A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (70 page)

Some of the other Angels
proved to be one-year wonders. The team moved to Anaheim. By the
time they fired Rigney in 1969, their Sunset Strip personality was
gone. Some say an “Angels Curse” hung over them, in the form of
various tragedies and quirks of fate that befell players wearing
the Halo. The nostalgic memory of the Sunset Strip “Summer of '62,”
however, remained, in many ways, the highlight of their history
until their 2002 World Championship year.

****

Walter
Alston was re-hired shortly after the 1962 World Series.
Buzzie Bavasi called him in Darrtown, Ohio.

"Smokey, if you haven't got anything better to do
next spring, meet me in Vero Beach," he said to him. There were no
more hard feelings. The fact that Los Angeles had just set the
all-time attendance record certainly played a part in the
decision.

Alston dealt with Durocher until 1964. In 1963, he
led the Dodgers to ultimate glory; a pennant and four-game sweep of
the New York Yankees, won in front of a Dodger Stadium throng.

With Durocher out of his hair, he repeated the act
in 1965. His managing of that team is considered one of the most
masterful of all time. The Dodgers had zero offense, leaving it up
to Alston to manufacture runs, then make maximum use of the
Koufax-Drysdale duo to win numerous 1-0 and 2-1 games en route to a
pennant and World Series triumph over Minnesota.

Alston did the exact same thing in 1966, when Los
Angeles captured another pennant before their hitting woes caught
up to them in a four-game sweep at the hands of Baltimore.

Alston oversaw another "youth
movement" between 1969 (when the club was known as
The Mod Squad
after a
popular TV show) and 1973. In 1974 he steered the club to 102
victories and a Championship Series triumph over Pittsburgh, but
the vaunted Oakland A's beat them for their third straight World
Championship.

Alston retired at the end of the 1976 season with
2,040 career victories. Aside from his five pennants and three
World Championships, he managed five teams to second place
finishes. Alston was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1983.

"Out of my whole managerial career, I'd like to have
back the last week of the '62 season, and the play-offs," he said.
It was his only known regret.

Alston passed away in 1984.

Leo Durocher got what he deserved . . .
eventually.

Before that, his re-hiring surprised everybody. When
it was announced at a press conference, Walt Alston's voice was
heard on a squawk box. "I am not convinced he said those things
," Alston stated. "And I've always gotten
along well with him."

Durocher stayed on through the
successful 1963 campaign and the 1964 season, when Sandy Koufax's
injury derailed the club's chances in August. He took over the
Chicago Cubs in 1966, ending the club's policy of "revolving
managers." His first observation of the Cubs was that they were not
a ninth place team. In his first year they were a
10
^th
place team, but Durocher steered Chicago to respectability for
the first time since 1945.

In 1969, he had the Cubs flying high, in first place
all season, but was blamed for overmanaging, playing tired players,
insisting on a four-man rotation with little bullpen relief, and
placing undue pressure on his team, when they blew the lead against
the "Amazin' Mets." The man who claimed he would have steered the
Dodgers to the 1962 pennant had failed to produce when placed in
similar circumstances seven years later. Alston, by then as
respected a manager as there was in the game, refrained from
gloating.

Durocher managed a few more years in Chicago, then
briefly in Houston, before retiring. Only five managers had more
wins. All were in the Hall of Fame, but "the Lip" never got in
while he was alive. Embittered, he told friends to reject his
induction after his death, which occurred in 1991 the age of 86. In
1994, the Veteran's Committee voted him in.

In 1963 baseball's rules committee expanded the
strike zone, restoring it to the pre-1950s standard; the top of the
shoulders to the base of the knees. This propelled Sandy Koufax and
Don Drysdale to great heights in what may be the greatest pitching
decade ever. Drysdale matured, resurrected his relationship with
Alston, apologizing to the manager and anybody else he offended. He
was a temperamental man who got in trouble with his mouth during
his career and later as a broadcaster with the Angels, but he was
also a gentleman who knew when he was wrong and was not afraid to
admit it. All who knew him said he was a class act who never put on
airs. He just wanted to win.

