Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever Read online

  “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.

  “And I hope,” Kennedy continued, not wanting to let go of the Drysdale thread quite yet, “we can have as good fortune in our campaign.”

  From there, he spoke for about fifteen minutes, a rambling address that was later compared to an Academy Awards acceptance speech rather than traditional political oratory. He concluded with a Churchill-like V-for-Victory sign and then, to the surprise of several of his handlers, he exited through the kitchen.

  The networks had already cut away when the bad news began to filter through the ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel. Still, the cameras rolled as the rumor spread like a shadow and face after face dissolved into tears and anguish. Campaign workers began to hug each other out of nightmarish sadness rather than euphoric happiness. Later it was learned that Grier, along with Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson and writer George Plimpton, had wrestled Kennedy’s assailant, Sirhan Sirhan, to the floor.

  Kennedy’s campaign held a genuine connection with the world of sports. The New York Times stated that “at least fifty star athletes, former athletes and coaches” had enlisted in his presidential bid. Their ranks included Vince Lombardi, Gale Sayers, Gary Beban, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Donald Dell, Bob Cousy, and Dave Bing. Oscar Robinson did advance work for the campaign in Indiana, while Bill Russell taped radio endorsements for Kennedy. The assassination devastated the nation, and sports, like any other group or institution in America, was unsure about how best to carry on.

  After Kennedy’s death, President Johnson declared a national day of mourning. But in response, baseball commissioner William “Spike” Eckert opted to postpone games only in New York, between the Yankees and Angels, and in Washington, between the Senators and the Twins. He told the other ballclubs that their particular contests could go ahead, as long as they didn’t start until after Kennedy’s funeral services were concluded. “From here on,” the Sporting News noted, “the confusion got out of hand.”

  In Houston, the Astros were supposed to host the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday, but players on both teams didn’t really want to play. Three of them took matters into their own hands. The Pirates’ Maury Wills stayed in the training room, reading Kennedy’s book To Seek a Newer World. The franchise looked the other way and didn’t discipline its player representative for what others deemed as insubordination.

  “I was out of uniform when Dr. King died,” Wills said, “and if I didn’t respect Senator Kennedy’s memory, too, I felt I would be hypocritical.

  Roberto Clemente was also ready to sit out the Sunday game but changed his mind after meeting with Pittsburgh manager Larry Shepard. That didn’t mean the Pirates future Hall of Famer was on board with matters. “I preferred not to play,” Clemente said. “The disturbing thing to me was the indifferent attitudes of some of our players. Some didn’t take a stand either way, just said they didn’t care whether they played or not.”

  He added, “This is one of things wrong with our country—too much indifference. I didn’t want to play but I did. I also voiced my opinion.”

  Voicing one’s opinion and even taking a stand proved to be costly for players in other dugouts, however. The Astros’ Rusty Staub and Bob Aspromonte joined Wills in refusing to take the field. For their actions, they were fined a day’s pay by Houston general manager Spec Richardson. The GM wanted the game to go on and reportedly was ready to fine anybody else who threatened to sit it out. “Among all the mealy-mouthed state
ments, it remained for Richardson to come up with the nauseating prize,” Red Smith wrote. “The games would go on, he said, because ‘Senator Kennedy would have wanted it that way.’”

  In San Francisco, the Mets’ were scheduled to play the Giants at Candlestick Park. It was Bat Day for the home team, with an estimated 40,000 tickets sold. Unlike some ballclubs, the Mets stuck together and decided, as a squad, not to play. Even under threat of forfeiting the game, management told players to stay at the team hotel and not show up at the ballpark.

  The issue became the most contentious in Cincinnati, where Reds pitcher Milt Pappas, the ballclub’s player representative, pleaded with his teammates not to take the field against the visiting St. Louis Cardinals. An initial vote among the players settled nothing, as it was deadlocked at twelve to twelve, with one player abstaining. That’s when manager Dave Bristol did some arm-twisting and a second vote was thirteen to twelve in favor of playing, with Tommy Helms, Jim Maloney, and Pete Rose among those opting to play.

  “You guys are wrong,” Pappas shouted as his teammates prepared to take the field. “I’m telling you you’re all wrong.”

