100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (3 page)

3. 32

Seventy-two-year-old Sandy Koufax came out to Los Angeles in 2008 to throw the ceremonial Opening Day first pitch, and 56,000 fans had the same thought: Get this guy his uniform. He still looked superhuman.

Hitting against Sandy Koufax was like staring into the sun…with the sun coming at you at around 100 miles per hour. Hitting against him was Armageddon. It was as hopeless an experience as any Dodger opponent would ever face on a regular basis.

Three of the five lowest ERAs for starting pitchers in Dodgers history came from Koufax: 1.88 in 1963, 1.74 in 1964, and 1.73 in 1966 (a 190 ERA+ for the latter, second-highest by a starting pitcher in Dodgers history behind Dazzy Vance's 1928 season). In his career, Koufax struck out 2,396 batters in 2,324
1/3
innings. One quarter of the batters he faced in the major leagues whiffed.

This lefty, who could have been sold down the river by a wildness that was either the cause or result of sporadic use in his early years, owned Los Angeles. By the early '60s, Koufax's control improved dramatically. After walking 405 batters in 691
2/3
innings through 1960, he walked 412 batters in 1,632
2/3
innings for the remainder of his career. So the good news was you knew where to look for the ball, even if you couldn't see it.

For a Dodger fan, Koufax provided a kind of nirvana that, for all the excitement that would follow him, would never be repeated. In 86 career games at Dodger Stadium—715
1/3
innings—Koufax allowed 109 earned runs (a 1.37 ERA). Some of that, surely, was a product of the stifling environment that Dodger Stadium offered hitters of that era, but there's little need to adjust the emotional ledger. Koufax was indomitable. He was FDIC-guaranteed.

“The team behind him is the ghostliest-scoring team in history,” columnist Jim Murray wrote in the
Los Angeles Times.
“This is a little like making Rembrandt paint on the back of cigar boxes, giving Paderewski a piano with only two octaves, Caruso singing with a high school chorus. With the Babe Ruth Yankees, Sandy Koufax would probably have been the first undefeated pitcher in history.”

Following his retirement in 1966, a mystique was added to Koufax's persona as he eventually retreated to a great extent from public view, and the full weight of what he had endured to succeed crystalized among the Dodger faithful. It's not that it was any secret that Koufax's pitching arm should have been protected from baseball by a restraining order, but while he was still active, the consoling thought was, “Who are we to argue if he can bear it?” After all, that's what men were supposed to do, right? Koufax, the soft-spoken Jew from Brooklyn, was the Marlboro Man and John Wayne when it came to steely bravery on the ballfield.

But with time to reflect on the torture of his left elbow, Koufax became something even greater, something more than just a man. Whatever ego Koufax does have, it's hard to imagine a more selfless and talented performer for this team. If God ever put on a Dodger uniform, he wore No. 32 and threw left-handed.

 

 

 

4. Next Year

Putting the 1955 season near the start of a book misses the point, doesn't it? Nineteen fifty-five was the culmination of an agonizing endurance test. This was the end of “Wait ‘Til Next Year,” but you readers hardly had to wait at all.

When did the wait begin? Baseball in Brooklyn can be dated back to the mid–19
th
century. National League play began in the city in 1890. The team won the NL pennant in 1890, 1899, and 1900 (three years before the World Series began). Over the next four decades, Brooklyn finished in first place twice.

That was the long, slow dreariness. The so-close-yet-so-far agony commenced in 1941 when the Dodgers might have written an entire other history if they had gotten one more strike in Game 4. Starting in 1946 and with the coming of Jackie Robinson in 1947, Brooklyn played past the scheduled regular season five times in eight years, falling short again and again and raising a fundamental question of sports—is it better to lose big and early or bitterly at the end?

Brooklyn invested a lot of energy in that question—the city was a regular Petri dish for baseball's psychological torture by the time the '55 season began. And then, it set itself up for its biggest delight or disappointment ever. The team won its first 10 games and 22 of its first 24. A four-game losing streak from May 15–20 was all the vulnerability the Dodgers showed to the National League that year. By early June, Brooklyn's lead in the NL surpassed 10 games and would never dip below that number. The Dodgers clinched the pennant September 8, the earliest date in league history.

Though Robinson was 36 by this time and struggling through the worst season of his major league career, several Dodgers were having tremendous campaigns. Center fielder Duke Snider slugged .628 with 42 home runs (.332 TAv). Catcher Roy Campanella hit 32 homers (.318 TAv), first baseman Gil Hodges 27 (.297 TAv), and right fielder Carl Furillo added 26 (.295 TAv). Don Newcombe, who not only cruised to a 20-win season (128 ERA+) but also batted .359 with seven homers, led the pitching staff. Brooklyn topped the NL in runs scored and ERA, and basically had half the season to worry about winning four games in October.

