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Bases Loaded, Part 17:
The History of the Los Angeles Kings
by Chris Oakley
Adapted from material previously posted at Othertimelines.com
 Summary:
In the previous 16 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; the Kings’
1963 ALCS clash with the Yankees; their 1963 World Series pasting
at the hands of the Dodgers; Orlando Cepeda’s departure from Los
Angeles;the Kings’ somewhat lackluster 1964 season; the arrival
of new L.A. manager Hank Borowy in 1965; and the Purple & Gold’s
heartbreaking playoff defeats during the 1966 and ’67 seasons. In
this installment we’ll look back at the return of Harry Hooper as
Los Angeles skipper late in the 1968 season.
To say the mood among Kings players and coaches on the flight
home from Boston was grim would be an understatement. It was, in fact,
almost funereal. For the second straight year the Purple & Gold had
seen their American League playoff run end in defeat at the hands of a
bitter rival; the AL West division pennant was cold comfort to a team
that had been looking forward to returning to the World Series. For a
few of the older players in Hank Borowy’s roster, it felt like the end
of an era; in particular Mickey Mantle, who was close to retirement by
then, feared he might have missed his last opportunity to play in the
Series in a Los Angeles uniform. And with the American League ready to
award new franchises to Seattle and Houston for the 1969 season, there
was a fairly good chance that the Kings would lose some key players in
the next expansion draft. Not exactly the kind of situation that would
encourage Kings fans to hold out much hope for another pennant to come
their way in the near future.
Sportswriters covering the Purple & Gold during the American
League’s 1968 spring training schedule noted that team morale was
still a bit wobbly. The Kings clubhouse, usually one of the liveliest
in the league, was unusually quiet even when they won a game; when
they lost, it was like a black hole. Manager Hank Borowy in particular
seemed to be down in the dumps much of the time-- and it couldn’t have
helped his spirits any that he was the subject of constant rumors in
the L.A. sports media he would be replaced as skipper should the Kings
miss the World Series again.
Nor did the club’s emotional state improve much when the ’68 MLB
regular season started. If anything, it got noticeably worse after the
Kings dropped five of their first six regular season games-- three of
them to the Athletics in that team’s first visit to Los Angeles since
their relocation from Houston to Oakland. And it wasn’t merely players
who were being affected by this grim state of affairs; a San Francisco
Examiner article published the day after the Kings’ first game of the
‘68 season against the Prospectors reported that two L.A. front office
executives had been seen getting into a shoving match up in the luxury
boxes at the Prospectors’ new home field Flesihhacker Stadium.
In May the Purple and Gold endured the humiliation of being blown
out by the Red Sox 17-0 at Fenway Park in what to this day stands as
the worst shutout defeat the Kings have sustained in Boston in their
franchise history; the defending American League champions, frustrated
at having lost the 1967 World Series against the Cardinals, took out
that frustration on Los Angeles with a vengeance. Carl Yazstremski by
himself accounted for at least five of the seventeen Boston runs that
afternoon with a third inning grand slam and a sixth inning RBI double
which scored infielder Mike Andrews from first base.
June started out on a fairly hopeful note for Los Angeles as the
Purple and Gold swept a four-game series against the Yankees in New
York and took two out of three games against the Orioles in Baltimore.
But the Kings were brought back to earth with a thud when they blew a
4-2 lead in the first game of a doubleheader against the Longhorns in
Kansas City and ended up losing that game 6-5. By the All-Star break,
Los Angeles was eleven games behind Kansas City in the AL West and in
serious danger of falling even further out of pennant contention.
The last straw for the Hearsts came on August 2nd when the Kings
suffered an 11-2 spanking from the Indians up at Cleveland Municipal
Stadium. Not wanting to wait for a turnaround that might never happen,
the Hearst family contacted former manager Harry Hooper and offered to
rehire him at double the salary he’d been making in his second tenure
as Purple & Gold skipper. After two days of mulling it over, a rather
wary but still interested Hooper decided to take the Hearsts up on the
offer; the day after that, Borowy was out as L.A. manager.
Hooper’s third tenure as Kings manager got underway with a five-
run shutout of the White Sox at Comiskey Park on August 7th. Although
by then Hooper’s physical health had started to decline, his brain was
still as sharp as ever; his presence seemed to light a fire under his
players, as the Kings went on to win their next seven games and thrust
themselves into the thick of the AL wild card race. By September 4th
Los Angeles was just six games out of first place and some of the more
optimistic fans in southern California were even daring to cherish a
slim hope the team might turn its fortunes around enough to overtake
the Longhorns for the division title. When the Miami Marlins arrived
at Hearst Palladium on September 14th to make up a doubleheader which
had been rained out earlier in the season, the stands were packed for
the first game as the Purple & Gold faithful waited to see whether Los
Angeles could keep the momentum going.
Their hopes took a sharp hit when Miami starting pitcher Mike
Cuellar, a Cuban transplant who would later become a critical piece
of the Baltimore Orioles’ starting rotation, struck out the first
seven batters he faced while his teammates scored five unanswered
runs against a Kings pitching staff that was starting to run out of
gas after weeks of struggling to keep Los Angeles in contention for
a pennant. Cesar Tovar managed to avert the shutout with a fourth
inning RBI double, but for the most part Miami was in the driver’s
seat; they went on to win the game 8-3. When the Marlins hung a two-
run shutout on the Kings to complete a sweep of the doubleheader, it
was as if a switch had been thrown to shut off the Purple & Gold’s
morale; they lost eight of their final sixteen regular season games
and finished the 1968 season nine games behind Kansas City in the AL
West.
After the season was ended, there was considerable speculation
in the press about whether Harry Hooper would return as Kings manager
for the 1969 season. The speculation ended when Hooper signed a two-
year contract which was guaranteed through the end of the 1971 season
and had an option for Hooper to be brought back for 1972 if the Kings
ownership was sufficiently satisfied with his performance. Settling
the question of Hooper’s return would be the easy part-- the bigger
mystery was whether the lineup he had available could shake off the
doldrums of the way its ’68 campaign had ended and return to pennant-
winning form in ’69....
Named after noted San Francisco philanthropist Herbert Fleishhacker.
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