  Reds’ assistant general manager Dick Wagner tried to intimidate Pappas, with little effect. “[He] stopped me on the field in front of the St. Louis dugout and started to put his finger on my shoulder as if he were some kind of tough guy,” Pappas later wrote. “He was one of those short guys who was mad at God for making him short, so he had this enormous chip on his shoulder. I looked him in the eye and said, ‘If that finger reaches my shoulder, I’m going to break it.’ I meant it, and he knew it.”

  Soon afterward Pappas resigned as his team’s player rep.

  Robert Kennedy’s press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, sent telegrams to Pappas, Wills, Staub and Aspromonte, and manager Gil Hodges on behalf of the entire Mets team. “Please accept my personal admiration for your actions,” it read. “Senator Kennedy indeed enjoyed competitive sports, but I doubt that he would have put box-office receipts ahead of national mourning.”

  Less than seventy-two hours later, Pappas was traded as part of a six-player deal to Atlanta. Reds general manager Bob Howsam denied that the move was linked to Pappas’s position on the Kennedy funeral and the day of mourning. “ We had been working on a trade of this kind since May 17,” Howsam said. “ We wanted to strengthen our pitching staff, and we had made it known then that Pappas was among those we would consider trading.”

  Meanwhile, the confusion and disjoined action by the commissioner’s office resulted in criticism from many quarters.

  “Baseball again returned to normalcy—confusion,” wrote Les Biederman, sports editor for the Pittsburgh Press.

  “Baseball’s observance of Senator Kennedy’s death was disorganized, illogical and thoroughly shabby,” added Bob August in the Cleveland Press.

  Dick Young, columnist for the New York Daily News, went further, calling for commissioner Eckert to resign. “This is the portrait of a commissioner trying to please everyone,” Young wrote. “I have funny, old-fashioned notions that students should not run universities, inmates should not run asylums, and ballplayers should not tell owners when they will play.... When that happens, the commissioner looks bad. When that happens, baseball looks bad.”

  With his teammates wearing black armbands on their uniforms’ left sleeve to honor Robert Kennedy, Don Drysdale’s next start took place at Chavez Ravine against the visiting Philadelphia Phillies. The practice of wearing such memorial markings in baseball dated back to 1876, the first year of the National League, and ballplayers Ray Chapman and Ed Delehanty, and President Franklin Roosevelt were among those so honored. The Dodgers would wear the armbands in honor of Kennedy through the remaining games of the homestand on June 12.

  In the top of the third, Los Angeles third baseman Ken Boyer made a great play on a hard-hit smash by Roberto Pena, assuring that the inning stayed scoreless and that Drysdale would break Walter Johnson’s major league scoreless record.

  In the fifth inning, the streak ended as quickly as it began. The Phillies’ Tony Taylor singled and went to third on Clay Dalrymple’s hit. With one out, Howie Bedell stepped up to the plate as a pinch hitter for pitcher Larry Jackson. He had appeared in fifty-eight games for Milwaukee back in 1962 and was now up for a cup of coffee with the Phillies. He hardly seemed like a dragon slayer. Yet Bedell, who would have only seven at-bats that season, collecting one hit in the process, lofted a high fly ball to left-center field. Even though Dodgers outfielder Len Gabrielson easily caught it, the drive was deep enough to score Taylor. With that, Drysdale’s streak was over.

  Moments later, after Drysdale got the third out of the inning, Philadelphia manager Gene Mauch requested that home-plate umpire, Augie Donatelli, check Drysdale for foreign substances. The umpire took Drysdale’s hat and then ran his fingers through Drysdale’s hair.

  “Usually when someone runs their fingers through my hair,” the pitcher said, “she gives me a kiss, too.”

  With that Drysdale pursed his lips.

  “Get out of here,” Donatelli said. “Go back to the dugout. You’re OK. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  Later, Drysdale decided that Mauch had instigated the whole thing. The Phillies manager bided his time until the streak was over before insisting that the men in blue pat down the pitcher one more time. “That’s baseball, folks,” Drysdale wrote in his memoir Once A Bum, Always A Dodger. “I probably had stretches when I actually threw the ball as well or had just as much stuff. To go 58 2/3 innings without yielding a single run, you have to be doing something right, true. But you have to have some luck, too. There has to be a combination of both, and I had it.”

