Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever (2 page)

“No hitter had an easy time of it that year,” said Cardinals’ first baseman Orlando Cepeda. “You might put together a string, get hot for a week or two, but anything more was asking too much in ’68.”

It was no surprise then that in the “Year of the Pitcher,” the two starters for the first game of the World Series stood front and center. While Gibson’s record was a modest 22–9, he finished the regular season with a 1.12 earned run average, the lowest ever for anyone pitching as many as 300 innings in a season. His counterpart for Game One, Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers, had compiled an amazing 31–6 record, the first pitcher to reach the thirty-victory plateau since Dizzy Dean in 1934.

By the time the two were set to take the mound that afternoon on October 2, the teams themselves had been eyeing each other for almost two months. In 1968, the last year before additional teams were added to postseason play, the Tigers won the American League pennant by twelve games and the Cardinals by nine. Everyone, including both ballclubs, their fans in each city, and the national press, had eagerly been awaiting this Fall Classic for some time.

Certainly there had been bumps in the road along the way for both teams, however. Built on speed and defense, the Cardinals sometimes fell into a swoon at the plate and in fact had been no-hit by the Giants’ Gaylord Perry only a few weeks before. Many believed Detroit, rather than the Boston Red Sox, should have won the pennant in 1967. So it didn’t surprise many when the Tigers kept the Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, and Red Sox at arm’s length this time around. Yet some still questioned Detroit’s ability to win under pressure.

If St. Louis captured the 1968 Fall Classic, the franchise would be recognized as a dynasty, the top ballclub of the sixties after winning in 1964 and 1967. If Detroit triumphed, the championship would be the city’s first in twenty-three years, and perhaps a psychic balm for a locale ravaged by rioting and racial division.

While few realized it at the time, the game of baseball was fast approaching a crossroads in 1968. In fact, the game’s first century of existence was about to go down in the history books. The first pro team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, had come into existence in 1869, nearly a century before, posting a 65–0–1 record while barnstorming 11,877 miles. Along the way, the game had authorized such advances as the curveball (in 1872), turnstiles (1878), and night baseball (1935). During this sweep of history, Cy Young retired with 511 career victories (1911), Babe Ruth walloped 60 home runs in a season (1927), and Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game, his fourth no-hitter in four years (1965). Looking ahead, a divisional format and play-offs were on the horizon—changes that were about to alter the national pastime forever. “People forget how honest and pure things used to be,” Willie Horton said. “Back then we played the whole season so the best team in the American League could play the best team in the National League. You cut right to the World Series. I always kind of appreciated that.”

On this day in October 1968, and at this time in U.S. sports history, baseball had everything going for it. Not only did the sport offer fans an epic pitching showdown in Game One, what some scribes called “The Great Confrontation,” the game itself reigned as king throughout the American sports landscape. In ’68 the national pastime was as popular as it had ever been. Soon it would fall from this lofty perch, thanks in large part to many events that took place during this watershed year. For now, however, the game was ready for another turn on center stage.

As Game One began, Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver settled in behind home plate. Tom Gorman, the home-plate umpire, took up his position behind him, and out on the mound stood Gibson, glaring in at both of them as if they were strangers, even adversaries. Even though the intimidating right-hander struggled somewhat early on, needing seventeen pitches to get through a scoreless first inning, it soon became apparent that Gibson was in rare form. His fastball displayed great movement, hissing like a snake as it flew through the strike zone. After gaining a touch more control, Gibson struck out seven of the first ten Tigers batters he faced. On this afternoon, the heart of the Detroit batting order—Al Kaline, Norm Cash and Horton—was overmatched, registering the lion’s share of Detroit’s strikeouts.

“That day was trouble all over again for me, for my ballclub, for anybody from Detroit,” Horton said, “In that game, Bob Gibson was the toughest pitcher I ever faced in my career. Ever.”

When it came to pitching in 1968, neither league was truly able to gain the upper hand. Nearly every team could roll out a quality ace, or at least one in the making. In the National League, the top arms included Gibson, Juan Marichal, Gary Nolan, Tom Seaver, Gaylord Perry, Mike McCormick and Ferguson Jenkins, not to mention such promising youngsters as Gary Nolan, Larry Dierker, and Steve Carlton. “Against studs like Gibson and Marichal,” Drysdale wrote in his memoir, “you knew damn well that you could give up three runs or less in a game and lose.”

