On August 9th, 1968, I was in Candlestick Park with my father and my cousin Chubby. Chub’s been skinny as a rail since he was seven, but he was chubby as a toddler and everybody calls him Chubby to this day. But this isn’t a story about my cousin. I won’t say here why he was with us that summer in New Mexico where we lived; why he was with my father and me in Candlestick Park on the 9th of August 1968. This story is about epistemology and baseball. It’ll also explain why I do not disbelieve my father when he tells me something.
People who remember 1968 have their reasons. Baseball historians remember it as The Year of the Pitcher. The Tigers’ Denny McClain had an ERA of 1.96 that year and won 31 games, still the modern-era record for most wins in a season. The St. Louis Cardinals’ overpowering Bob Gibson had an ERA of 1.12. The Giants’ ace, Juan Marichal, led the National League in wins with 26.
Bob Stevens, the San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter who covered the Giants from ‘58 to '78, wrote, “If you placed all the pitchers in the history of the game behind a curtain, where only a silhouette was visible, Juan’s motion would be the easiest to identify. He brought to the mound beauty, individuality, and class.”
It’s Marichal who is warming up on the mound when my father says, “The Mets are gonna win this game!”
If he’s serious, he’s misplaced his confidence. The Mets are huge underdogs. But this is my father. He roots for underdogs, unless they’re playing the Tigers, the Green Bay Packers, or the Michigan Wolverines. New York has two good young pitchers you may have heard of: Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver. They have Jerry Koosman, too. But none of those guys are pitching tonight. Dick Selma is.
Selma’s not bad, but the Mets hit like nuns. New York’s best slugger is Cleon Jones from Plateau, Alabama. The Giants boast Willie McCovey, Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds, and Jesus Alou. Marichal, the Dominican Dandy, is 20 and 4 coming into this game. (Bobby’s son, Barry, lives in Tiburon where I do. He would be pretty good at baseball, too.)
My father is a soldier, and tonight he could be Gaius Julius Caesar in Pharsalus on the 9th of August, 48 BC. The side he says will win, the Mets, is like Caesar’s veteran legions up against the army of Pompey the Great: it’s matched against a vastly superior lineup, it’s short on provisions, and it’s in hostile territory. My father knows a thing or two about military history, so maybe he knows what took place on the 9th of August in Pharsalus. I’ve not asked him.
Here’s the play-by-play:
Top 1st: Marichal pitches a 1-2-3 inning. Tommie Agee flies out to center; Larry Stahl strikes out; Cleon Jones strikes out looking. I raise my eyebrows at my father. He says, “The Mets are going to win this game.”
Bottom 1st: Bobby Bonds strikes out looking; Jim Davenport flies out to center; Willie Mays strikes out swinging.
Top 2nd: Ed Kranepool—who was 17 when he broke into the Big Leagues—leads off with a single; Ed Charles singles to left, advancing Kranepool to 2B; JC Martin singles to right; Kranepool to 3B, but Charles is thrown out at 2B trying to stretch his hit to a double; Phil Linz hits a sacrifice fly to left field. Martin on 2B; Kranepool scores. Buddy Harrelson is given an intentional walk; Dick Selma grounds out to end the inning. Mets 1, Giants 0. Dad smiles.
Bottom 2nd: Willie McCovey grounds out to 1B; Dick Dietz walks; Jesus Alou hits a ground ball double play.
Top 3rd: Tommie Agee singles to CF; on a wild throw pickoff attempt by Marichal, Agee takes 2B and 3B; Stahl grounds out; Cleon Jones grounds out, scoring Agee; Kranepool singles to center; Charles grounds out. Mets 2, Giants 0.
Bottom 3rd: Bob Schroder fouls out; Hal Lanier grounds out; Marichal strikes out. Mets 2, Giants 0.
Top 4th: Martin flies out to the shortstop; Linz grounds out to SS; Harrelson is hit by a pitch; Selma grounds out.
Bottom 4th: Bobby Bonds leads off with a home run; Davenport singles to LF; Mays grounds into a double play; McCovey strikes out. Mets 2, Giants 1.
Top 5th: Agee is hit by a pitch; Agee steals second; Stahl flies out to LF; Jones flies out to CF; Kranepool flies out to CF, stranding Agee. Mets 2, Giants 1.
