptick in these areas. In the NL, teams are hitting .246 in May as opposed to .233 in April, and they're currently hitting 1.1 HRs per game in May as contrasted with 0.88 HR/G in April.

The team-by-team breakout can show you the teams who have the greatest performance differences from month-to-month thus far (and we should reemphasize that we're only about 40% through May at this point). 

We will be surprised if, for example, the Washington Nationals will hit .288 for the full month of May. But ten of the fifteen NL teams have higher BAs in May than in April, as opposed to just seven of the fifteen AL teams. 

Likewise, in HR/G, eight NL teams have hit more HR/G in May than in April, with startling upticks from the Diamondbacks, Reds, Marlins, Brewers, Phillies, Pirates, Cardinals and Nationals. 

Over in the AL, the only startling upticks in HR/G thus far in '22 belong to the Angels and the Orioles. Overall, HR/G is down in May for the AL, but in the NL it's up about 25%.

We'll check back soon to see if this trend continues. Stay tuned...

***

And here is another slice of this data, using the ballparks themselves as the comparison point between the year-to-date in '22 and last season.

The limitation in the data is just that--as was the case above, we're not measuring a full 2022 season, only the part during the relatively cold weather of April and early May. That's not enough to see how these numbers change--and they will change--as a result of the four hotter months of the season.

But at least we can see the range of difference at this point, and get a sense of the current patterns in the data.

We're looking at the same stats here--OPS and HR/G--as we did above. What we see in the year-to-date '22 data is that twenty-three of thirty ballparks are manifesting a decline in offensive production as measured by OPS.

And we see that six of the seven teams experiencing an uptick at their home parks are teams from the National League--the Reds, the Rockies, the Marlins, the Brewers, the Giants and the Cardinal. The only AL team with a park increase in OPS: the Seattle Mariners.

Homers are even more lopsided: they've increased in only three ballparks--all in the NL (home parks for the Marlins, the Brewers and the Giants). 

Parks that have seen HRs sink below the floorboards thus far in '22 are all located in the American League: Homers per game are down 222% (!) in Camden Yards thus far; they are down 146% at Cleveland's Progressive Field; and they're down 105% at the Oakland Coliseum.

Speaking of the Oakland Coliseum: take a look at that OPS value for the park thus far in '22. That .593 OPS is, at least at the moment, one of the lowest in MLB history. Most of the ballparks that have managed a lower OPS over a full year are from the 1960s (full disclosure: we set aside the Deadball Era parks due to the consciously different style of play). The parks in question are: Comiskey Park, 1967 (.564 OPS); Comiskey again in 1966 (.577 OPS); Dodger Stadium, 1968 (.578 OPS); Anaheim Stadium, 1973 (.579 OPS); Colt Stadium in Houston, 1963 (.583 OPS); and the Astrodome, 1981 (.590 OPS).

We'll see how this all shakes out as the season unfolds...

60 YEARS AGO/32: CONTRASTING WAYS TO WIN

On Sunday, May 13, 1962, the Giants and Dodgers both closed out road series with wins, but they were decidedly different in nature.

The Giants broke a scoreless tie in the fifth inning and took command with four more runs in the sixth, thanks to continued hot hitting from the left side of their infield (Jose Pagan's two-run homer being the big blow). SF was still banging out the hits, totaling 13 on the day (including three more from third baseman Jim Davenport, now hitting .337). After this game, the  Giants' team batting average--remember, in 1962, pitchers were still batting for themselves--was a lofty .298.

Jack Sanford finally weakened a bit in the ninth, allowing the Colts to score, but it was too little, too late. Final score: Giants 7, Colts 2.

In St. Louis, the Dodgers were stymied early by Larry Jackson, and fell behind 2-0, which was the score as they batted in the top of the eighth. A key throwing error from the normally reliable Ken Boyer on Maury Wills' sacrifice bunt allowed both Dodger baserunners to score, followed by a seemingly inexplicable decision by Cards' manager Johnny Keane to walk Wally Moon intentionally in favor of facing NL RBI leader Tommy Davis.

