Bases 14

Bases Loaded, Part 14:
The History of the Los Angeles Kings
by Chris Oakley
Adapted from material previously posted at Othertimelines.com

Summary:

In the first 13 chapters of this series we reviewed William Randolph Hearst’s creation of the Continental League and the Los Angeles Kings; the 1935 CL-MLB merger and subsequent MLB reorganization; the Kings’ postseason triumphs and heartbreaks in the late ‘30s and the firing of manager Al Bridwell after they lost the 1940 World Series; the Kings’ spectacular 1941 season; L.A.’s World War II doldrums on the diamond; the Los Angeles postwar resurgence which led to World Series victories against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and the Boston Braves in 1948; the heartbreak of their 1949 ALCS defeat; their collapse in the home stretch of the 1950 baseball season; Hearst’s death late in the 1951 season; the retirement of “California Clipper” Joe DiMaggio; the return of Al Bridwell as Kings manager in 1952; the Kings’ epic playoff runs of the mid-1950s; the uproar among Kings fans over Dodger owner Walter O’Malley’s decision to move his team from Brooklyn to southern California in 1957; O’Malley’s purchase of land in the San Fernando Valley for a new Dodgers home field; the Kings’ remarkable run to the 1958 World Series championship; the evolution of Purple & Gold right-hander Don Drysdale into one of the best starting pitchers in MLB history; the Purple & Gold’s heartbreaking collapse in the final weeks of the 1959 MLB season; the Kings’ return to the postseason in 1960 ; L.A. outfielder’s outfielder Mickey Mantle’s highly memorable 1961 home run race with New York Yankees slugger Roger Maris; the Kings’ 1961 ALCS showdown with the Yankees; their 1961 World Series triumph over the Cincinnati Reds; L.A.’s disappointing 1962 season; and the Kings’ 1963 ALCS clash with the Yankees. In this segment, we’ll recap the Purple & Gold’s ’63 World Series showdown against the Dodgers.

“Who are you rooting for in the Series?” was the most common question asked by Los Angeles residents of one another in October of 1963, and the answer to it depended on who you talked to. But there was one thing baseball fans in the City of Angels unanimously agreed on: the lineup of starting pitchers for the World Series opener was a match made in hardball heaven. In one corner was Sandy Koufax, seen by fans and sportswriters(not to mention many of his peers) as perhaps the greatest National League pitcher since Christy Matthewson. In the other corner stood Don Drysdale, the most dominant starting pitcher of his generation in the American League. The hype surrounding the personal showdown between Koufax and Drysdale fed into the greater drama surrounding the Series itself; it would be the first time in fourteen years the Bums squared off against the Purple & Gold in the Fall Classic, and all of America was anxious to see who would prevail in this third Series matchup between the old postseason rivals.

The airwaves of the city’s top FM radio stations hummed with novelty songs in which fans of Koufax took shots at Drysdale and Drysdale fans ragged on Koufax. On the eve of Game 1 of the 1963 World Series two of the most popular 45” records among listeners in the Los Angeles area were “Sink The Koufax”, a parody of “Sink The Bismarck” written by a comedian who was also a Kings fan, and “We’re Gonna Clobber Drysdale”, a country-style single set to the tune of “Deep In The Heart Of Texas”. Both songs got so much radio play that the superintendent of the Los Angeles County public school system eventually banned them from the city’s secondary schools on account of they were supposedly interfering with his students’(and in some cases teachers’) concentration in the classroom.

Not surprisingly, a number of ex-Kings and ex-Dodgers turned out in the VIP section of Hearst Palladium to cheer on their old clubs in the Series opener. One of those alumni, Larry Doby, turned up to throw the ceremonial first pitch. Given the fluid ease with which he put the ball over the plate and the roar from the Hearst Palladium crowd when that ball thwacked into the catcher’s glove, it would have been hard to tell Doby had been retired from the majors three hours, let alone three years.

The previous year Wills had led the National League in steals with 104.

