Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever (7 page)

In 1968, the Eastern Conference’s seventh and deciding game returned to Philadelphia. Before the opening tip Russell strode to the jump circle with purpose. “Other players would be slapping each other and pumping themselves up,” he wrote in his autobiography
Second Wind
, “but I’d always take my time and walk out slowly, my arms folded in front of me. I’d look at everybody disdainfully, like a sleepy dragon who can’t be bothered to scare off another would-be hero. I wanted my look to say, ‘Hey, the King’s here tonight.’”

Sometimes Russell would take things even farther.

“‘All right guys,’ I’d say to the other team, ‘Ain’t no lay-ups out there tonight. I ain’t gonna bother you with them fifteen-footers’ cause I don’t feel like it tonight, but I ain’t gonna have no lay-ups!’ Or I’d lean over to one of the forwards and say, ‘If you come in to shoot a lay-up off me you’d better bring your salt and pepper because you’ll be eating basketball.’”

Russell didn’t say such things to Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, or Jerry West. Those were all-stars and able to reply in kind. Just about anyone else, though, was fair game.

In the final seconds of Game Seven, Russell backed up his tough talk. Down 98–96, the 76ers controlled a jump ball, with Chet Walker driving for a shot that Russell blocked. Philadelphia’s Hal Greer retrieved the loose ball, shot, and missed. Russell soared over Chamberlain for the pivotal rebound. Boston won 100–96, coming all the way back from a 3–1 deficit to take the series and advance to the finals against their bitter rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers.

While the Celtics’ comeback against the favored 76ers certainly earned national headlines, baseball remained king of the mountain. And the national pastime was about to gain even more attention for what was about to begin in Los Angeles.

Don Drysdale’s record-setting scoreless streak started convincingly enough with a 1–0 shutout over Ferguson Jenkins and the Chicago Cubs on May 14, 1968. On team after team, pitchers bemoaned the lack of timely hitting and runs, and Drysdale’s Dodgers were no different. Even during its championship years, Los Angeles was known for its quality starting pitching—Drysdale, Bill Singer, Claude Osteen, Stan Williams, and Sandy Koufax—rather than any real firepower at the plate. The ballclub was still years away from fielding such hitters as Ron Cey, Rick Monday, or Steve Garvey. In fact, a few seasons earlier, when Drysdale was briefly away from the team, Koufax pitched a no-hitter against the Phillies and Drysdale’s first reaction was, “Did he win?”

As ’68 began, the Dodgers were considered more pretender than contender. Koufax had retired after the 1966 season. In ’67, Drysdale had labored to a 13–16 record, with a respectable 2.74 ERA (earned run average). In spring training, he hurt his right arm while covering third base in an exhibition game at the Houston Astrodome. Even the big right-hander himself admitted he “was on the downside of the baseball mountain.”

Still, four days later, on May 18, 1968, Drysdale defeated Dave Giusti and the Houston Astros. Again, the final score was 1–0. Several trends were apparent to everyone, especially Drysdale. Not only were the Dodgers scoring few runs, but more likely than not, Drysdale was matching up with the opposing team’s ace. “You’d better think about pitching a shutout,” Drysdale later explained, “or giving up at most one or two runs, if you had any ideas of winning.”

That was certainly true for the third game of the shutout streak. The Dodgers were on the road facing the Cardinals, and Drysdale’s opponent was none other than Bob Gibson. It had rained much of the day in St. Louis and some wondered if the contest would be called. Yet Drysdale knew that Gibson “always meant box office.” In fact, the Cardinals had a big advance sale for the showdown, so the game was played despite the subpar conditions. St. Louis out-hit the Dodgers, five to three, but Drysdale won the game, 2–0, over Gibson. To this point, Drysdale had pitched twenty-seven scoreless innings—three consecutive shutouts.

On May 26, the Dodgers were back in Houston and Drysdale had to pinch himself to make sure the five runs his teammates put up for him were real. Still, the Dodgers’ ace was unable to rest easy. Astros manager Grady Hatton was convinced that Drysdale was using petroleum jelly or some other foreign substance to make the ball dive or soar. Reluctantly, home plate Al Barlick came to the mound to check the pitcher.

“I’ve got to look around here,” he told Drysdale. “Don’t worry about anything.”