Tommy promptly singled home Wills, and Johnny Roseboro's sacrifice fly brought Moon home with the fourth run in the inning--which proved pivotal, because it took all three of the Dodgers' "big three" relievers--Larry Sherry, Ron Perranoski, and Ed Roebuck--to tamp down the Cardinals' furious rally in the bottom of the ninth. With the winning runs on base, Roebuck stuck out Charlie James to ensure that this come-from-behind win did not morph into a blown-lead loss. Final score: Dodgers 4, Cardinals 23.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 24-8, LAD 20-12

60 YEARS AGO/31: HALL-OF-FAMERS IN EXTRA INNINGS

OK, we're going to bury that lede and cover the items pertinent to Saturday, May 12, 1962 in ascending order of noteworthiness. First, in Houston, the Giants returned the favor by shellacking the Colt .45s (who'd shut them out the previous evening). Juan Marichal tossed a four-hit complete-game shutout as his teammates gave him ample support, scoring four times in the second inning and adding six more runs in the fourth. Lusty hitting from Felipe Alou (3-for-5, back up to .352 for the year) and Orlando Cepeda (2-for-4, .322) was capped by Jim Davenport's three-run homer; even Marichal got into the act, slapping a couple of singles and driving in a run. Final score: Giants 11, Colts 0.

In St. Louis, Maury Wills' evolving assault on Ty Cobb's single season stolen base record shifted into second gear as the Dodgers' shortstop swiped two bases in three consecutive games for the first time in the 1962 campaign. 

The table at right gives you a day-by-day overview of Wills' unprecedented stolen base activity. Read it column by column from the left, where we begin with April, the slowest month for Maury (he hit only .214 for the month).

The days of the month are shown from top to bottom, and we go back up to the second column to view May, where Maury begins a skein of games where he steals more than one base per game (data that's collated in the second summary row at the bottom of the graphic, the one marked "1+"). As you'll see, he has only two such games in April, but he has seven in May, a figure that he matches again in August and September when the race to chase Cobb shifts into high gear.

The grey cells represent off-days for the Dodgers; the red dots at the top right edge of many of the cells represent games that the Dodgers won. The cells colored in orange show the games in which Maury was caught stealing; the darkest of these, occurring on June 4, is the only game during Wills' trailblazing '62 where he was caught stealing twice. All in all, Maury stole 104 bases and was caught only 13 times, which is truly a remarkable performance.

The "1+W" row at the bottom (just above the cumulative total row) shows the correlation between multiple-steal games and Dodger wins. That correlation is virtually perfect from April to August: the Dodgers are 18-2 in those games. In September and October, however, when the Dodger hitting elsewhere in their lineup takes a nosedive, that correlation breaks down: the Dodgers are only 3-5 in Maury's "run wild" games.

And May 12 was the first time when Maury had multiple steals in a Dodger loss. It was a notable game because it represents one of the latest occurrences where Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitched in the same ballgame (they'd do it again in early July). Koufax, facing a tough-hitting Cardinal lineup in their home park (a haven for hitters), was not able to dominate: he was victimized by the Cards' rookie shortstop Julio Gotay, who would wind up going 4-for-4 in what surely was his greatest day offensively (he would fade badly after the All-Star Break and be traded to the Pirates in a deal for Dick Groat, who would help them win a pennant and the World Series in 1964). 

Koufax left after six trailing 4-3; they trailed 5-3 in the top of the ninth, when the (temporarily) unsinkable Larry Burright hit a two-run homer to tie it up. They nearly lost the game in the bottom of the inning, needing Frank Howard to throw out Bill White at the plate to send the game into extra innings.

And that's where we finally get to our teaser. In the eleventh inning, Bob Gibson entered the game for the Cardinals. While 1962 proved to be the first top-flight season from Gibson in a career whose arc would rise sharply upward, this particular game did not feature him in his dominating mode--he put men on base in four of the five innings he pitched (walking five batters) and was forced to work his way out of jams, including one with the bases loaded in the twelfth.

Two Dodger rookies--Pete Richert and Joe Moeller--managed to keep pace with Gibson through the fourteenth. At which point Don Drysdale, the Dodger ace, was brought into the game--giving us two Hall of Fame pitchers in the same game as relievers in extra innings (and three total Hall of Famers, of course, when one includes Koufax).

