A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (55 page)

These descriptions represent some of the most vivid
descriptions of a time, a place, an era, and a stadium ever
written.

Ron Fairly told Willie "Three Dog" Davis before the
penultimate game that "this one is ours." Durocher wore the same
T-shirt, shorts and socks he wore the day of Thomson's 1951 homer.
"I wore them yesterday when we won, and they have magic powers,"
said Durocher, somehow overlooking the possibility that those items
might have a "mojo" that would favor the Giants, not his new
team.

The writers asked Dark if he brought along anything
from 1951. "Yeah," he said. "Willie Mays."

The starters were the ailing Marichal vs. the
bone-tired winner of the 1955 game seven, Podres on two days of
rest. In the third inning San Francisco took a 2-0 lead on three
Dodgers errors, including one by Podres. A Snider double and an RBI
grounder by Howard cut it to 2-1. Roebuck replaced Podres with the
bases full in the sixth.

"Even so, I pitched pretty good," said Podres of his
exhausted effort. "I got us into the sixth inning before Eddie
Roebuck bailed me out."

Roebuck, making his sixth appearance in seven days,
pitched out of the jam with a force at home and double-play. In the
bottom of the inning Snider singled and the "Giant killer" Tommy
Davis hit a 400-foot homer to give the Dodgers a 3-2 lead. Hope
sprang eternal in the breasts of large-busted starlets!

Then the scoreboard flashed news that astronaut
Walter Schirra, a USC graduate, had orbited the Earth six times.
American Exceptionalism seemed to give the crowd a burst of
adrenaline, exacerbated by the home team's increasing its lead to
4-2 in the seventh. Wills's fourth hit and 104
^th
stolen
base, his third of day, led to the fourth run. A famed photograph
shows the throw skipping past Davenport, with Wills totally
disrupting him. Durocher ran all the way down the line with Wills
as if he were Bobby Thomson and it was over. Durocher
slid
as Maury scored, and the Giants seethed. Felipe Alou said right
then and there that it steeled the Giants' resolve.

"For a time today, it seemed that all the recent
doubts and discomforts suffered by Dodger fans were finally to be
rewarded . . . " wrote Angell, who in his
New Yorker
piece
described how the club forged ahead "in the happiest fashion
imaginable," behind the "old demi-god," Snider and the "young
demi-god," Tommy Davis, "who studies each pitch with the eye of a
jewelry appraiser . . ." Wills was "the ranking deity in Los
Angeles this year." The Giants "forgot their newly discovered
stratagem for getting Wills out," describing how the previous day
Wills had stolen second, only to be cut down at third by "the best
arm on the club," the sturdy right wing of Mays.

San Francisco went down quietly against Roebuck's
sinker in the eighth. Los Angeles had chance to increase their lead
in the bottom half of the inning. Dark walked two batters
intentionally, loading the bases. Roebuck came to the plate. He had
thrown three innings and was dead tired. Alston allowed him to hit.
The Dodgers groaned. Koufax and Podres begged Durocher to talk
sense into Alston, to pinch-hit for the reliever and use Sandy or
Drysdale in the ninth. Drysdale shouted and screamed for the
chance. One of the best-hitting pitchers of all time, with some
managerial foresight he could easily have been used as both the
pinch-hitter and the closer. Instead, Roebuck made the last out and
trudged out for the ninth.

"I'd rather have Roebuck pitching for us with a
two-run lead than anybody I've got," Alston later said.

"You're damn right I would have liked to pitch,"
Drysdale later told Bud Furillo. "Only they didn't ask me. I didn’t
think Roebuck should have started the ninth. He did enough."

Roebuck said Walt's theory was that his sinker would
be more effective since he was exhausted, but the pitcher said he
was "the most uncomfortable I've ever felt in a game." The smog was
debilitating, and he just wanted to get it over with.

In the Giants' dugout, the silence was broken up by
Dark. "Matty, grab a bat," he said.

Felipe Alou's little brother Matty, a contact
hitter, was the worst guy a sinkerballer like Roebuck could face in
that situation. Matty drilled Roebuck's second pitch to right field
for a single.

