Alou Read online

  Pandemonium exploded in our clubhouse. Player after player went to Alvin Dark and hugged him. He believed in us, and he was right.

  We didn’t have too much time to celebrate, though. Game One of the three-game playoff was the next day. Thank goodness it was at home in Candlestick Park.

  Historically, there has always been a simmering animosity between the Giants and the Dodgers, the rivalry having traveled the distance from New York to California. Earlier in the season, before a series against the Dodgers at Candlestick Park, Dark ordered the groundskeepers to speed up the infield by cutting the grass short and also slowing the base paths by watering them down—both designed to neutralize the Dodgers’ vaunted speed. The Dodgers complained and retaliated by stealing our weighted practice bat. We returned the favor, stealing their weighted practice bat.

  Now here we were again, with a three-game playoff destined to send one of us home and the other to the World Series. It was the same as eleven years earlier, in 1951, when it was the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers and Bobby Thompson hit the “Shot Heard ’Round the World”—a ninth-inning Game Three walk-off homer to win it for the Giants. Just as in 1951, the Dodgers held a substantial lead in the pennant race, only to have the Giants catch them. Would eleven years later provide a West Coast part-two déjà vu?

  The Dodgers started Sandy Koufax, and it was clear from his first pitch this wasn’t vintage Koufax. Even Sandy admitted that years later, saying, “I had nothing at all.” He battled, though, tenacious, and that’s when I really saw what kind of man he is. But the nasty bite wasn’t there on his curveball, and his fastball had an uncharacteristic flatness to it, transforming it from overpowering to predictable. Still, Koufax got our first two hitters out in the first inning—Harvey Kuenn and Chuck Hiller. I came up with two outs and mashed a double to left field. Willie Mays followed with an opposite-field home run to put us up 2–0. Koufax then induced Cepeda to groundout unassisted to first base. In the second inning Jim Davenport greeted Koufax with another home run, followed by a line-drive single from Ed Bailey, and that was it. Koufax came out, and the Dodgers burned through five relievers the rest of the way. We won, 8–0, but I’ll admit I felt sorry for Koufax. I think a lot of us did. Sandy was always such a gentleman.

  Game Two was at Dodger Stadium, and on the way to Los Angeles the talk was that this was all business. No going out. No girlfriends. Everybody abided by the edict. The game turned into a bit of a slugfest. I got a couple of hits, including an RBI double off Don Drysdale that scored Cepeda. In all fifteen runs were scored. Unfortunately, only seven came from us in an 8–7 loss. The big blow was a bases-clearing, three-run double off the bat of Lee Walls. The ball rocketed over Willie Mays’s head, and I thought for sure Willie would catch it. He didn’t. Every once in a while moments like that would remind me that, as great as Willie was, he was still mortal.

  Now it was down to the deciding Game Three, also at Dodger Stadium, with Juan Marichal going against Johnny Podres. We took a 2–0 lead in the third, but the Dodgers retaliated with a run in the fourth, two in the sixth, and another in the seventh to take a 4–2 lead.

  It was that tack-on run in the seventh inning that especially bothered me, because of the way the Dodgers’ third base coach, Leo Durocher, acted when they scored it. After Maury Wills lined a one-out single, he stole second. Then, with two outs, he took off for third. Catcher Ed Bailey’s throw was wild, and as it got away from our third baseman, Jim Davenport, Wills raced home. That would have been bad enough, except that Durocher ran all the way down the line with him and slid as Wills slid home safely. Thinking they had the game won, Durocher got up laughing, like it was a show, a joke. I never wanted to win a game as badly as I did that game.

  When I came off the field after the bottom of the eighth, with the score still 4–2, I went straight for the clubhouse and did something I’ve never done before or since—I prayed for us to win. I felt I needed a quick connection with Jehovah God, a few seconds to visit with him before going into combat.

  I returned to the dugout just in time to see Matty lead off the ninth inning by lacing a line-drive single to right field. The inning produced another single, four walks (one by me), a wild pitch, an error . . . and four runs to give us a 6–4 lead. Historians had a field day with that, since it was also four ninth-inning runs the Giants scored in the 1951 playoff to give us a 5–4 victory against the Dodgers. In our case Billy Pierce came in to pitch a scoreless ninth inning to secure the win and the pennant.

