A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (47 page)

Roebuck's next-door neighbor was Stan Williams. A few
years earlier, Williams, Roebuck, pitcher Roger Craig, and first
baseman Norm Larker all built homes on the same street in suburban
Lakewood, a pleasant community nestled in between Long Beach in
L.A. County and Los Alamitos in Orange County.

But in 1961 Craig and Larkin were lost in the
expansion draft. Williams's family grew out of the house so they
moved to Long Beach. Because Williams was the first of the group to
become a father, he was given the nickname "Big Daddy." Later he
was called "Big Hurt" because his pitching assignments often were
tailored around the disabled list. Plus, a song called "Big Hurt"
had come out.

The large, powerful Williams would sneak up on
teammates and put a half-Nelson on them until the other guy
screamed. "I guess I was kind of a playful giant with a lot of
energy," recalled the 6-4, 225-pound Williams. Norm Sherry said he
was the hardest-throwing pitcher on the staff; maybe his speed was
not as great as Koufax's, but the bruises on the catcher's hand
were more blue.

Williams's professional debut was . . . dubious.
Arriving late for his first game at Shawnee in 1954, he entered the
dugout just as the umpire was turning to the dugout to throw out a
player who had made a caustic remark. Mistaking Williams for the
offending man, he tossed him before he had even arrived.

Williams won 18 and 19 games in separate minor league
seasons, then hooked on with Los Angeles for good in 1960 when he
was 14-10 with a 3.00 ERA, making the All-Star team. His 205
strikeouts in 1961 trailed only Koufax in the National League. He
kept notes, was smart, and like the rest of the guys pitched
inside, keeping track of batters he hit. He was strategically wild,
just enough to intimidate the opposition. In 1961, Alston was
concerned that he was working the count too deep. He took a lot of
time in between pitches and his fielders were sometimes caught
flat-footed. Alston thought he was frivolous.

"We were never very close," Williams said of his
relationship with the manager. "I always had the impression he
thought I was a big dummy, and even when I pitched well I didn't
feel a lot of respect coming from him. I never cared a lot for
Walter and I think he felt the same way about me."

In 1962, Williams was expected to have a breakout
year, but his control problems made him inconsistent. During one
month-long stretch he did not complete or win a single game. In a
relief appearance against the Mets, he walked eight batters in five
innings. A week later against Philadelphia, however, Williams
tossed a shutout with no walks in the second game of a
double-header.

Johnny Podres started the season opener at Dodger
Stadium but lost, and struggled all year, especially at home. In
the first game of a July 2 twin-bill, however, Podres won his
first-ever game at Chavez Ravine, 5-1. He retired the first 20
Phillies and struck out a then-big league record eight straight
batters.

The southpaw Podres was a native of New York state,
where he was born in 1932. His mother had double pneumonia when he
was born and his father worked in the mines for $18 a week. Despite
that, he enjoyed his childhood.

"A small town is the only place to live," he said. "I
knew everyone and everyone knows me, but nobody bothers me. I can
find more friends there in one day than in the rest of the world
over."

His passions were ice fishing in the winter, baseball
in the summer. Baseball paid better: a $6,000 signing bonus by the
Dodgers. His father's encouragement kept his hopes up as he
struggled through the low minor leagues and a back injury.

At the age of 23, Podres was a regular starter on the
famed 1955 Dodgers' staff, winning game seven of the World Series,
2-0 over the hated Yankees. A carefree man about town, he liked to
party and was the toast of Brooklyn, but other than that such
pitching stalwarts as Carl Erskine and Don Newcombe overshadowed
Podres. He was a good pitcher year in and year out, however. While
Newcombe won the Cy Young and the MVP award, he was the vanishing
man in the World Series, whereas Podres stepped up.

"When something was on the line, I guess I rose to
the occasion more than I did during other times during the course
of the year," he said.

Podres was a "money pitcher," said Perranoski, with
"one of the best change-ups in the history of baseball." Norm
Sherry described it as a "pull-down-the-window-shade" change of
pace. Buzzie Bavasi said if he needed one pitcher to win one game,
he would pick Podres, and so would Alston. This on a team with
Koufax and Drysdale!

