A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (53 page)

Dark apparently did tell Billy Pierce he had "pitched
enough this year," and was free to go home early "as soon as we're
out of this thing." Pierce made some flight reservations, but
events that week forced him to keep changing them, finally
canceling them altogether. By the third or fourth call the airline
reservation clerk knew him by name.

Beat L.A.!

"What the hell are they saving me, the first spring
exhibition game?"

- Don Drysdale's reaction to not being named the
starter in the second 1962 play-off game

On Tuesday and Wednesday, San Francisco beat St.
Louis twice while L.A. split with Houston. On Thursday, Gene Oliver
's homer sparked the Cardinals to a 7-4 win at Candlestick. In the
sixth, Mays lost track of how many outs there were, an unbelievable
reversal from his regular baseball instincts, which were flawless.
Cepeda struck out and Mays casually walked away from third. The
catcher tossed to Ken Boyer, tagging the stunned Mays out while the
crowd booed. It got worse when he proceeded to strike out with two
men on.

That night, Koufax tried to clinch it at Chavez
Ravine. He had good stuff at first, retiring 11 straight with four
strikeouts. In the fifth he still led Houston 4-2, and the Dodgers
could taste it. But Sandy tired and Alston went to the bullpen.
Roebuck, Sherry and Perranoski were shelled in an 8-6 loss. They
still were up by three, but blowing Koufax's lead to an expansion
team was devastating to their psyches.

"That loss was the turnaround game," Perranoski
admitted.

L.A.'s Daryl Spencer had been with St. Louis in
1961. He said the Cardinals loved the Hollywood nightlife. "There
was quite a bit of chasing around out there with some gals," he
recalled with a smile.

With nothing to play for, in-coming Cardinals players
hit the Sunset Strip and hung out until four in the morning. They
were loose; the only visiting team to post a winning record at
Dodger Stadium in 1962.

"They made pitches that they might not have thrown if
they'd gotten a good night's rest," said Ron Fairly. "And that's
how they got us out."

In game one, St. Louis won, 3-2 in 10 innings. The
tension in the Los Angeles clubhouse, what with Wills and Gilliam
on less than friendly terms; Alston and Durocher mortal enemies;
Drysdale complaining; Koufax's courage questioned; and Tommy Davis
giving the "evil eye" to anybody who looked at him askance; was
thick and heavy.

On top of everything, the specter of 1951 hung over
them like a ghost. The Dodgers hit incessant grounders to
shortstop. It got so bad that they laughed, in gallows humor-style,
as if to say hungover St. Louis needed only a pitcher, catcher,
shortstop and first baseman to beat them. The fans were apoplectic,
the media aghast. Doom. Creeping terror. It was 1951 redux.

On Friday a rare September rain canceled San
Francisco's game. On Saturday afternoon, Houston's Joey Amalfitano,
a talkative native of San Pedro, which serves as the Port of Los
Angeles, asked Willie Mays if the Giants "could score a run?" Mays
just stared at him. Amalfitano told Mays that Los Angeles
could
not
score anymore, so all the Giants needed was to score and
the pennant was theirs. He was not far from wrong.

In the opener, San Francisco scored 11. Cepeda,
McCovey and Haller provided the offense behind Sanford and Miller.
L.A., playing that Saturday night, looked on at the televised game
in abject desperation. Marichal started the second game of the
double-header. His foot still hurt him. X-rays showed no fracture
and Dark distrusted the "Dominican Dandy," thinking he was
weak-minded and could not handle the pressure of the pennant
chase.

"He said very little, but the look in his eye told me
that he thought I was trying to quit under pressure," recalled
Marichal.

Marichal pitched in pain, but it affected him in a
4-2 loss. After the game, the Latin players gathered at his
cubicle. Marichal was hurting and his teammates - friends - felt
Dark had risked his career pitching him, but the X-rays of 1962 had
mysteriously not caught any fracture.

When Dark benched both Cepeda and Alou on the final
Sunday, the Latinos were convinced it was a statement, that
Spanish-speaking players could not handle the stress of big
games.

That Saturday night, the players went home and
listened to a telegraph wire re-creation by Giants announcers Lon
Simmons and Russ Hodges. It was not unlike 1951, when they took a
train from Boston to New York listening to Hodges while traveling
through Connecticut, giving them "play-by-play" over the train's
loudspeakers of Brooklyn's final game with Philadelphia. Hodges
later announced the famed
"Giants win the pennant!"
when
Bobby Thomson hit the "shot heard 'round the world."