  I ran in from right field, jubilant, celebrating with my teammates. At the same time I caught sight of some of the Dodger players, forlorn, heads bowed, a few showing tears. As I did with Koufax, I felt sorry for them. For us, though, it was pandemonium again in the clubhouse. I found another quiet spot, this time in the shower area, and bowed in another prayer. I emerged to see someone offer Alvin Dark a paper cup filled with champagne.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I don’t need any help to be happy at a time like this.”

  He was right.

  Coming together and winning as a team, accomplishing what we believed we were capable of doing when we were in spring training seven months earlier, was such a pure joy, and nothing artificial could add or subtract from that.

  But more work in the form of the New York Yankees waited, as did their opening-game pitcher, Whitey Ford, who was riding a then record thirty-two-inning scoreless streak in the World Series. Anticipating after we beat Koufax that we would win the playoff series, the Yankees flew ahead to San Francisco. We, however, still had to travel back from Los Angeles. There were reports that fifty thousand fans were waiting for us at the airport, some of them blocking the airfield. Our pilot circled for an hour and twenty minutes before deciding to land at a maintenance depot a mile from our gate. The fans still found us, swarming our bus, smashing some windows in their raucous celebration. We didn’t get home until about four in the morning.

  Awaiting us several hours later were Whitey Ford, the New York Yankees, and Game One of the 1962 World Series.

  13

  1962 World Series

  How do you go from the incredible high of beating your archrival in a three-game series to several hours later being ready to play Game One of a World Series? You don’t. And we weren’t.

  To this day, if you wear a Giants uniform and you beat the Dodgers, there is a special sense of satisfaction—even if it’s a spring training game. So after beating the Los Angeles Dodgers with that ninth-inning, come-from-behind rally, it felt as though we had already won the World Series. We sensed the fans felt that way, too. There was a buzz for Game One of the World Series at Candlestick Park. No question. But it wasn’t the same buzz.

  We were tired. Our energy—physically and emotionally—was down. Meanwhile, the New York Yankees were rested and eager. Our pitching staff was depleted, forcing us to start relief pitcher Billy O’Dell. The Yankees had Whitey Ford on the mound, riding the crest of thirty-two scoreless World Series innings.

  Some of the other Latino players and I chatted before the game—in Spanish, of course—and we wondered what could be more exciting, more electric, than what we had just experienced against the Dodgers. I heard some of the other guys saying things like, “What more can we do?”

  After seeing two future Hall of Famers in the playoff series—Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale—we got our first look at another one in Whitey Ford. It was apparent from the first pitch that Ford, while not a hard thrower, was the type of pitcher who allowed you to get yourself out. Anything that looked like a strike was a ball, and anything that looked like a ball was a strike. He had a sinker, a changeup, and a big roundhouse curveball—a lot of movement with a lot of pinpoint control. His pitches headed straight for the strike zone and then, once you committed, faded away or dropped out. And Whitey never gave in. Even on a 3-0 count, when most pitchers give you a fastball, he would still make his pitch, and he would throw it on the black part of home plate.

  Maybe that exp
lains how, while we were able to get ten hits and draw two walks against Ford, we still managed only two runs. It didn’t help that we had no pop in our bats—just one extra-base hit, a double from Chuck Hiller. The Yankees managed only one more hit, and only two extra-base hits, but they also worked five walks against our pitchers.

  Things might’ve been different had I gotten to one of those extra-base hits. In the first inning, sandwiched between striking out lead-off hitter Tony Kubek and cleanup hitter Mickey Mantle, O’Dell surrendered a pair of singles to Bobby Richardson and Tom Tresh. With two outs and runners on first and second, Roger Maris smashed a long fly ball to right field. I chased it to the warning track, leaped . . . and felt it graze off my glove as both the ball and I fell to the ground. I think I might have saved it from being a home run, but the hit still did damage. With the runners going on two outs, both easily scored, while Maris pulled into second for a double.