Shrugging off the incident, the Dodgers’ ace shut out the Astros’ and Houston starter Larry Dierker, 5–0. “I was a kid back then, not quite twenty-two,” Dierker said. “But anybody could see that this was perhaps a once-in-a-generation thing. That guys like Drysdale and Gibson were setting a new standard. When you’re in the same profession, trying to do the same job, you’re just trying to keep up with it all.”

Ironically, the home-plate umpire would play the biggest role in Drysdale’s next start—May 31 at home against the rival San Francisco Giants. By this time the media was on the case, determining that Drysdale’s scoreless streak was the longest since Guy Harris “Doc” White pitched five consecutive shutouts for the Chicago White Sox in 1904. (During his playing career, White would combine with sportswriter Ring Lardner to write several popular songs, with “Little Puff of Smoke, Good Night” the most popular.) The all-time scoreless innings streak was held by Hall of Famer Walter “Big Train” Johnson, who pitched fifty-five and two-thirds scoreless innings in 1913.

Against the Giants, Drysdale was sailing along, holding a 3–0 lead into the top of the ninth. That’s when Willie McCovey walked, Jim Ray Hart singled, and then Drysdale walked Dave Marshall to load the bases with none out. (Marshall would break up Drysdale’s bid for a no-hitter later in the summer at Candlestick Park.)

Seizing the opportunity to end Drysdale’s scoreless string and perhaps even pull out a victory, Giants manager Herman Franks inserted Nate Oliver to be McCovey ’s pinch runner at first. San Francisco catcher Dick Dietz, who was next up, worked the count to 2–2. Drysdale went with a slider, but the pitch didn’t have much bite and it grazed Dietz on the left elbow. The Giants’ batter began to jog toward first base, which would have brought in Oliver from third. Pretty much everyone in the ballpark, including Dodgers catcher Jeff Torborg and Drysdale, thought the streak was over. The hit-by-pitch had forced in a run. Yet home-plate umpire Harry Wendelstedt surprised everyone by ruling that Dietz hadn’t tried to get out of the way of the pitch. Instead of allowing him to head to first base, the ump told him to get back in the batter’s box. Wendelstedt ruled the pitch a ball, making the count 3–2.

The Giants’ protest was long and loud. Third-base coach Peanuts Lowrey argued the call, as did Franks, halting the game for nearly a half-hour. Dodgers announcer Vin Scully filled the time by reading the rulebook on the air to listeners. The infielders stayed warm by throwing the ball around as Drysdale stood on the mound, watching Dietz, Lowrey, and Franks plead their case to Wendelstedt.

When play finally resumed, Dietz fouled off the next pitch. Then Drysdale got him to hit a shallow fly to left field. It wasn’t deep enough to score Oliver, so it was one out and the bases still loaded.

Next up was pinch hitter Ty Cline. He hit a line drive toward first base, where the Dodgers’ Wes Parker dug it out of the dirt and fired home in time for the out. Two down and the bases were still loaded.

Drysdale then induced pinch hitter Jack Hiatt to pop out to Parker at first. Somehow the Dodgers’ ace had gotten out of the jam and his scoreless string was intact. Drysdale had now pitched five consecutive shutouts.

“It took a lot of balls on Harry’s part to make that call,” Drysdale said, “ but he was absolutely right. Dietz made no effort to avoid that pitch.”

Juan Marichal, the Giants’ Hall of Fame right-hander, later told Drysdale that Dietz had said he was eager to be hit by the pitch. If that’s what it took to break up the scoreless streak, he’d pay the price.

Afterward, Franks called Wendelstedt “gutless,” while Dodgers manager Walter Alston said he “never saw the play called before. But then, it’s the first time I ever saw anyone get deliberately hit by a pitched ball.”

In 1968, football was positioned to supersede baseball as the most popular game in the land. What seems incredible looking back on things is that few saw this sea change coming.

Unlike baseball, football could be played in almost any weather. The 1967 “Ice Bowl,” the National Football League Championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and the host Green Bay Packers the previous December, solidified the game’s status among sports fans. With the gametime temperature of thirteen degrees below zero, on a field that had literally frozen overnight into the famed tundra, the Packers drove for the game’s deciding score. Despite the weather, a sellout crowd packed the stands at famed Lambeau Field. Public address announcer Gary Knafelc said it was like “seeing big buffaloes in an enormous herd on a winter plains. It was prehistoric.” And great television.