The bachelor Willie McCovey, a man about town, was on
the town with a date and later recalled San Franciscans straining
to pick up the Dodgers' broadcast from Los Angeles, which could be
picked up at night. The static-voice of Vin Scully was heard on the
streets, in cabs, coming out of cars, on transistors in The City.
Scully, the ultimate professional, trying to maintain calm despite
his team's freefall; Giants fans desperately rooting the other way.
At the opera house, the downtown theatres, Union Square, on Market
Street, Van Ness Avenue, the Embarcadero, the financial district,
Fisherman's Wharf, the Marina, Cow Hollow, the Western Addition,
Russian Hill, Noe Valley; out by the Great Highway, the Sunset
District, Twin Peak's, from St. Francis Wood to Hunter's Point to
Potrero Hill; at Original Joe's, Bardelli's, Trader Vic's,
DiMaggio's, Marin Joe's; along the peninsula, across the bridge in
Oakland, Berkeley and the East Bay; in the hinterlands of Stockton,
Sacramento and Modesto; down towards Fresno where Central
California sympathies were evenly split between the Giants and the
Dodgers; on the 101 where motorists rooting for both teams
traversed the state, past Big Sur and Monterey; Scully's voice told
the tale.

Ernie Broglio, who hailed from the East Bay Area,
out-dueled Drysdale, 2-0 at Dodger Stadium. San Francisco's hopes
were alive, and in all the aforementioned places and a thousand
others, cars honked, people whooped and hollered. The Giants was
not dead yet. In keeping with St. Louis's "loosey-goosey" style of
partying and playing baseball that final weekend, the
happy-go-lucky Broglio was throwing curves on 2-0 and 3-2
counts.

"That had to be the best game he ever pitched," said
Perranoski. Frank Howard's mis-play of a fly ball gave Broglio all
his support. The next day the
Times
read, "Should O'Malley
tempt fate by ordering champagne for the Dodger clubhouse today,
he'd best order it on consignment."

They led by a game with one day to go. Amalfitano
continued to be right: they
could not score
.

It all came down to September 30, 1962. On that day,
James Meredith attempted become the first black to enroll at the
University of Mississippi. A riot ensued and much white and black
blood was shed. Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett provided no
assistance to his fellow Democrat, President John Kennedy, who
called it the "worst thing" he had ever seen.

The "Mississippi burning" caught the attention of San
Francisco's black and minority players, most of whom had
experienced prejudice first hand playing in the South, but when
Cepeda and Alou did not see their name on the line-up card, they
figured they were dealing with it on the West Coast, too. Dark's
Southern heritage was an albatross he could not shake.

Dark started the Southern-born Billy O'Dell against
Houston's Turk Farrell, who told the writers he did not intend to
lose. In the fourth, Ed Bailey hit a long foul ball, then got the
same pitch and hit it fair for a homer to give San Francisco a 1-0
lead. The score was 1-1 when Mays came to the plate in the eighth.
He had not had a hit in 10 at-bats and the Candlestick crowd booed
him. He was considered a poor clutch hitter, "pop-up Mays."

Organist Lloyd Fox tried to simmer things down by
playing, "Bye Bye Baby." It was a phrase Hodges used to describe
home runs, and a song was made out of it:

Oh when the Giants come to town

It's bye, bye baby

Always when the chips are down

It’s bye bye baby

Then Mays deposited a Farrell fastball deep into the
left field seats for a 2-1 lead.

"It became a blur of white, smashed through
the noise of roaring throats, sailing high into the blue," wrote
Bob Stevens, "and it gave San Francisco the best shot it has ever
had at the long-awaited pennant." Mays had homered on the first
pitch he saw in 1962, and now on the last pitch he saw . . . of the
regular season, at least.

It was number 48 of the year for Mays, the most in
the league. Stu Miller retired Houston in the ninth, striking out
Billy Goodman for the last out as the crowd of 41,327 roared to its
feet. The Giants mobbed Miller and celebrated on the green plains
until the special police escorted them off the field.

The fans stayed in the stands. It was Fan
Appreciation Day and five cars were to be awarded to winners of the
promotion, but just as important, the score from Los Angeles was
not a final. The Dodger game had started an hour later than the San
Francisco game.

L.A. entered the final day having won twice in eight
days, both times behind the clutch hurling of Johnny Podres. On the
final Sunday, Podres faced Curt Simmons. It was Podres's
30
^th
birthday.