Undoubtedly, everyone in the American League knew the stakes had been raised as well, with McLain and Mickey Lolich in Detroit, Luis Tiant and “Sudden” Sam McDowell in Cleveland, Dean Chance and Jim Kaat in Minnesota, and Jim Lonborg coming off his Cy Young season in Boston. Throughout 1968, this chord became the clarion call, sounded time and again. Sometimes it would be the game’s top stars that delivered this refrain. In other moments, unknown arms, at least at the time, would underscore this trend. While professional football, especially the upstart American Football League, strove for explosive offense and points, the more the better, in baseball that year teams often struggled to put a few runs on the board. Early on, veteran hitters could tell there was a bad moon rising for them in ’68. One needed only to look at the daily headlines to realize that pitching ruled the national pastime.

“You could see that the pitching was going to be something that season,” Gates Brown said. “Anybody with eyes knew that even as early as the first weeks of spring training. My God, the arms that were out there. As that ’68 season began all I was thinking was put the damn ball in play and see what happens. That’s about all a man could do some days.”

In the Pirates’ fourth game of the season, Jim Bunning picked up his first win with the Pittsburgh Pirates, a 3–0 victory at Dodgers Stadium. The shutout was the fortieth of his career and included his one-thousandth strikeout in the National League. That made him the first pitcher since Cy Young with one thousand in each league.

A day later, the Houston Astros defeated the New York Mets, 1–0, in twenty-four innings. The game lasted six hours and six minutes.

Of course, one could rationalize Bunning’s star turn was the culmination of a Hall of Fame career, and indeed, the no-nonsense right-hander was inducted into Cooperstown in 1996. As for the marathon in the Astrodome? Just a fluke, right? Maybe, maybe not.

The following week, on April 19, Nolan Ryan, in his season debut for the New York Mets, struck out eleven, including three batters on ten pitches in the first inning. Afterward, announcer Ralph Kiner compared the soft-spoken Texan with Bob Feller when it came to sheer velocity. But as was Ryan’s luck during his years with the Mets, things didn’t turn out well. The Texan lost 3–2 when Rocky Colavito, who was a last-minute addition to the Dodgers’ lineup, drove in the winning run. Jim Fairey was supposed to start in the Los Angeles outfield, but mistakenly thought the game was a night affair and overslept. That put Colavito in the starting lineup and his single in the eighth inning decided it.

“Strikeouts weren’t the problem for me back then,” Ryan said. “Getting wins was another matter.”

By the time the Orioles’ Tom Phoebus no-hit the Boston Red Sox on April 27 in Baltimore little doubt remained that a trend was apparent. Brooks Robinson not only drove in three runs but saved the no-no with a diving grab, to rob Rico Petrocelli of a hit in the eighth inning.

“The evidence mounted quickly,” said William Mead, author of
Two Spectacular Seasons
, “that this was going to be a great time for the pitchers.”

On May 8, 1968, Catfish Hunter of the Oakland Athletics hurled a perfect game against the visiting Minnesota Twins. It was the A’s first year in Oakland, after moving to town from Kansas City. Only 6,298 fans were in the stands that evening for what was just the eleventh game ever played at the new Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. But what the privileged few in the stands witnessed was the first regular-season perfect game—no hits, no walks, no errors—in the American League since 1922.

For baseball insiders, Hunter’s “perfecto” came down to a precious moment or two. In the seventh inning, the twenty-two-year-old faced Twins slugger Harmon Killebrew. The count ran to 3–2, and just about everyone, including Killebrew, figured the baby-faced right-hander would throw a fastball. But Hunter crossed up the future Hall of Famer, going with a changeup that Killebrew swung at and missed.

From there, things quickly moved to the game’s final batter, Rich Reese. The Twins’ pinch hitter fouled off four pitches with a 3–2 count before a called third strike. “For a while there I thought I was never going to get him out,” Hunter said afterward. “That boy kept on fouling off everything I threw up there. I sure was glad to see him strike out.”