But Drysdale didn't have it that night. He immediately gave up a single to backup outfielder Doug Clemens, and proceeded to hit Gotay. Then, in a truly memorable moment, he faced Bob Gibson, who was batting because there were no other pinch-hitters available for the Cardinals. In the midst of that Drysdale-Gibson confrontation, Big D suddenly whirled around and picked Clemens off second. 

And then he proceeded to walk Gibson. Which proved to be his ultimate undoing, for after he struck out Curt Flood, the Cards' weak-hitting Julian Javier worked the count to 3-2 and then looped a fly ball to right that neither second baseman Burright nor right fielder Howard could reach: fittingly enough, Gotay came chugging around third with the winning run. Final score: Cardinals 6, Dodgers 5 (15 innings).

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 23-8, LAD 19-12

60 YEARS AGO/30: THE VARIED VAGARIES OF BATTERY ACID

Pitchers and catchers, who report early to spring training together, sometimes cast an outsized shadow on the outcome of a game. That was certainly the case on Friday, May 11, 1962 as the Dodgers and Giants swapped opponents.

In St. Louis, first-string catcher Johnny Roseboro was finally back in the lineup, and he celebrated by banging out four hits, raising his batting average to .351. The Dodgers broke a 2-2 with a four-run sixth, spearheaded by a pinch bases-loaded triple by Duke Snider, who was batting for Daryl Spencer (who was batting for starting pitcher Stan Williams).

Ed Roebuck nearly gave away that lead in the bottom of the sixth, when Cardinals catcher Carl Sawatski doubled in two runs. Ron Perranoski was quickly thrown into the breach, and responded with four innings of shutout relief to seal the win for Williams--but not before catcher Roseboro was thrown out attempting to steal home! Final score: Dodgers 8, Cardinals 5.

In Houston, the buzzsaw the Giants ran into was all pitcher-catcher related. Ex-Dodger Dick (Turk) Farrell blanked San Francisco on six hits; he and batterymate Merritt Ranew each hit homers--back-to-back, no less--as the ex-Dodgers "doing time" with the Colts made things dicey for "young Gaylord Perry," who had to be relieved in the second inning and found himself removed from the Giants starting rotation as a result. Another ex-Dodger, Bob Aspromonte, had a single and a double and two RBI. It was the first time all seaosn that the Giants had been shut out. Final score: Colts 7, Giants 0.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 22-8, LAD 19-11.

60 YEARS AGO/29: TWO BENCHWARMERS SHOW SIGNS OF LIFE...

No one will ever equate Willie McCovey and Ron Fairly--two very different lefty hitters, one enshrined in Cooperstown and the other a subtle cog in an inscrutable machine that managed to beat the Hall of Famer's team 3-1 in pennants during the 1960s. 

In 1962, however, they had more similarities than would be the case shortly thereafter. Both came up young (Willie Mac at 21, Fairly at 19) and each showed great promise early in their careers--McCovey with a spectacular third of a season in '59 than netted him the Rookie of the Year award, Fairly with a .322/.434/.522 slash line at age 22 in '61. Looking back on it all, it's unfathomable that both of these hitters were buried on their team's bench as the '62 season started.

They had one thing in common, however, that contributed to their managers' reluctance to play them full-time: both McCovey and Fairly struggled against lefties. McCovey would overcome his problems with southpaws in 1967 and emerged as baseball's best hitter in 1968-70; Fairly never did turn the corner, winding up with a .221 lifetime BA against left-handers.

That factor, along with the talent glut on the two teams, kept these two on the bench for much of the early going in '62. It's shocking to note that McCovey had only four plate appearances in April! But, then again, the Giants went 15-5 that month with him on the bench. Fairly appeared in 13 of the Dodgers' April contests, getting seven starts, but he was clearly fourth in the conga line behind Duke Snider, Wally Moon, and Frank Howard. 

AND the rust was showing on Ron when he got a start in right field (in a situation when Snider had been getting all the playing time) in Houston on Thursday, May 10: he was hitting just .152 on the year. Fairly's contribution to the getaway game at Colt Stadium was not dramatic, but he did reach base three times (a single and two walks), with one of those walks kicking off a Dodger rally in the fourth (climaxed by Larry Burright's three-run homer.) Don Drysdale allowed only three hits (two of them solo homers) and he cruised to his fifth win. Final score: Dodgers 6, Colts 2.