But one game doesn’t make a sport king of the hill. Other planets must fall into alignment and that’s exactly what was afoot in 1968. An integral series of events was set into motion when, after leading the Packers to another Super Bowl championship, Vince Lombardi stepped down as Green Bay’s coach.

“Historians should recognize that the first real superstar in modern professional football was not Jim Brown or Joe Namath, but a coach—Vince Lombardi,” Bill Russell wrote. “He was much more of a celebrity across the country than any of his players—in fact, more than anybody who’d ever played pro football.

“Lombardi was the military commander, the dictator of the Green Bay Packers, and the players were useful only if they fit into the machine he designed. It was a winning one, and he drove his men to the limits of their endurance. Stories circulated about how he scoffed at injuries and expected his players to keep going. He demanded that they eat, drink and sleep football, in complete submission and loyalty to his discipline.”

On the surface, losing a single coach, even a legend like Lombardi, doesn’t seem like a deal-breaker. After all, the National Football League (NFL) had plenty of great teams left, starting with the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Colts. Yet many in the rival American Football League, the upstarts who had been crushed in the first two Super Bowls by Lombardi’s Packers, recognized that they now had an opening, perhaps a real opportunity to run for daylight. Even though discussions continued about making it possible for two NFL teams to meet in the Super Bowl—the insinuation being that this would ensure a matchup between better teams—the American Football League (AFL) had nonetheless gained a growing following. How large? Early in 1968 nobody was quite sure. But events would soon conspire to underscore that it was in fact far bigger and more national than many in the sport realized.

Football was a different kind of game in the AFL. Players on the Buffalo Bills, Oakland Raiders, Kansas City Chiefs, San Diego Chargers, and New York Jets usually weren’t as big or as heavy as their counterparts in the more established NFL. The new league had more than its share of castoffs and misfits. It also emphasized offense, especially the long ball. While lacking at some positions, its cadre of quarterbacks—Joe Namath, Daryle Lamonica, Jack Kemp, John Hadl, Lenny Dawson—could throw the pigskin downfield.

“We knew we couldn’t just duplicate what the NFL was doing,” said Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt. “At least in part, we had to go in a different direction. Often that meant throwing the ball, the quick-strike offense. We had to show we could put points on the board. That was our way to win over more fans.”

Of course, any football owner would have loved to woo fans away from baseball. But as farfetched as it may sound now, baseball was often the front-page news in 1968. It was the sport that kept everybody talking.

With five consecutive shutouts, Drysdale had tied Doc White’s record. Next up were the Pittsburgh Pirates on June 4 at Dodger Stadium. Before another capacity crowd at Chavez Ravine, Drysdale gave up only three hits, one to Maury Wills, the Dodgers’ former shortstop who was now with Pittsburgh. The streak had now reached fifty-four innings and counting.

Later that same evening, Robert Kennedy made his way through the crowded Embassy Ballroom to the podium at the Ambassador Hotel. When he positioned himself at the two microphones, nobody could hear him at first.

“Can we get something that works,” Kennedy asked, anxious for the technical difficulties to be ironed out.

Even when the problem was fixed, he asked several times, “Can you hear?” before going ahead. Only minutes earlier, the networks had named RFK the winner of the California primary. At this point in time, many believed he held the inside track to the Democratic Party nomination for president. With his wife, Ethel, at his side, Kennedy smiled again and ran his fingers through his hair. On either side, the media held out their microphones to capture every word, while others took photographs. Behind him, former professional football player Roosevelt Grier, who often traveled with Kennedy, broke into a wide grin, surveying the cheering crowd. To watch the scene decades later, on YouTube or elsewhere, is to be reminded how distant our heroes stand from us now, how wide the gap between the stage and the first row has become, and how much security is now in place. Of course, that’s due, in large part, by what happened on this evening.

“I’d like to express my high regard to Don Drysdale,” Kennedy said, and the packed ballroom broke into applause for the hometown pitcher. “Who pitched his sixth straight shutout tonight.”

Here Kennedy paused, suppressing a smile. The more jaded among us would say that the candidate was doing what any good politician does: dropping the name of a hometown favorite. An easy applause line to break the ice. Yet Kennedy certainly knew of Drysdale’s achievement. He, as much as anybody at that time, realized that politics had already become forever intertwined with sports.