"You can't imagine the pressure I was feeling by
now," Roebuck admitted. He made $14,000 that year, and the Series
share was $10,000. Wills tried to calm him down. Roebuck got Kuenn
to hit a perfect one-hop double-play grounder to Maury, but
somebody
had moved Larry Burright two steps away from second
base. He was a split-second late in the force at the bag, just
enough to allow Kuenn to beat his throw to first base. No
double-play.

The question would swirl around Dodger circles like
the famed "Who lost China?" accusation that dominated politics in
1949. "Who moved Burright?" According to Roseboro, Lee Walls yelled
for Burright to play Kuenn as an opposite-field hitter.

Roebuck walked McCovey. Felipe Alou came to the
plate. Alston visited the mound. Still no Drysdale. Big D seethed.
Roebuck told the manager he just wanted to "finish this thing one
way or another." It would turn out to be "or another."

"The clatter of typewriters died away in the press
box," wrote Angell. Many writers were already in the elevator
headed towards the Dodger victory celebration. Now, silence befell
the cramped Dodger Stadium press box. None of the LA. writers
wanted to have to re-write their stories. Half wanted more drama.
Half just wanted it to end.

Roebuck had enjoyed success with Mays in the past,
but Willie inside-outed a jam sinker up the middle.

"This white blur was coming right at me," Roebuck
recalled. He had a large glove he called "The Claw." He stabbed,
barely missed catching it for the second out and possibly setting
up a double-play. Instead it squirted off the webbing for an
infield hit and a run scored. Bye Ed.

Drysdale?

"Stan Williams!" roared Durocher, not caring who
heard him. "He'll walk the park."

Drysdale was beside himself as Williams entered.

The Giants were stunned. Alston had
Koufax and
Drysdale
in the bullpen, but went with
Stan
Williams
.

"He must have been saving them to pitch in the
Series," deadpanned O'Dell.

Dark said that if he had Drysdale, "I'm thinking
pretty seriously about seeing if he can't finish the ballgame,"
that in a game of this magnitude "there is no tomorrow."

Williams thought he was brought in because he had
pitched well the day before - even though that increased the
fatigue factor - and that he had won two play-off games against
Milwaukee in 1959.

Alston figured the right-handed Williams would get
the right-handed Cepeda, then the southpaw Perranoski could be
brought in against the left-handed Bailey. Williams jammed Orlando,
who hit a short fly to right. Fairly had a decent arm but was a
first baseman, not an outfielder. His throw was late. The Giants
tied it at 4-4. Cepeda said it was one of the biggest RBIs of his
great career. Consternation bordering on hatred was palpable in the
Dodgers' dugout and bullpen, with open, verbal questioning of
Alston. A pall fell over the Dodger Stadium crowd, broken up only
by the wild shouts of scattered Giants rooters and the San
Francisco players themselves.

Alston and Durocher "stalked slowly back and forth
in their dugout, staring at their shoe tops and exuding an almost
invisible purple cloud of yearning; they wanted the National League
season extended by a few more innings or a few more games," wrote
Roger Angell. "This wish, like so many other attitudes to be seen
in this city, must be regarded as excessive . . . the twitchy,
exhausted athletes on both squads was reminiscent of action in the
winter softball games played by septuagenarians in St. Petersburg,
Florida." The Dodgers had permitted their "gasping pursuers" to
catch them, and now they were about to pass them.

Alston
did not go to Perranoski
against the
left-handed Bailey, who later admitted he had little chance against
Perranoski. Williams threw a wild pitch. Mays moved to third,
Felipe to second. Alston ordered Bailey walked intentionally.
Roseboro came to the mound. He did not want the wild Williams
loading the bases; he could easily walk in the go-ahead run, just
as Durocher predicted. They looked towards the dugout to get
Alston's attention; to come out and get Williams, or at least talk
it over, but
"we couldn't find him,"
said Roseboro. Alston
was in the runway . . .

Smoking . . . a . . . cigarette . . .

Bailey was walked intentionally.

Davenport, a .320 lifetime hitter vs. Williams, came
to bat. The first two pitches to him were balls, then a strike.
Williams, aiming now, walked him. Alou trotted home and San
Francisco led, 5-4. The pall in the dugout and the stands barely
concealed indignation.

Finally
, too late, Perranoski was brought in.
Naturally, Burright booted Pagan's grounder and it was 6-4. Bob
Nieman flied out.