Rest assured, no one in Brooklyn could have thought the Dodgers were a lock to win the Series. They certainly kept an eye on their longtime nemesis, the New York Yankees, and had to have taken a collective deep breath when the Bronx Bombers survived a much closer pennant race—edging out Cleveland after being tied with nine games to go.

In Game 1, before 63,869 at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees fed Brooklyn's anxiety like short-order cooks. The Dodgers scored two in the top of the second; the Yankees answered back with the same. The Dodgers scored one in the third; so did New York. And when the Yankees pushed in front on home runs by Joe Collins off Newcombe—a solo shot in the fourth and a two-run clout in the sixth—they didn't let Brooklyn off the hook. Not even a Robinson steal of home in the eighth could catapult the Dodgers to victory. They lost 6–5.

Game 2 was almost as frustrating and equally as damaging. The Yankees combined four singles, a walk, and a hit-by-pitch with two out in the fourth inning for four runs, and made it stand up for a 4–2 victory. Next year already had folks waiting in line.

When the teams reunited at Ebbets Field for Game 3, an 8–3 victory behind Johnny Podres forestalled the potential indignity of a sweep. But that seemed to be all. The Yankees took a 3–1 lead in the fourth inning of Game 4.

Then, the Dodgers burst to life. Campanella, Furillo, and Hodges went homer-single-homer to kick off the bottom of the fourth and put the Dodgers back in front. In the next inning, Snider blasted a three-run shot. The Dodgers had an 8–5 victory, and the Series was down to a best-of-three.

When Snider hit two more homers the next day to lead Brooklyn to a 5–3 victory, the Dodgers had a 3–2 Series advantage over the Yankees for only the second time in their history. The other time, in 1952, the Dodgers had suffered narrow losses in the final two games. And indeed, Brooklyn would score only three more runs in their final two contests of 1955. In Game 6, the Dodgers weren't even competitive. Karl Spooner was knocked out in a five-run first inning, and Whitey Ford pitched a complete-game four-hitter for a series-tying 5–1 victory.

Game 7, however, attained the unattainable. Here was a generation of Brooklyn history in one contest. Tension, as the game remained scoreless after three innings. Hope, as the Dodgers took the lead on Hodges' RBI in the top of the fourth and his sacrifice fly in top of the sixth.

Then came the bottom of the sixth. The Yankees put two runners on. And then, after Yogi Berra went the other way with a long fly ball, left fielder Sandy Amoros, who entered the game that inning, ran into the frame of history, his neck tilted back as if trying to spot an airplane, his arm fully outstretched at a perfect line to the ground, his weight back to keep from pushing too far toward the stands. He makes the catch close enough to the foul-line seats for an entire city to exult him, and in a continuous motion, he pivots on that back foot that is bearing the weight of the moment and fires the ball back to shortstop Pee Wee Reese, who relays it to Hodges to double up Gil McDougald.

It's entirely conceivable that history was setting up Brooklyn for the most crushing disappointment possible, but Podres fought back. With two on in the eighth, Podres survived Berra again, getting him to fly to right, before striking out Hank Bauer.

The final inning. Moose Skowron nearly drilled Podres into oblivion, his one-hopper ripping the webbing of Podres' glove before sticking between its fingers. Podres freed the ball and fed Hodges for the first out. Amoros then made an easy play on Bob Cerv's pop fly to left.

The final batter. With a 2–2 count, Elston Howard fouled off five Podres fastballs. “Podres had had enough,” wrote Stewart Wolpin in
Bums No More!: The Championship Season of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers.
“Campy called for another heater, but Podres shook him off. The tired but stubborn lefty wanted to throw one last changeup.”

Howard hit a grounder to short. Could this be it? Reese's throw to first base was wide—would there be another defeat ripped from victory? Hodges, stretching forward and low and to his left, flagged the ball with the tip of his shoe clinging to the bag.

The 1955 season proves it. The harder the journey, the sweeter the arrival. Euphoria.

 

 

 

5. The Sweetheart from '88

“A high fly ball to right field. She is …”

She is heavenly in our memory, still vivid, still true.

She is sailing from the pitcher's hand toward a man on knotted stilts, all torso and determination and even a little secular prayer, but no legs, none to speak of. His bent front peg trembles, elevating slightly, the rear one already buckling.

She rises so slightly off an invisible cushion of air, then starts to settle, trailing away but not far enough away. The front peg descends under the weight of arms, strong, driving down into the strike zone.

She is inside the circumference of the catcher's mitt, but the bat intercedes. The arms look horribly awkward, the back elbow bent at almost 90 degrees, the front arm cutting down in front to form a triangle. The back leg elevates at the heel as the batter lunges, almost to the point of falling down.

But she meets flush with the bat, ceasing to be a sphere, transforming into a comet. She is launched by a popgun, a croquet swing. The left wrist twists, then the hand loses the bat entirely. The follow-through whimpers like that of a novice tennis player, but it doesn't change anything.