  I did save us some possible calamity in the third inning when I made a diving catch on a sinking fly ball off the bat of Tresh. We also battled back with runs in the second and third—I contributed a single in the middle of our third-inning rally—to knot the game at 2–2. But the Yankees scored four runs in the last four innings to win 6–2.

  In Game Two I felt we were up for business. I believe there was a realization that if we played the way we played against the Dodgers, we could win this thing. We had Jack Sanford going in Game Two and Juan Marichal scheduled for Game Four. We thought we had better pitching. But we didn’t know about Ralph Terry, although we should have. Terry was an average pitcher before the ’62 season, with a Major League record of 48-49. His claim to fame was surrendering Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off World Series–winning home run for the Pittsburgh Pirates two years earlier, in 1960. But he had his best season in ’62, winning a league-leading twenty-three games, and for my money he was the best pitcher for the Yankees in that World Series. Evidently, others agreed with me, as he became the World Series MVP.

  Terry limited us to five hits and two runs over seven innings in Game Two, but thankfully Sanford pitched a three-hit shutout to give us a 2–0 victory, tying us at a game apiece with a day off and the Series heading to New York.

  After getting a hit in each of the first two games, I went hitless in Game Three. Bill Stafford had a tough sinker and a slider away, and I couldn’t get a pitch to hit all day. I did make a leaping catch to rob Elston Howard of an extra-base hit. We still lost 3–2, our pair of runs coming on Ed Bailey’s two-run homer in the ninth inning, scoring him and Willie Mays, who led off the inning with a double.

  I don’t know why, but it was during Game Three that I got reflective. Kids today in the Dominican Republic dream and strive for the World Series. But I never did growing up. My field had no dreams—only lemons and limes and coconuts and makeshift mitts and playing purely for fun. I believe God puts you in positions, and I was thankful for that, thankful for where I was. But it struck me that only seven years earlier I was studying to be a doctor at the University of Santo Domingo. That was my world. Now I was in the World Series.

  Game Four had Marichal going for us . . . and then disaster struck. It was billed as a classic pitching duel—Marichal versus Ford. We were winning 2–0 going into the fifth inning. Tom Haller hit a one-out single, followed by another single from José Pagán. With runners on first and third and one out, Marichal, a decent hitter, stepped to the plate.

  Alvin Dark gave him the bunt sign, and Marichal squared before letting the pitch go by—ball one.

  The bunt sign was on again, and again Marichal squared before letting the ball go by—ball two.

  Now Marichal had the take sign—ball three.

  Marichal faked a bunt—strike one.

  Marichal faked a bunt again—strike two.

  What followed was a strategic decision that we’ll always scratch our heads about. With a 3-2 count, Dark signaled for a suicide squeeze, which meant Haller would be racing home and Marichal absolutely had to put the bat on the ball. It was a stupid call. We thought it was stupid then and still believe that today.

  No doubt Dark thought Ford, on a 3-2 count, would deliver a cookie right down the middle. But that wasn’t Whitey Ford. In retrospect, I believe Ford outsmarted Dark. One of the things that separate great pitchers from the rest of the pack is that great pitchers sense plays, and I’m convinced Whitey Ford sensed a suicide squeeze. He threw Marichal a nasty pitch, out of the strike zone—a pitch that dived into Marichal’s ankles. There is no way a pitcher with Whitey Ford’s control would miss the strike zone that badly. He had just thrown two pinpoint strikes. I believe he purposely threw down and in, impossible for Marichal to bunt. But with Haller racing in from third—and as a catcher he wasn’t exactly a speedster—Marichal was forced to stab at the ball with his bat. The impact produced a loud thwack! It sounded like the ball hit all bat, but it hadn’t. The baseball smashed Marichal’s index finger so hard his fingernail fell off, and he was immediately removed from the game. Adding insult to injury, the ball went foul, which meant Marichal struck out.

  Marichal has always said that up until then he was pitching the best game of his life—four shutout innings with four strikeouts, two of them against Mickey Mantle. We ended up winning 7–3, but we lost Marichal for the rest of the Series.