The press box loudspeaker announced that United
Airlines would have a special flight leaving at seven o'clock for
San Francisco and the World Series.

Pierce was called on for last three outs. He was as
calm as a commuter waiting for the 5:15 to Greenwich. Wills
grounded out, Gilliam hit "can a corn," and "I knew we were in
pretty good shape," said Pierce.

The .205-hitting Walls stepped in for Burright and
lifted an easy, soft fly to Mays, who did not make his usual
"basket catch." Asked about it later, he yelled, "Are you crazy?
That was $15,000 a man." In a year in which he owed money to
everybody, he was not about to take any chances. There is a photo
of the shirtless Mays, displaying the muscles of a steroid user
long before such enhancements were thought of, in the post-game
clubhouse. Willie displayed a "million dollar" smile.

The game was over and the stunned crowd spilled onto
the freeways, the streets, the bars . . .

The Giants "went into the ritual Autumnal dance of
victory in front of their dugout, leaping into the air like
Watusi," wrote Angell.

"One of the most dramatic and nerve-racking pennant
races in years came to an astounding end today . . ." wrote John
Drebinger in the
New York Times
, calling the crowd of 45,693
"incredulous" at the sight of their beloved home nine blowing a
two-run lead in the ninth inning of a deciding play-off game for
the second time in 11 years.

Park maintenance moved cases of champagne three
different times in anticipation of the celebratory locale. The NBC
crew barely moved their equipment out of the Dodger clubhouse
before the angry home team stomped in. The cramped Giants'
clubhouse was a madhouse.

"This is the greatest moment of my life!" shouted
McCovey, who posed for a wide-smiled photo with his rival Cepeda
and pitching hero Pierce. Then they broke into a conga line. Dark
smilingly begged off the champagne.

"If we drink all this stuff, we'd be sick for a
week," exclaimed Bailey. "And if we had blown that game today, we'd
have been sick for a year."

Former race Vice President Richard Nixon, trolling
for votes in his neck-and-neck Gubernatorial campaign against
incumbent Governor Pat Brown, the election only a month away, told
Dark, "You're players have heart. You'll beat the Yankees."

The first game of the World Series was less than 24
hours away. The Yankees had been idling away the whole time; a
relatively early pennant-clinching, then waiting out the play-offs.
The Giants were loosey-goosey, carefree.

"This was it - this was the pressure," said Mays.
"We've got no time to worry about the Yankees now. We'll deal with
them as they come."

"Winning those play-offs was better than the Series,"
Felipe Alou later said. "Because of the rivalry, the animosity
between the Dodgers and Giants, the way we came from behind. This
was the biggest thing that ever happened to me in baseball - even
more than the day I played in the same outfield with my two
brothers."

The team started to party in the clubhouse, managed
to deal with the press, showered, and were still partying as they
made their way to the Los Angeles Airport for the flight to San
Francisco.

Dark reminded them that they had a game to play the
next day. They managed to cool it, but as the plane approached San
Francisco International Airport, pilot Orv Schmidt announced,
"There's a little disturbance down below."

People showed up
en masse
at SFO. When the
parking lot filled up, many just parked on the side of the 101
freeway and walked to the airport. Fans, estimated at between
25,000 and 75,000 strong overran the runway. The plane circled for
an hour and there was talk of landing in Oakland, across the bay.
Many feared a crash. Felipe Alou in particular hated to fly.

Eventually, the DC-7 was allowed to land at a United
maintenance base. A small gathering of mechanics and the Giants'
bus driver politely applauded. The bus would drive the team north
to Candlestick Park, where their cars were, but the players who
lived on the peninsula, to the south, decided to find their own way
home. Cepeda, the Alou brothers, Pierce and Marichal waded their
way through the crowd. They eventually were given rides by fans
they had never met before. They all made it.

The rest boarded the bus. At the main concourse,
wives and family awaited but beyond that was a semi-dangerous
throng. The day had been long and alcohol-fueled. People broke
through police barricades, French Revolution-style, converging on
the bus.

"Those folks meant well, but they really shook us
up," recalled Dark. They started to shake and rock the bus. Several
recalled being terrified that the bus would be rolled over and they
would be crushed. Writer David Plaut said it was a "miracle" the
team escaped without serious incident or injury, to players or
fans.