He looks up. His back leg comes down again, spread across home plate from his right. His left arm is cocked like a puncher. His first motion out of the batter's box is of a runner. There's been a mirage. The living, breathing, conquering athlete was in there all along.

 

 

“GONE!” Dodgers pinch-hitter Kirk Gibson rounds the bases in celebration after hitting a game-winning two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Oakland A's 5–4 in the first game of the World Series at Dodger Stadium October 15, 1988.

 

She travels at the speed of light. The right fielder breaks back, taking one, two, three…four…five…six steps, slowing down, his mind and hope retreating before his legs even know. A single set of identical red lights, that's all, prominently glowing but orphaned, can be seen under the peak of the pavilion roof, behind the brimming, jammed bleacher seats, not abandoned, not at all. Arms are soaring into the air in exultation.

She is crashing down from the sky; mass times acceleration, a shooting star at mission completion. She is in the crowd, she is in our heads, she is in our astonishment, she is in our incredulous joy, she has broken into our ever-loving, unappeasable souls and exploded.

She is …

“GONE!!!”

It had to be something astonishing, something brain-defying. To paraphrase Vin Scully, quoted above making his preeminent call of Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit, two-run 1988 World Series Game 1-winning home run, it had to be something impossible in a year so improbable.

And in a Series so unbelievable, there was also:

• Mickey Hatcher, a journeyman with 56 hits and one home run all year, bookending the Series with two-run homers in the first innings of Game 1 and Game 5, racing around the bases like the kid we wish all major league players still had inside them.

• Mike Davis, an unadulterated free agent bust for six months, with 55 hits and two home runs after knocking 419 and 65 the previous three seasons, drawing his second walk since September 3 from none other than Dennis Eckersley, who had walked 13 men the entire year—with two out in the ninth inning of Game 1.

• Orel Hershiser, continuing his unprecedented heroics, getting as many hits of his own in Game 2 as he allowed in a 6–0 shutout, then finishing off the A's in Game 5. For his final 124
2/3
innings in 1988, from August 19 through the end of the playoffs, Hershiser had an ERA of 0.65.

• An enfeebled Dodger lineup, including a Game 4 crew with 36 combined home runs in 1988, outshining an Oakland squad bursting with strength. For the series, Jose Canseco (.345 TAv in 1988) and Mark McGwire (.309) combine to go 2-for-36 at the plate with five walks. Canseco hits a second-inning grand slam in Game 1 that should have closed the door on the Dodgers; McGwire wins Game 3 with a ninth-inning homer that should have reopened it for the A's. Nothing else.

 

Gibson is done after his Mt. Olympus moment; Hatcher steps in. Mike Marshall goes down with an injury; Davis steps in. John Tudor's elbow gives way; Tim Leary steps in. Mike Scioscia wrenches his knee after a busted hit-and-run; Rick Dempsey steps in. No matter how hard the wind blew or the ground shook, the pennant never touched the ground.

Baseball is not a sport that embraces upsets. Baseball likes to see the best team win. In the age of the wild card, there's an undercurrent of dissatisfaction when a lesser team takes advantage of a short series to defeat a greater team. Postseason baseball doesn't light a candle for Cinderella; it nods to her politely, almost grudgingly, and moves on.

Except for a team like the '88 Dodgers. When a team wins with such drama and such style, when a team wins with eternal moments, that team can't be left unacknowledged; they are embraced.

The 1988 World Series title for the Dodgers is one of the greatest in baseball history.

 

 

Scioscia's Swat

Did anyone mention Mike Scioscia? If it weren't for the onion-shaped Dodger catcher, Kirk Gibson's remarkable World Series homer never would have happened. Orel Hershiser's scoreless inning streak would have been the postscript to a disappointing year.

The Dodgers were three outs away from losing their third game of the first four in the 1988 NL Championship Series when, after John Shelby walked, Scioscia no-doubted a Dwight Gooden pitch over the right-field wall, tying the game at 4–4. Scioscia's blast, as much as anything, set up the remarkable string of events that included a home run by Gibson (a 1-for-16 postseason goat up to that point) in the top of the 12
th
to give the Dodgers a 5–4 lead and Hershiser's emergence from the bullpen after pitching 15
1
/
3
innings in the previous five days—events that would propel the Dodgers back on track to their last World Series title of the 20
th
century.

Scioscia hit only three regular-season home runs in 1988 and 68 in 1,441 career games. When he came up to face Gooden in the ninth inning at Shea, Scioscia was 7-for-41 with one walk (.190 on-base percentage), one home run, and two doubles lifetime against Gooden. For his part, Gooden had allowed only one hit since the first inning. Scioscia was not hopeless with the bat: three years earlier, he had an on-base percentage of .407. But as stunned as the Oakland A's would be by Kirk Gibson's Game 1 homer six days later, the Mets were almost that floored when Scioscia knocked his out.