Fairly would get red-hot in the second half of May, hitting .540 over a stretch of 15 games, driving in 16 runs as the Dodgers went 14-1 in that time frame. He would push Wally Moon off first base, and Frank Howard would eventually push Moon out of right field and onto the bench, where he and Duke Snider could compare splinters.

IN St. Louis, McCovey kick-started a two-run rally for the Giants in the fourth with a single, and hit a three-run homer off Bob Gibson to blow the game open in the fifth. Billy O'Dell shut down the Cardinals' tough lefty hitters (Stan Musial and Bill White) and held his own against the righties, spinning a four-hit shutout as San Francisco kept on rolling. Final score: Giants 6, Cardinals 0.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 22-7, LAD 18-11

60 YEARS AGO/28: THE DODGERS' LINEUP BEGINS TO TAKE SHAPE

Wednesday, May 9, 1962 was the day when the Dodgers' Davis boys--Willie and Tommy--began to bat back-to-back in the batting order. Willie, #2 in the batting race behind Stan Musial at this point, had been moved into the third slot behind Maury Wills and Jim Gilliam earlier in the month; Tommy, #2 in the RBI race but destined to storm into the lead in both that category and in batting average, was moved into the cleanup slot on this day--and drove in a couple of runs. 

The LA lineup kept up its lofty hitting in Colt Stadium, putting the lie to the notion that the stopgap ballpark favored pitchers--the Dodgers banged out 16 hits and broke the game wide open by scoring five runs in the ninth inning. 

Johnny Podres scattered eight hits and coaxed the Colts into an 0-for-7 performance with runners in scoring position--though catcher Merritt Ranew, later famous as one of the Seattle Pilots' "country boy" players featured in Jim Bouton's Ball Four, became the 85th catcher since 1901 to hit two triples in the same game, a feat that has been accomplished only nine times by catchers in the twenty-first century. Final score: Dodgers 9, Colt .45s 2.

IN St. Louis, Curt Simmons allowed three homers to the Giants...but they were all solo shots; meanwhile the Cardinals knocked Jack Sanford out of the game in the fourth, led by Carl Sawatski, who wound up with four RBIs. (Like the Pirates, the Cardinals would prove to be an extremely streaky team in '62, and they'd play a decisive role in the outcome of the pennant race in the last days of the '62 season.) Final score: Cardinals 7, Giants 3.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 21-7, STL 16-8, LAD 17-11, PIT 14-10, PHI 12-11, CIN 13-13, MIL 11-14, HOU 10-15, NYM 5-16, CHC 6-20

60 YEARS AGO/27: CUTTING THINGS A BIT TOO CLOSE...

Tuesday, May 8, 1962 saw both the Giants and Dodgers in action, with SF invading St. Louis and LA continuing its series in Houston. Both games were hotly contested affairs, with the Giants facing off against a team that gave them the most trouble during the '62 season (they could only split their eighteen games against the Cardinals that year). 

In Busch Stadium (renamed from Sportsman's Park when beer magnate August "Gussie" Busch purchased the Cardinals in the 1950s), it was Juan Marichal vs. Larry Jackson. The Giants got two in the first thanks to an Orlando Cepeda double; Marichal kept the Cards blanked until the bottom of the fifth, when they scored a run on a bizarre play in which Curt Flood's sacrifice fly turned into an inning-ending double play. Stan Musial, having his final great season for St. Louis (hitting .388 at this point), homered in the sixth to tie the game at 2-2.

It stayed that way until the top of the eighth, when the Giants knocked out Jackson with three straight hits (Cepeda's second double of the game, followed by another double from Felipe Alou, and a single from Ed Bailey), making it 4-2. Marichal struggled a bit in the ninth (and this is where '62 baseball diverges radically from today's game...) but was allowed to stay in even after giving up a homer to Carl Sawatski and allowing the potential winning run to come to the plate. Marichal brought the game to a close with a flourish, however, by firing a called third strike past Flood. Final score: Giants 4, Cardinals 3.

DOWN in Houston, the Dodgers must have felt that they were seeing themselves on the field when they looked at the Colts personnel--no fewer than seven ex-Dodgers would play against them on this night. Despite that, things were cruising along well for the boys from LA, as they took a 6-1 lead into the sixth behind Sandy Koufax. (This was the beginning of the short-lived "Larry Burright era" for the team; manager Walt Alston played a hunch in this game, shifting Jim Gilliam to third and inserting Burright at second base--who responded by slapping out a single, double and triple and suddenly found himself in the starting lineup...for a while, at least.)