  Nearly every athlete believes that if you think too much about what’s going on in the surrounding world, you’ll lose your focus. Yet early in the ’68 season, Bob Gibson decided that “there was no escaping the pervasive realities of 1968—the assassinations, the cities burning, the social revolution.”

  While Martin Luther King’s death had greatly saddened him, Gibson found that Kennedy’s assassination affected him as no event ever had. Whether or not it was coincidence, Gibson pitched his first shutout of the season the day after Robert Kennedy died. At that point in the ’68 season, Gibson considered himself a mediocre pitcher, who hadn’t done much yet to warrant any accolades. It bugged him that Drysdale “was hogging the headlines.” After Kennedy’s assassination he felt he had so much rage he might as well try to utilize it to raise his game. Some of what he was feeling had to do with what was going on in the country around him. Another aspect was the embarrassment he felt when comparing himself with his peers early in the 1968 season. In any event, Gibson decided that the only thing he could do was outpitch his situation.

  “The answer, clearly, was to take a cue from Drysdale,” he later wrote, “and throw some damn shutouts, which was something that appeared to be within my power at the time. My fastball was boring into [Tim] McCarver’s mitt and my sliders were behaving like smart missiles. I was definitely settling into what would be referred today as a zone....

  “I really can’t say, in retrospect, whether Robert Kennedy’s assassination is what got me going or not. Without a doubt, it was an angry point in American history for black people—Dr. King’s killing had jolted me; Kennedy’s infuriated me—and without a doubt, I pitched better angry.”

  After blanking the Houston Astros, Gibson shut out the Atlanta Braves. In short order, his performances caught on with the rest of the Cardinals’ rotation—Nellie Briles, Steve Carlton, and Ray Washburn. As a staff, they were considered the best in the National League and they eventually carried St. Louis into first place. “Bob pitched with such intensity that it rippled through an entire staff,” Briles said years later. “All you had to do was watch him, as a teammate, and you felt yourself getting excited about your next turn on the mound. If you could emulate him, even just a little bit, you’d probably win, too.”

  Gibson’s third consecutive shutout was
an epic affair against Cincinnati’s Gary Nolan. The Cardinals’ ace struck out thirteen and allowed four hits in dropping his ERA to an impressive 1.30.

  Next up was the Cubs and Ferguson Jenkins, and it took a 1–0 shutout for Gibson to win that game. After throwing a four-hitter against the Pirates June 26 in St. Louis, Gibson’s shutout streak stood at five. Only a few weeks after Drysdale had established a new standard, supposedly one for the ages, Gibson was now in his rearview mirror, with forty-seven consecutive scoreless innings and counting.

  To a large extent, Gibson excelled by becoming caught up in the incongruity, even the mayhem that defined 1968. In fact, when asked about the pressure of the mounting shutout streak, Gibson replied that he felt more pressure being a black man in America at the time.

  His next start was July 1, 1968, a Monday night in Los Angeles, against none other than Drysdale and the Dodgers. More than 42,000 fans were in attendance, knowing that another shutout would put Gibson within just three innings of surpassing Drysdale’s new mark. But in the first inning, with two out, Gibson gave up a single to the Dodgers’ Len Gabrielson. Tom Haller then hit a hard groundball that Julian Javier couldn’t corral and Los Angeles had men at the corners.

  Next up was Ron Fairly, who usually hit well against Gibson. Johnny Edwards, the Cardinals’ backup catcher, who was giving McCarver a rest that night, decided to stay away from Fairly’s power. Edwards set up on the outside corner, signaling for a fastball. Even though it was early in the game, Gibson had exhibited good control, so Edwards wasn’t prepared when the next pitch sailed inside, handcuffing him.

  The ball glanced off the tip of Edwards’ glove and bounced toward the backstop. That enabled Gabrielson to sprint home, where he raised both fists in the air as he crossed home plate.

  Now it was up to the official scorer to decide if Gibson’s scoreless streak would remain intact. If the play was ruled a passed ball, the run would be unearned and the streak would be safe. But if it was ruled a wild pitch—in other words Gibson’s fault—the scoreless string would be over.