Podres loved Los Angeles, particularly the night life
and the ladies. Like Angels southpaw Bo Belinsky, he was renowned
for his amorous adventures, and at 29 was still a bachelor and
loving it. Podres enjoyed drinking with the other pitchers as well
as the playing the horses at Hollywood Park.

Alston, the malted milk drinker, did not like it, but
Bavasi said, "I never thought malted milk drinkers were good
ballplayers, and that's why I always had a soft spot for guys like
John." Apparently, Podres abstained from alcohol and sex the night
before he pitched, and was, like Whitey Ford, always ready to go.
He adhered to the principle enunciated by another fun-loving guy,
USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux, who told countless Trojans, "No
drinkin' before the game, but afterwards there's nothin' like a tub
'a suds."

In 1961 Podres was 18-5, but his father died of lung
cancer, probably the result of working in the mines. He missed a
few September starts. At the beginning of the 1962 campaign Podres
pitched poorly. Some speculated that the loss of his dad was still
affecting him.

Joe Moeller was 19 years old in 1962, the youngest
player in baseball. He was in only his second year of organized
baseball. The previous season he won 20 games with almost 300
strikeouts in three different minor league stops. Despite plans for
more seasoning, Moeller impressed Alston so much at Vero Beach that
he made it to Los Angeles.

"Everything he throws jumps and moves," said
Sports Illustrated
.

Moeller had mixed success in 1962, getting sent back
to the minor leagues before getting called up again. He was a local
kid from the Manhattan Beach strand. Playing for the Dodgers was a
dream come true.

"Two years before I signed, I was still getting
players' autographs," he said. "I collected every article about the
Dodgers, going back to when they were in Brooklyn. I got higher
offers from other ballclubs, but I really wanted to play for the
Dodgers."

On a pitching staff that liked to drink beer, Moeller
was not old enough to tag along, and there was some resentment. The
Dodgers always had the biggest farm system in baseball. Getting to
the Major Leagues meant a lengthy process of "paying dues," but
Moeller had avoided all of that.

Nobody even wanted to room with the kid, so he became
one of the first Major Leaguers to have his own room, which made
for a "pretty lonely existence." It was a tough experience for him,
especially after having dreamt of it all his life, but Moeller
dealt with his rookie woes as best as he could.

San Francisco

". . . And it's bye, bye baby . . . !!"

- Giants announcer Russ Hodges's standard call of
home runs

In many ways, the story of Alvin Dark is the
story of America: a nation’s reconciliation, redemption and new
understanding, followed by socio-political restructuring. This
describes how the American South struggled to find, as Abe Lincoln
called them, “the better angels of our nature.” In many ways
through sports, the South came to grips with new racial realities,
then saw the Republican Party husband the region “back into the
Union” until they became not a marginalized New Deal voting bloc,
but “rose again” to emerge as an economic and political
powerhouse.

Al Dark was that walking conundrum of Dixie:
the hardcore Baptist Christian burdened by racial prejudice.
Through baseball, he was able to get out of the South and become a
man of the world. It first led him to New York, where he starred
for the 1954 World Champion Giants. A great picture exists of Dark
and the black superstar Willie Mays, smiling in each other’s
company during the team’s Broadway ticker tape parade.

The Giants of the early 1960s were one of
the first truly integrated teams. Mays, Willie McCovey, Felipe
Alou, Juan Marichal, and Orlando Cepeda were black and Latino stars
of the first order.

Dark, who lived in Atherton, appeared at
religious functions. The Holy Bible went everywhere with him and he
read it . . . religiously. The Giants were in contrast to the
secular nature of The City. Aside from Dark, they had a large
number of Christian players. The Latinos, in particularly, were
strong Catholics. Mays and McCovey, while never known for being
outgoing Christians, were from the Bible Belt and could not help
but be influenced by that upbringing.