But Koufax faltered in the sixth, and had to be relieved by Larry Sherry--who had another rough outing in relief, allowing two of Sandy's bequeathed baserunners to score (in part due to an untimely error by shortstop Wills). Sherry would allow the game to be tied 6-6 when Bob Aspromonte tripled home a run and another ex-Dodger, Norm Larker, brought him in with a sacrifice fly.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers were being frustrated by virtue of another appearance from knuckleballer Bobby Tiefenauer; the aggravating part was that they were getting men on base against Bobby, but they'd find a way to come up with nothing by hitting into double plays or having a runner picked off. (We're reminded of the smaller size of the average pitching staff in '62 when we discover that the man who got picked off second base by Tiefenauer was none other than Larry Sherry, who was allowed to bat in this inning despite having just coughed up the lead!)

The Dodgers survived another surreal threat in the ninth, when Sherry struck out Carl Warwick, but Warwick wound up on first when the third strike got past catcher Doug Camilli. After Sherry walked Aspromonte (probably a good thing, given how he was hitting against them), Alston finally replaced him with Ron Perranoski, who retired the next two hitters to send the game into extra innings.

And in the top of the tenth, the Dodgers finally got to Tiefenauer, with an improbable two-out rally that began with Burright's bunt single. Pinch-hitter Frank Howard followed with a single, and Maury Wills did the same, scoring Burright to make it 7-6. LA added two surreal insurance runs when ex-Dodger Dick (Turk) Farrell, relieving Tiefenauer, uncorked a wild pitch to Jim Gilliam that proved so disruptive that it allowed both baserunners to score. (The play went like this: Farrell's 3-2 pitch to Gilliam, with both baserunners on the move, was wild. Catcher Merritt Ranew retrieved the ball, and made an even wilder throw to the plate that eluded everyone, allowing both pinch-runner Dick Tracewski and Wills to make it home safely.)

Ed Roebuck, who'd logged four innings the night before, came in and retired Houston in the bottom of the inning to put a stake in the Colts' "hand from the grave" antics. And speaking of "retiring": this game would signal a major shift in the appearances of Duke Snider, who up to this point had been playing regularly and batting in the middle of the Dodgers' order (an OPS of 1.052). After this game, the Duke was relegated to pinch hitting, and would start only three more games until late August, returning when Alston attempted to address the team's ongoing sinkhole at third base by shifting Tommy Davis there from left field. (Though it was never called that while it was happening, it was the official and irrevocable end to the "Boys of Summer era.") Final score: Dodgers 9, Colts 6 (10 innings).

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 21-6, LAD 16-11

60 YEARS AGO/26: NOT THE WAY TO SPELL RELIEF...

Strange things crop up in every baseball season...just ask Jayson Stark, the man attuned to the game's at-the-ground-level anomalies. (Jayson is already all over the potential extremity of the 2022 Reds, and we're guessing that there is enough grist there for him to grind away until the end of the season.)

Colt Stadium, dwarfed by the "eighth wonder of the world" that soon replaced it.

But we're here to talk about 1962, actually, so enough of the present-day. On Monday, May 7, 1962, the Giants had the day off, while the Dodgers--just rained out in Pittsburgh--traveled to Houston to play their first regular season game against an expansion team.

It wasn't an ordinary game, and it was definitely unusual in terms of the results produced in the Colt .45's (later, of course, the Astros) ballpark--Colt Stadium (it would be three more years before the Astrodome would open). This was a makeshift ballpark constructed as a stopgap facility, and it quickly became known as a deadly place to be on a summer afternoon (and often just as much on a summer night, which came to include Sundays in order to keep the players from collapsing from heat stroke).

And the park was so jackleg in its looks that the best way--or, rather, the only way--to see it without testing one's gag reflex was to see it at night. 

The dimensions of the park were spacious (427' to dead center, 400' to the power alleys, 345' down the lines) and it won't be surprising when you examine the 1962 ballpark data (the sum of the stats compiled by home teams and their opponents in the 19 stadia in use for the '62 season) that Colt Stadium is the lowest scoring ballpark in the NL by a wide margin (and only a bit better than the AL's pitching park, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore).