...only to see those hopes sorely disappointed when Wills smashed an 0-2 changeup into center field for a standing double and the first hit of the Series. Drysdale made up for it, however, by fanning Dodger third baseman Jim Gilliam and tagging Wills out in a rundown play when the normally fleet-footed shortstop bungled an attempt to steal third base. The Kings ace then retired Dodger center fielder Willie Davis on a grounder to first base, and the Purple & Gold prepared to unleash the full weight of their offense on Sandy Koufax.

Unfortunately for Kings fans, Koufax had no intention of playing Sonny Liston to the Cassius Clay of Harry Hooper’s batting order; he struck out Orlando Cepeda, Mickey Mantle, and Felipe Alou in rapid succession. From that point on, everybody in attendance at Hearst Palladium knew that the Koufax-Drysdale smackdown would be going down to the wire, and nobody understood it better than Koufax and Drysdale themselves. In an interview with the New York Post just after the game ended, Koufax would openly confess to having what he called “a squadron of butterflies in my stomach” from the second inning onward until the final out. If the game had been dramatic to start with, now it was taking on elements of a great Shakespearean saga.

For the next seven innings Koufax and Drysdale shut down each other’s respective lineups, reminding fans in attendance at Hearst Palladium and viewers watching the game on TV why these aces were the most dominant starting pitchers in their respective leagues. On the campuses of UCLA and USC, in the shopping boutiques of Beverly Hills, on the studio backlots of Hollywood, in the living rooms of Watts, everybody within range of a TV set or a radio was glued to the one-on- one duel between Drysdale and Koufax. Then-L.A. mayor Sam Yorty had three radios and two TVs set up in his office so that he wouldn’t miss a single moment of the action. Doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital had the radio broadcast of the game booming out over the hospital’s PA system. Even inmates at the San Quentin state prison were being granted the privilege of listening in on the epic showdown.

The eighth inning promised more of the same at first. Drysdale struck out the first two men he faced and got ahead of the count on Dodgers catcher John Roseboro; on his third pitch to Roseboro, though, disaster struck as the veteran catcher blasted a spectacular triple to right field. The next batter Drysdale faced was his pitching nemesis Sandy Koufax. Kings fans drew in their breath, convinced disaster was just around the corner-- and sure enough Koufax tapped a bloop single into center to send Roseboro home for the first run of the game. And from there things only got worse for the Purple & Gold: shortly after scoring Roseboro, Koufax himself crossed home plate courtesy of an RBI double by Maury Wills.

In the bottom of the eighth the Dodgers bullpen stepped in to give Koufax a chance to rest up for his next start and preserve what was by then a 3-0 Dodger lead. A solo homer by Roger Maris broke the shutout bid, but there was nothing the Kings could do to stop their cross-town rivals from rolling to victory. The final score: Dodgers 4, Kings 1.
It was a major shock to the system for Purple & Gold fans accustomed to seeing their boys wipe the floor with the Bums...or at least put up a serious fight against them.

The two rivals returned to Hearst Palladium the next day for Game 2 in highly contrasting frames of mind. The Dodgers were relaxed and displaying an almost kindergartener-like glee as they did their pre-game warm-ups; the Kings, on the other hand, looked and felt like men who had just been sentenced to consecutive life terms at San Quentin. Instead of being ahead 1-0 in the Series with an opportunity to take a 2 games-to-0 lead with them to Dodger Stadium, Harry Hooper’s crew was stuck in an 0-1 hole and faced with the grim possibility that if they lost the second game they might find themselves in danger of getting swept by Walter Alston’s boys. And while scheduled Dodgers starting pitcher Johnny Podres wasn’t quite in the same class as Koufax, by the same token he was no slouch either-- the 30-year-old lefthander had racked up a respectable 134 strikeouts during the regular season and utterly shut down the Cardinals batting order in the third game of the 1963 NLCS. Podres had also played a modest but critical role in the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series triumph against the Kings, and in spite of all the changes the Purple & Gold roster had undergone in the last eight seasons he was still familiar enough with their basic approach to the game to be able to anticipate many of their offensive strengths and weaknesses when he pitched against them.