Despite that, Dark refused to make the
Giants' clubhouse a church. "He had a rule against presenting his
Christian testimony to any of the players while in uniform, a rule
I was also to abide by," said Felipe Alou. "He told me he felt
there was ample time to talk about my beliefs, but that while I was
in the clubhouse and on the field I was to be dedicated to winning
baseball games."

Dark was particularly careful about talking
religion with the San Francisco press corps, among which there were
Jews and Left Coast secularists. In Spring Training he did draw a
parable, calling the cut-off play "just like the Bible. You don't
question it, you just accept it."

Off the field he neither smoked nor drank.
On the field he was aggressive, a gambler who "instilled an
aggressiveness in that ballclub," recalled catcher Tom Haller. "He
wanted us to play hard. Alvin loved to win, but hated to lose. And
he did curse. He'd get hot under the collar and could get quite
angry at times."

After screaming profanities
to umpire Shag Crawford, he "confessed" that "the devil was in me,"
that it was "not a Christian thing to do," to the
San Francisco Examiner
.
"Never before have I so addressed any man - and with the Lord's
help, I hope to have the strength to never do so again." Dark could
be a martinet, lumping the good in the with bad after a tough loss
which embittered all.

Dark was born on January 22, 1922 in
Commanche, Oklahoma, the son of an oil well engineer. The family
moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana where he grew up in a staunch
religious household. Life in the Bayou state of his childhood was
heavily Baptist, with strong racist and segregationist overtones.
Laws outlawing integration had been on the books since the Civil
War era. When Felipe Alou played in Louisiana in 1956, he and a
minority teammate were banned from future action by a law
forbidding whites and blacks from playing with or against each
other.

Dark's religious convictions were the shield
against instinctive racism. His years in New York with black and
Latino teammates certainly moderated him further. "Since I had been
a kid, the ways I have used to express myself have been mostly
physical . . . I was not good at expressing my thoughts verbally or
on paper," said Dark.

Dark was not alone in the
Southern white's interpretation of the racial dynamic. "I felt that
because I was from the South - and we from the South actually take
care of colored people, I think, better than they’re taken care of
in the North - I felt when I was playing with them it was a
responsibility for me," he said in Jackie Robinson's 1964
book
Baseball Has Done
It
. "I liked the idea that I was pushed to
take care of them and make them feel at home and to help them out
any way possible that I could playing baseball the way that you can
win pennants."

Alvin played football and baseball, but his
love was baseball. At age 10 he played against 19-year olds. He was
all-state in football, captain of the basketball team. LSU beat out
Texas A&M for his services. He played football and baseball for
the Tigers. In 1942, his sophomore year, Dark was the running back
along with Steve Van Buren, later a Hall of Famer with the
Eagles.

Dark was in the Marines during World War II,
and was assigned to officer candidate school at Southwestern
Louisiana State, where he earned football All-American honors. He
played halfback on an overseas team in 1945 before going to China.
Sports kept him out of major combat, as it did for numerous college
and pro athletes. Despite being drafted by the NFL and the
All-American Football Conference, Dark went for the Boston Braves,
breaking into the big leagues in 1946. He played all of 1947 at
triple-A, then helped lead the Braves to the 1948 World Series at
age 26.

The middle infield of Dark
and Eddie Stanky was distinctively Southern. Stanky taught the
youngster the intricacies of the game. Dark's .322 average earned
him Rookie of the Year honors over Philadelphia's Richie Ashburn.
In 1949 Dark and the Braves tanked. Manager Billy Southworth lost
his son and drank heavily. Dark learned from Southworth
things
not
to do.
Dark and Stanky were too opinionated. Both were traded to the New
York Giants.

Leo Durocher loved Dark's fiery ways. When
Dark turned down $500 to make a smoking commercial, Durocher paid
him the money and made him captain. He thought of Dark as a
player-coach, a manager on the field.

Over the years, Dark played for Gene Mauch,
Charley Dressen and Fred Hutchinson, all respected baseball minds.
"You get the chance to learn managing from a Durocher or a Mauch -
that's a pretty good education," he said.