In 1963 Drysdale beat Jim Bouton of the Yankees, 1-0
in a classic Dodger Stadium match-up en route to a Los Angeles
four-game sweep. While he won his only Cy Young award and a
career-high 25 games in 1962, 1965 must go down as his best season.
He was 23-12 with a 2.77 ERA, but pitched with broken ribs (unknown
by the manager) down the stretch; all clutch victories that led Los
Angeles to the pennant. He pitched brilliantly in the World Series,
a seven-game thriller over Minnesota.

However, Drysdale was hit hard in the first game of
the 1965 Series. Koufax was slated to start, but the game fell on
Yom Kippur. Sandy sat it out and Big D took his place. After
losing, he approached Alston and wryly told him, "I bet you wish I
was Jewish, don't you?"

Pitching at Dodger Stadium, he
atoned for his poor performance in Minnesota and the club won the
title. In 1966 Drysdale and Koufax held out in contentious contract
negotiations with Bavasi. Drysdale threatened to join the Screen
Actor's Guild, to leave baseball for the movies. He and Koufax made
a movie with David Janssen,
Warning
Shot
, and told the press they were
individually wealthy and did not need baseball. Bavasi told the
writers "good luck with their acting careers."

When they returned, Koufax was brilliant, Drysdale
was not (13-16), but they still combined to pitch the Dodgers into
the 1966 World Series. Drysdale again pitched below-par in the
Series opener with Baltimore, but was excellent in an outing at
Memorial Stadium. Lack of offensive support - which marked his
career in L.A. - made him a 1-0 loser.

When Koufax retired after the
season ended, Drysdale resumed his role as staff ace, which he had
held from 1957-62. In 1968, the "
Year of the Pitcher," the
31-year old pitched six straight shutouts, completing a Major
League record of 58 2/3 straight scoreless innings. The record was
attained at Dodger Stadium on June 8, just a few days after and a
few miles away from the Ambassador Hotel, where Senator Robert
Kennedy was assassinated. Drysdale was a Kennedy admirer who was
shaken by the experience.

After attaining the record, Drysdale's season fell
flat and he finished 14-12 with a 2.15 ERA on an average club. He
retired in 1969; the sturdy right-hander suddenly experienced arm
troubles after a durable career. His record was 209-166 with a 2.95
ERA and 2,486 strikeouts.

Drysdale announced for the California Angels during
Nolan Ryan's prime years. He later joined Vin Scully in the
Dodgers' broadcast booth. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in
1984. Drysdale had a strange incident occur in Montreal when he was
apparently drugged, possibly by a woman at the hotel bar, who may
have wanted to lure him to her room to steal from him or worse. His
marriage to the beauty queen Ginger did not last, but he did
re-marry, to the great UCLA women's basketball star Ann Meyer, but
died tragically young in 1993 at the age of 56.

Sandy Koufax also benefited from expansion of the
strike zone in 1963. All previous assumptions or questions; about
his toughness, his competitiveness, his relationship with Walt
Alston; were dispelled that season when he exploded above and
beyond all expectations.

He was 25-5 with a 1.88 earned run average, 11
shutouts and 306 strikeouts, earning the Cy Young as well as
National League MVP awards, then was named the Most Valuable Player
of the World Series when he beat the New York Yankees twice, 5-2
and 2-1. It was one of, if not the most, dominating seasons ever
recorded.

In the opener at Yankee Stadium, a ballyhooed
Koufax-Ford match-up was all Sandy when he set the big league
record for strikeouts in a World Series game, with 15. Koufax
shocked the mighty Yankees. Their commentary was laced with
defeatist phraseology, with Ralph Houk stating they had "27 outs
left" before facing him in game four. Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and
others expressed amazement that Koufax had managed to
lose five
games
that season.

Koufax was just as good in 1964, carrying a 19-5
record with a 1.74 ERA and 223 strikeouts in 223 innings pitched
when he was injured in August. With Koufax out for the year, Los
Angeles dropped out of the pennant race. In 1965 he may have been
better than ever, going 26-8 with a 2.04 ERA. His perfect game
against the Chicago Cubs was the fourth no-hitter of his career,
and his 382 strikeouts set the new Major League record. He won his
second Cy Young award and added two wins over the Twins as the
Dodgers won the World Series.