Parks with the highest total in any stat have that highlighted in orange; parks with the lowest are highlighted in yellow. As you can see, Colt Stadium had one thing going for it: triples. (But let's not get sidetracked on that...)

No, we were talking about strangeness, and in the context of the 1962 duel between the Dodgers and Giants, that quality is located in the number of high-scoring games that the Dodgers played against the first-year Colt .45s when those games were occurring in two of the most pitcher-friendly parks in baseball.

And that's where we came in with the "no way to spell relief" teaser. Even with the extra day of rest for pitchers afforded him by the rainout, Dodger skipper Walt Alston decided to send "teenage monster" Joe Moeller to the mound (hey, it's an expansion team--who cares if they're actually playing close to .500 unlike their counterparts in New York?).

And so the teenage monster turned into a monstrosity again, going full "wild thing" (sorry, getting ahead of ourselves again...) in the second inning, but also victimized by some bad relief pitching from the usually reliable Ron Perranoski. 

To be fair to Ron, he himself was victimized by his third baseman, Daryl Spencer, who booted a grounder to the second batter Perranoski faced in relief (the first, alas, was a bases-loaded walk). By inning's end, Ron had allowed all three of Moeller's inherited runners to score, and had given up one of his own to boot. Houston led, 5-0, after two.

(But this also points up a dramatic difference in strategy that existed in the '60s that is rarely employed today--bringing in a top reliever early in the game to try to choke off a rally. When Alston brought in Perranoski--in the second inning, mind you--the score was only 1-0 Houston. The idea, of course, was to nip the rally in the bud. The idea and the reality...ahem...diverged.)

No truth to the rumor that Bob Aspromonte was descended
from the Flatheads (obligatory L. Frank Baum reference...)

But we're not through, yet--no, no, not at all. It's only the top of the third, remember. The Dodgers began chipping away at that five-run lead, scoring single runs in the third, fourth, and fifth innings (what the baseball insiders of the day termed "building a picket fence"). In the sixth, they knocked out Colts starter Dave Giusti and plated three more runs, going ahead 6-5 on the still-unsinkable Doug Camilli's RBI single. (Camilli wound up 3-for-3 on the evening, and was hitting .800 for the season--of course, it was all downhill from there).

And with a 6-5 lead, it was all downhill for the Dodgers as well--Alston brought in another rookie to pitch: lefty Pete Richert. ("Steady Eddie" Roebuck had just completed four innings of scoreless relief.) Pete had fanned six batters in a row in his debut for the Dodgers back in April, but he'd been struggling since then--and that's exactly what happened to him in the seventh, when he gave up a walk to former Dodger Norm Larker, a fly ball single to Hal Smith that some thought Tommy Davis should've caught. 

And then, another former Dodger, third baseman Bob Aspromonte. Richert fell behind 3-1, and Aspromonte hit a sharp line drive to left on the next pitch that kept carrying--and carrying. It carried all the way into the left-field bleachers for a three-run homer. The Colts were back on top, 8-6. 

The Dodgers were now being baffled by the knuckleball antics of Bobby Tiefenauer (a situation that would reverse itself the next evening--but that wasn't helping them salvage this game). Colts manager Harry Craft sent minor league outfielder Johnny Weekly up to bat for Al Spangler in the eighth: Weekly had been buried in the Giants organization behind a boatload of outfielders, but still wouldn't get much of a chance with the Astros. However, Richert was still in there and he grooved another one--and Weekly did not hit it weakly. (The despondent Richert was quoted afterwards: "I didn't think the ball would ever come back to earth.")

In the top of the ninth, Camilli kept hitting (a double) but Tiefenauer "bobbed" and weaved his way through the bottom end of the Dodger batting order to close things out and earn his first big-league win since 1955. It was the second highest total of combined runs scored in Colt Stadium during the 1962 season--a number that, even more improbably, the two teams would match on the very next night. 

The Colts would prove to be tricky opponents for the Dodgers, and given how razor-thin the pennant race got in the final days of the season, it wouldn't be surprising if a game like this one happened to crop up in the memories of players and fans alike. Final score: Colt .45s 9, Dodgers 6.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 20-6, LAD 15-11