The game was scoreless for seven innings. Los
Angeles, supposedly the best base-running team in baseball, blew
several opportunities. Lee Walls was thrown out trying to stretch a
single into a double. Willie Davis was caught on a decoy play. The
crafty Simmons picked off Tommy Davis. The Dodgers were reduced to
a Little League team, their sense of fundamentals completely gone.
They were desperate, befuddled and bamboozled.
They could not
score!

The Dodgers' strong radio station was again heard; at
Candlestick during the Fan Appreciation day event, and of course at
all the places it had been listened to the previous evening. In
addition, Russ Hodges maintained up-dates on KSFO. Cars pulled up
to curbs. 49ers fans at Kezar Stadium, where the team was playing
Minnesota, listened in. The Giants gathered around the radio in
their clubhouse. A Western Union ticker revealed the play a minute
after it happened. The Dodgers' broadcast could not be heard in the
Giants' clubhouse.

Podres dominated. He called it one of the best games
of his career, better even than his 1955 game seven triumph over
the New York Yankees in the World Series. But with one out in the
eighth, Gene Oliver, whose three-run homer had decided an earlier
win at Candlestick, deposited a Podres curveball barely over the
left field fence.

Fans were being awarded cars when news of Oliver's
homer was announced, and a "Giant roar" came up. When an attractive
blonde ambled onto the field to claim her prize, the crowd roared
even louder.

At that moment, John Brodie of the 49ers was calling
signals at Kezar. It was fourth-and-one at the Vikings' 18 and he
suddenly was drowned out by a crescendo of cheers, thinking it was
for him. He waved for quiet so his signals could be heard. The
49ers won, but fans stayed at Kezar to hear the Giants-Dodgers
reports.

In the bottom of the ninth, Ken McMullen and Maury
Wills flied out. It truly did look as if they simply lacked any
capability of scoring, so woeful were the Dodgers offensively. The
long season, the dispute between Alston and Durocher, Wills's
histrionics, the Koufax injury, Don Drysdale's loud complaints
about everything; they were sapped of all strength, like the
General Ripper character in
Dr. Strangelove
who fears being
drained of his "precious bodily fluids."

The players listened to Hodges. Chub Feeney's
footsteps could be heard in the background. Finally, Hodges told
them that Jim Gilliam had popped to Julian Javier. There would be a
play-off. Bedlam ensued; everywhere. Dark proclaimed it a comeback
for the ages, and he had been there in '51.

The contrast between the Giants and Dodgers
clubhouses was extraordinary. It was also a little different from
1951. On the last day 11 years earlier, the Giants beat Boston and,
with the Dodgers losing big against Philadelphia, seemed to have
the pennant locked up. Then Brooklyn rallied. Jackie Robinson saved
the day with a remarkable catch, and Brooklyn jumped for joy. By
evening time, when the Dodgers won, it was the Giants who had the
heart taken out of them. This time it was all Giants.

Dodgers players swore and threw things. Podres was
beside himself, one of his greatest efforts having gone for naught.
He drove to the Mayflower Hotel, his L.A. residence, where friends
were waiting to throw a surprise birthday party, but he was in no
mood to celebrate. Alston was full of recriminations, self and
otherwise. 21 innings had come and gone without a Dodger run, and
this was no light-hitting squad. They were stars, winners of over
100 games, World Champions three years earlier; the fabled Dodgers'
franchise. There were no excuses.

In the last 13 games, San Francisco was only 7-6, but
Los Angeles had gone 3-10. "It was like two drunks having a fight
in a saloon and trying to stagger to the safety of the swinging
doors," wrote Arthur Daley in the
New York Times
. "Both kept
falling down. The Giants, however, could crawl better than the
Dodgers."

The Dodgers had led for 111 days compared to 54 for
the Giants, and entered the final two weeks up by four. The two
teams were 9-9 against each other in the regular season, most of
their victories coming at home. The L.A. media began an anatomy of
their collapse. Aside from internal dissension, defense in
particular had failed the club down the stretch. They had finished
last in the league in double-plays. Koufax's injury, Drysdale's
late-season failing after winning 25 games, bullpen collapses,
power hitters reduced to an endless stream of grounders to
shortstop, bad base running by the so-called Swift Set, and above
all terrible fundamentals were cited. Others said they had "gone
Hollywood," tempted by beautiful starlets, too much nightlife, the
glitz, their press clippings . . . it went on and on.