Could Koufax be better? Yes, he could, and he was in
1966 when he was 27-9 with a 1.73 ERA and 317 strikeouts, leading
the anemic-hitting Dodgers to the National League title. Squaring
off against rookie Jim Palmer of Baltimore in the World Series,
Koufax was betrayed by Willie "Three Dog" Davis, who despite being
a superb defensive center fielder somehow could not handle catching
or throwing that day in a 6-0 loss at Chavez Ravine.

Duke Snider felt that Koufax from 1963-66 was the
greatest pitcher ever. "He comes closer to being unhittable than
any other pitcher I ever saw," said Frank Shaughnessy, the late
president of the International League, who had seen Christy
Mathewson, Grover Cleveland Alexander and Walter Johnson.

"Against that guy we should get four strikes," one
batter said. Koufax announced his retirement after the 1966 season.
He was 30 years old with a 165-87 record, 2.76 ERA and 2,396
strikeouts. He said the pain of injuries was too great; that he
wanted to enjoy his life without enduring a debilitating ailment
that would prevent him from living like a normal man. Koufax said
the pain of hot salves applied to his arm before games was even
greater than the pain of pitching. He hated the freezing ice
applied to his arm after games, and claimed he was on so many
medications to dull his senses that he was constantly "high,"
worried about operating a car or thinking straight.

Koufax's acting career never amounted to anything. He
tried broadcasting and was on the national
Game of the Week
crew for a few years, but his personality was so dull that he was
not very good at it. He wrote an uninspiring autobiography and had
biographies written about him, the best of which was written by
Jane Leavy in 2002. He remained, for the most part, mysterious. Of
all the myths he was most eager to dispel, the one he worked the
hardest at was the idea that he was an intellectual, uninterested
in baseball greatness; as if it had all been an accident. He had
worked too hard, he stated, for that to have been the case.

Koufax married the daughter of movie star
Richard Widmark and tried to live a quiet life in Santa Barbara,
but the marriage was not successful. In 1970, the Associated Press
named him Player of the Decade.

"I'm not being modest, but I never had 10
good years in the decade," said Koufax. "I had about five. A lot of
people had 10 good ones. . . . this award was a very big one. But
there were so many great players in the decade, it had to be hard
to single out one.

"I might have chosen Mays or maybe Mantle or
Aaron. I'm still surprised I got it, because I haven't pitched
since 1966 . . . It's hard to single out the highlights, because
big years are more important than single big moments. Consistency
is the main thing."

Koufax made a point in his autobiography that
he approached games in May the same as September pennant-clinchers.
The moments that did stand out for him included "the perfect game
against the Cubs," which "might be the biggest, but I’ll never
forget my victory in the seventh game of the 1965 World Series and
that win over the Yankees in New York to start the 1963 Series . .
. You know, I never won 30 games in a year, but that doesn't gnaw
at me at all. To do it, you have to be terribly good and terribly
lucky.

"But you have to get the decisions, too, and
if you don't get a lot of runs, you won't. 30 is a heck of a
number. Heck, I would have liked to win 40, or all of them for that
matter . . . As the years go by, I miss baseball less, but I still
get the urge to pitch when Spring Training comes around. Or when
the pennant race goes into the last week.

"But you gave to face the fact that everything
ends."

He was named to the Hall of Fame in 1972 at the age
of 36, the youngest inductee ever. For years, Koufax's public
appearances, which always generated enormous excitement, have
mostly been when he worked with Dodger pitches in Spring Training.
In a recent episode of HBO's
Entourage
, an untrue rumor of
Sandy's demise was the premise for the Kevin Dillon character's
purchase of a vintage 1966 Koufax number 32 jersey.

Tommy Davis won the batting title again in 1963, and
seemed headed straight to Cooperstown until, early in 1965, he
suffered a terrible leg injury on the basepaths. Without Davis, the
Dodgers - known as the "Hitless Wonders" - had little offense, but
won the World Championship behind the extraordinary pitching of
Koufax and Drysdale. After the 1966 pennant-winning campaign, Davis
was traded to his hometown New York Mets. His injury healed buy he
never approached the explosive athletic prowess of 1962-63 again.
Still, he was a consistent .300 hitter who played for the White
Sox, Pilots, Astros, A's, Cubs, Orioles, Angels and Royals in a
well-traveled career. He was a strong contributor to the A's
champions and on Orioles contenders. Davis retired at the end of
the 1976 season with a .294 career average. He was Seattle's
hitting coach in 1981.