While his guesses weren’t always right in Game 2 of the 1963 World Series, they were correct often enough to keep the Kings’ bats deathly silent for six full innings. By the time Harry Hooper’s men managed to get a hit-- a Roger Maris double with two out in the seventh –Walter Alston’s squad was ahead 5-0 and leaving the besieged American League champions flailing in their wake. The Bums tacked on two more runs in the ninth inning to put the crowning touch on a 7-1 Dodger victory. Dick Calmus, who came on in relief of Podres in the eighth, produced one of those runs with an RBI triple that scored Tommy Davis and sent a visibly embarrassed Dean Chance retreating to the comparative peace and quiet of the Hearst Palladium clubhouse showers.

Kings fans were flabbergasted and scared as the series shifted to Dodger Stadium for Game 3; for the first time, some of the gloomier spirits among them even began to broach a possibility that just a few days earlier would have seemed far-fetched-- that the Purple & Gold, the Hearst family’s mighty diamond juggernaut, might actually end up getting swept by the hated Dodgers. Such a thought would have made the late William Randolph Hearst turn over in his grave, and it certainly wasn’t doing anything to calm his heirs’ nerves either.

For Game 3 Bill Monboquette would have the unenviable task of trying to keep the American League champions from falling into an 0-3 hole against the suddenly red-hot Bums. The Dodgers would counter with Bob Miller, the right-hander who’d won the deciding game of the 1963 NLCS for Los Angeles. It was the moment of truth for both teams: would the Kings reassert themselves and climb back into the Series, or was
it going to be the day when the Dodgers put their long-time rivals on the ropes and set them up for the knockout blow?

As he had done two years earlier when the Kings were taking on the Reds, Wally Pipp visited his old stomping grounds in Los Angeles to see if his former team could pull a rabbit out of their hat to win the World Series. This time, however, he was backing the losing side in the Fall Classic; morale in Harry Hooper’s clubhouse was at an all- time low following their back-to-back losses in the first two games of the ’63 Series, and it was about to get lower still-- on his first six pitches of Game 3 Bill Monboquette surrendered four hits and two runs, and to add insult to injury(literally) he strained the shoulder in his pitching arm while trying to make a force play at second base with two outs in the first inning. This forced Hooper to go to his bullpen much earlier than he’d wanted to, and many of the fans in attendance viewed it as an ominous sign for the Purple & Gold.

An understandably quite nervous Dean Chance stepped onto the mound with the hopes of millions of Kings fans riding on his shoulders; his right arm was just about the last thing standing between the American League champions and the worst postseason defeat they had endured in a generation. Unfortunately for the Kings, that proved to be far more of a burden than said right arm could handle as the Dodgers tacked on two more runs in the second inning and a Tommy Davis solo homer in the top of the third. Mickey Mantle finally broke up the Dodgers’ shutout bid with an RBI double in the fifth inning, but by then it was too late-- the Kings were at the bottom of a very deep hole and the Dodgers were doing everything possible to make that hole even deeper. The game, and the Series, had effectively been put out of the Purple & Gold’s reach. All that remained was for Walter Alston’s club to take Game 4, and the Series championship pennant would be unfurled over Dodger Stadium.

Game 4 witnessed a rematch of the Sandy Koufax-Don Drysdale duel from Game 1; this time, however, Koufax gained the upper hand quickly and kept it thanks partly to support from outfielder and Series MVP Frank Howard(three RBIs in the game and an unassisted double play in the fifth inning). The closest the faltering Kings ever got to closing the gap between themselves and the Dodgers was a one-out sixth inning Felipe Alou double that scored two runs and cut what had been a 6-1 Bums lead down to 6-3. It was the final gasp of a team already on its last legs: in the ninth inning Koufax wrote the Purple & Gold’s Series epitaph, retiring the first two batters he faced on grounders and then getting Kings pinch hitter Lou Klimchock out on a pop fly to short to clinch the Dodgers’ second World Series championship since they moved to Southern California.