  Because we sent our families home late in the regular season, anticipating that we wouldn’t catch the Dodgers, Juan and I were living together in my apartment, driving together to the games at Candlestick Park. His disappointment was profound. Giants owner Horace Stoneham had some connections in Japan, and he had an herbal salve flown in overnight. They put it on Marichal’s index finger and wrapped it, hoping for a miracle cure. They took it off several days later, before Game Seven, and it looked worse than when he first injured it.

  For the time being, we were tied 2–2 in the World Series.

  Game Five had to wait a day in New York because of a rainout. With an extra day’s rest, Ralph Terry pitched another solid game, with Tom Tresh hitting a double, a home run, and a sacrifice fly to knock in three of the Yankees’ five runs. I had a triple and a single, but we scored only three runs, losing 5–3. Down 3–2 in the Series, it brought us to the brink of elimination.

  It would be four days before we played another game. After the rainout in New York, we returned to San Francisco for, of all things, what meteorologists say was one of the worst storms to hit the area in a century, claiming at least forty-six lives. The deluge was so severe that several names were attached to it: the “Columbus Day Storm of 1962,” the “Big Blow,” and “Typhoon Freda.” For us, it was one huge rain delay, as it dumped almost five inches of water in the Bay Area, flooding streets and wreaking havoc. We ventured farther inland to get in some practice as we waited it out. When Game Six finally arrived, MLB tried to dry the field with hovering helicopters and by pouring gasoline on the infield and lighting it on fire. It helped some but not enough. We felt the sogginess beneath our feet the next two days.

  As good as Whitey Ford is, he lasted only two outs into the fifth inning of Game Six. We tagged him for nine hits and five earned runs. I got two of those hits, knocking in a run and scoring another. We won 5–2, setting the stage for Game Seven.

  We were hoping Marichal could start, and to this day we wonder what the result might’ve been had he not smashed his finger attempting an ill-advised suicide-squeeze bunt. I would occasionally ask him how it felt, and his reply was always glumly the same: “It hurts.”

  Because of losing three days to an epic rainstorm, we had to face Mr. Ralph Terry again, and once again he was on top of his craft, carrying a perfect game into the sixth inning, until our pitcher Jack Sanford broke it up with a single to center field. Sanford also pitched superbly, yielding only a run through seven innings. Our main problem was that going into the ninth inning, we managed only a pair of hits and no runs.

  Trailing 1–0, Matty led off the ninth with a perfect pinch-hit drag bunt between the first and second basemen. I w
as up next and received the bunt sign. I hit twenty-five home runs and knocked in ninety-eight runs that season and had been asked to bunt maybe twice. Now I was bunting for the first time in the World Series. I squared and pushed a bunt down the first base line. It stayed fair for a bit, but the first baseman, Moose Skowron, let it roll foul. I blame the wind. But that’s still no excuse. Even though I hardly bunted all year, you have to be ready to bunt in the World Series—and I wasn’t ready. It still pains me that I didn’t get that bunt down, and I consider it one of the lowest points of my professional career, something I’ll take to my grave because I failed in that situation.

  I got the hit-and-run sign before the next pitch, which came in high. With the infield charging, expecting a bunt, I fouled it straight back. I took a big roundhouse cut at the third pitch and missed. Strike three. That at-bat still haunts me. I failed to advance my brother with a bunt, and then I struck out. Little did I realize it would be the last pitch and the last at-bat I would ever have in a World Series.

  Chuck Hiller followed with another strikeout. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game Seven of the World Series, Willie Mays stepped to the plate, representing the winning run. Typical of Willie, he came through in the clutch, lining a pitch down the right-field line. “I was thinking home run,” Mays said later.

  Too bad he didn’t hit one, because this is where I’m convinced the soggy field came into play. Under normal circumstances, maybe Mays’s hit would’ve traveled all the way to the fence. But it didn’t. Roger Maris cut it off and fired the ball to Bobby Richardson, who relayed it to the catcher, Elston Howard. The soggy field also slowed my brother, as it would any runner. Third base coach Whitey Lockman stopped Matty at third, and that’s a good thing. I know there is controversy over whether Lockman should have sent Matty home, but he would’ve been out. To this day I can replay it all in my head, and to this day I still believe Matty would have been out.