Bottom 5th: Dietz walks; wild pitch, Dietz to 2B; Alou grounds out to 1B, Dietz to 3B; Schroder hits a sacrifice fly to LF, Dietz scores; Lanier grounds out to 1B. Mets 2, Giants 2.
Top 6th: Charles grounds out; Martin grounds out; Linz strikes out looking.
Bottom 6th: Marichal is hit by a pitch; Bonds singles, Marichal to 2B; Marichal is picked off 2B by Selma; Davenport walks, Bond to 2B; Mays flies out to RF; McCovey doubles to CF, Bonds scores, Davenport scores, McCovey to 3B/advancing on throw to home; Dietz walks; Alou strikes out looking. Giants 4, Mets 2. “The Mets are going to win this game, I’m tellin’ ya!” Dad insists.
Top 7th: Harrelson grounds out; Al Weis grounds out; Agee flies out to CF.
Bottom 7th: Cal Koonce pitching in relief of Selma; Schroder grounds out; Lanier grounds out; Marichal doubles to LF; Bonds strikes out.
Top 8th: Stahl grounds out; Jones single; Kranepool flies out to 3B; Charles single to CF, Jones to 3B; Martin strikes out looking.
Bottom 8th: Davenport grounds out; Mays flies out to C; McCovey walks; Barton walks, McCovey to 2B; Alou grounds out. Giants 4, Mets 2.
Top 9th: Ron Swoboda, pinch hitting for Cal Koonce, singles to CF; Harrelson singles to CF, Swoboda to 2B; Art Shamsky, pinch hitting for Weis, strikes out; Agee singles to CF, Harrelson to 2B, Swoboda scores; Stahl hits a grounder forcing Agee out at 2B, Harrelson to 3B. Giants 4, Mets 3.
There are two outs. Cleon Jones hits a towering pop up to third base. “I told you, Dad! Giants win!”
Harrelson, on third, running on contact with two outs, crosses home plate. A formality. It won’t count. Stahl, running from first, rounds second.
“The Mets are gonna win this game!” Dad says against all evidence to the contrary.
This is the willing suspension of disbelief. This is Coleridge at Candlestick Park. “It’s not over,” he says.
Cleon thinks it’s over. He throws his bat to the ground. He walks to first base. He knows he’s out and the Mets are finished, but he moves in the direction of first for the same reason Stahl runs to third and passes in front of Jim “Peanut” Davenport, the Giants’ third baseman, to lose with a semblance of dignity.
Peanut peers into the dark above a city named for Saint Francis of Assisi. Peanut is looking into the sky as Francis did when he was nine in 1190 which is how old I am standing there in Candlestick Park. Nine-year old Francis bought some birds from the market and let them go. They flew low over his head like parakeets, as if to thank him. When I was nine, in White Sands Missile Range New Mexico, I used my slingshot to kill a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher minding his own business sitting on the telephone wire behind my house. He never knew what hit him. I cried. I dug a grave for the beautiful creature. I fixed a cross on the grave. And I swore never to kill anything again for the fun of it.
Davenport waits for the sky to tilt, to return what the kid from Plateau put up there. It does. The ball descends on Peanut, glances off his glove, and falls like my Yellow-bellied Flycatcher helplessly to the ground. E-5. Harrelson scores/unER; Stahl scores/unER. Cleon Jones to 1B. Jones is caught stealing. Mets 5, Giants 4.
It’s unbelievable. But it was never that to my father. He had believed it all night.
Bottom 9th: Ron Taylor, pitching in relief of Koonce, gets Schroder to ground out; Ty Cline flies out to center; and Jim Ray Hart fouls out to 1B. Mets 5, Giants 4.
“I told you the Mets would win this game,” Dad says, gloating.
The Mets won the game. And that is where it began, in San Francisco, on August 9th, 1968, my inability to disbelieve my father.
Coleridge was on opium when he wrote, “If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake—Aye, what then?”
As I live and am a man, this is a tale unexaggerated. It happened. I remember it the way I remember a dream. And in my hand I hold a flower. The box score.
My father and I are Detroit Tigers fans, and '68 was a vintage season. The Tigers faced the mighty St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Bob Gibson struck out 17 Tigers in the opener, setting a World Series record that still stands. The Cards took three of the first four games. The Tigers battled back to win the next two. In the decisive seventh game, Mickey Lolich out-pitched Gibson, Lolich’s third victory of the series, and the Tigers triumphed 4 – 1. And you can guess what happened on that ancient field in Pharsalus, what came of the army of Pompey the Great.