At the time of Hunter’s perfect game, the chances of a no-hitter were calculated at 1,300 to 1. The chances of a perfect game stood at 28,000 to 1. In the Oakland clubhouse, Hunter told representatives of the Hall of Fame they were welcome to anything they wanted, uniform, cap, even the bat he used to help his own effort by driving in three runs, everything except the ball that struck out Reese. “That last one belongs to me,” the pitcher said. “I’ll keep it as long as I live because it sure took me a long time to get that final out.”

Afterward, Athletics’ owner Charlie Finley promised Hunter a $5,000 raise—a princely sum in these days before free agency—in honor of the accomplishment. When Hunter called his father back in North Carolina, the old man cautioned his son, “Tell me all about that five thousand when you get it.” After all, Finley already had the reputation for being a notorious skinflint. In the end, though, Hunter got his money. Perhaps because of all the great players the Athletics owner employed over the years, this pitcher was his favorite.

In high school, Hunter pitched five no-hitters, including a perfect game. But before signing a professional contract, he was involved in a hunting accident, which blew off a toe and left thirty shotgun pellets in his right foot. He was winged by his older brother, who stumbled, the gun accidentally going off, while the two were duck hunting. Upon seeing Hunter’s bleeding foot, the brother promptly fainted, leaving the wounded pitching prospect on his own.

Hunter crawled on his belly to a nearby creek, where he soaked his sweater in the cool running water. Then he scrambled back, wringing the garment over his brother’s face. Thankfully that was enough to revive the sibling and soon Hunter was in the bed of the family pickup truck, hightailing it to the local hospital. There doctors told him that he would never play baseball or football again.

“I could see he was handicapped,” said Finley, who visited the Hunter family’s sharecropper shack in Hertford, North Carolina. “Yet he still played baseball. His determination grabbed me, and after I heard the story of his accident, I was convinced that I wanted him.”

Other teams hadn’t gone above $50,000 for Hunter’s services, due to the damaged foot. But Finley made a preemptive bid of $75,000 “ because the Catfish had character.”

Early on, Hunter needed a good foot more than an admirable character. An operation to remove the shotgun pellets slowed his progress and many in the A’s organization urged Finley to drop him from the roster. Yet four years after the signing, Finley’s gamble paid off as Hunter was carried off the field on his teammates’ shoulders. In pitching the first perfect game in the American League since Don Larsen’s in the 1956 World Series, Hunter threw just 107 pitches, and only four balls were well hit. Left fielder Joe Rudi, making his first start in left field after being called up from Vancouver of the Pacific Coast League, tracked down two of them, including Rod Carew ’s line drive in the seventh inning. Afterward, Hunter said the latter was the only one that really concerned him.

“He probably threw no more than five curves all night,” said A’s catcher Jim Pagliaroni, who had caught Bill Monbouquette’s no-hitter in 1962. “He shook off only two of my signs. He made my job easy.”

With Hunter’s perfect game, it was apparent to sports fans that—to paraphrase the Buffalo Springfield hit song of the time—something was happening here. Pitchers, young and old, had the fever, and looking back on it, Hunter’s perfect game ushered in a season of excellence that we may never witness again. “It was the times,” said Jon Warden, a rookie reliever with the Tigers in ’68. “Everybody knew it. We were witnessing one of the great eras in pitching, and I, like anybody who threw a baseball back then, wanted to be a part of it in the worst way.”

Ken (Hawk) Harrelson, who would go on to lead the American League with 109 RBI, remembered Hunter’s perfecto as a sign of what was to come. “There were a lot of amazing pitchers in that season and folks will ask me, ‘Who was the best?’” Harrelson said. “And I’ll ask them, are we talking about best stuff or best pitcher? If we’re talking stuff, it would have to be somebody like Luis Tiant or ‘Sudden’ Sam McDowell. I mean nobody had four pitches as good as McDowell in his prime.

“But if we’re talking best pitcher, I’d go with Catfish Hunter. He didn’t have the stuff of the guys we’re talking about and I’d had glimpses of Bob Gibson or Juan Marichal or Don Drysdale, too. We’d go up against those NL guys in spring training and I’d faced Gibson in the ’67 World Series.

“Catfish didn’t have that kind of stuff. His fastball was kind of sneaky and he had a spinner of a breaking ball. Maybe not much. But what he did have was the biggest heart and more balls than anybody I ever faced. I mean the man was a competitor. If you’re asking me who’s the guy to win me a game when my family’s lives are at stake, I’m going with Catfish.”