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| Willie Mays' eighth-inning solo homer gave San Francisco a 2-1 victory Sept. 30, 1962, over the Houston Colt. 45s, sending the Giants into a tiebreaker playoff with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League pennant. The homer was Mays' 47th of the year. He added two in the playoffs, and his total of 49 led the NL and was the third-highest in his career. He was also second in RBIs with a career-high 141. |
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| Stu Miller retired six straight batters after coming on to start the eighth inning and got the victory Sept. 30, 1962, in the San Francisco Giants' 2-1 decision over the Houston Colt .45s on the final day of the regular season. The Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers then met in a tiebreaker playoff series to decide the National League World Series representative. |
By Phil Ellenbecker
On deck for the baseball Giants was a full dose of deja vu. But to get to that date with destiny, the Left Coast edition of the Giants had to survive a regular-season closing skirmish with an addition to the National League.
The San Francisco Giants, in their fifth year after moving from New York to San Francisco, squeaked past the Houston Colt .45s, 2-1, on Sunday, Sept. 30, 1962, before 41,327 at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. That necessitated a tiebreaker playoff for the NL pennant with the Los Angeles Dodgers, in their fifth year in LA after moving from Brooklyn, in a rematch of the classic 1951 playoff between the longtime bitter rivals. The Dodgers entered Sept. 30, 1962, leading the Giants by a game but lost 1-0 to the St. Louis Cardinals at LA as Curt Simmons outdueled Johnny Podres, leaving the Giants and Dodgers each at 101-61.
The Giants-Astros Sept. 30 tilt also settled into a pitcher's duel, between San Fransciso's Billy O'Dell and Houston's Dick "Turk" Farrell.
Willie Mays was the fitting hero for the Giants, giving a preview of what he'd be doing in the playoff. His solo homer leading off the eighth inning, his 47th homer of the season, snapped a 1-1 tie and made a winner of Stu Miller. Miller is probably best-known as the relief ace and changeup artist who'd been called for a balk in a 1961 All-Star Game at Candlestick when a fierce wind made him waver on the mound. (He was the winning pitcher in the game.)
Miller made Farrell grab some wind with a strikeout to close the 1962 finale, making it six batters up, six down, in Miller's two-inning stint.
The Giants' other run also came via the solo homer route, Ed Bailey connecting with one out in the fourth for his 17th homer of the year.
The Colt .45s, one of two 1962 expansion teams along with the New York Mets, tied the game with one out in the sixth when Jim Pendleton singled in Roman Mejias, who'd led off the inning with a single and advanced to second on Bob Aspromonte's single. O'Dell got the next two batters, and Houston's only threat from there was a leadoff double in the seventh by Farrell. But O'Dell retired the next three batters and Miller took it from there.
(Mejias, the .45s' sixth pick in the 1961 expansion draft and 11th overall, chosen from the Pirates after nine yeares in Pittsburgh, won the team's Triple Crown in 1962 with a .286 average, 24 homers and 76 RBIs. It was by by far the best season in his nine-year big league career.)
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Billy O'Dell, one of the Giants' mainstays on San Francisco's 1962 pitching staff, held the Houston Colt .45s to one run over seven innings in a no-decision Sept. 30, as the Giants won 2-1 on the final day of the regular season to tie the Los Angeles Dodgers for first place and set up a three-game playoff. Dick "Turk" Farrell allowed two solo homers Sept. 30, 1962, dooming him to a 2-1 loss to the San Francisco Giants and saddling him with a final record of 10-20. But he was the ace of the expansion .45s, tying for the team lead in wins, plus he was the team's representative on the National League All-Star squad. |
Save for the homers, Farrell allowed no runners farther than second in his eight innings. He scattered nine hits while striking out four and walking one and allowing the two earned runs. He finished at 10-20, second in the league in losses, four behind the Mets' Roger Craig. But he tied for the team lead in wins with Bob Bruce. And he finished fourth in the NL in strikeouts with 203, fourth in ERA at 3.07, and was Houston's representative on the All-Star Game roster.
O'Dell, who allowed only three runners as far as second except for the sixth, had a final line of one earned run, seven hits, four strikeouts and two walks in his seven innings. He went 19-14 on the year with a 3.53 ERA, second on the Giants in wins behind Jack Sanford's 24-7. He was third in the NL in innings pitched with 280 2/3.
Miller, as noted before, was spotless in his two innings with two grounders, two pops, a fly out and the game-ending strikeout as he moved to 5-8. Named The Sporting News Fireman of the Year in 1961 and in the AL in 1963 with Baltimore, he wasn't so sharp in '62 with an ERA of 4.12.
Mejias went 2-for-4 for Houston and Chuck Hiller 2-for-3 for San Francisco for the only multi-hit games between the two teams.
Houston, which became the Astros in 1965 when they moved into "The Eighth Wonder of the World," the Astrodome, finished 1962 at 64-96. That was good for eighth place in the 10-team NL and 36 1/2 games behind the Giants and Dodgers. (They slipped in ahead of the Chicago Cubs while the Mets brought up the abyss with a mark of 40-120, sixth worst of all time and 60 1/2 back of the leaders.)
The Giants went on to beat the Dodgers 2-1 in the playoff, just as they did in 1951. And the Giants had to rally in the ninth inning to win the deciding game, just as they did in 1951. Only this time it was from 4-2; in '51, 4-1. And unlike in '51 when Mays was on deck as Bobby Thomson hit his game-deciding homer, Mays was in the middle of the winning rally, driving in the first run of the ninth on a bases-loaded, infield single and scoring the final one from third base on an error.
For the series Mays was 5-for-11 with a pair of homers, four RBIs and four runs scored as the Giants moved on to the World Series for the first time since winning it in 1954.
The New York Yankees won their second straight world title and fifth in seven years when they defeated the Giants 4-3 in a Fall Classic that ended when second baseman Bobby Richardson grabbed a screaming line drive by Willie McCovey off Ralph Terry for the final out of Game 7. Mays was at second and Matty Alou at third, with the Yankees leading 1-0, providing redemption for Terry, who'd given up the ninth-inning game-winning homer in the 1960 Series to Pittsburgh's Bill Mazeroski.
Following the season, Maury Wills was named the National League MVP over Mays in what has been recognized as one of the biggest MVP snubs ever. Wills got 209 points and eight first-place votes from the writers. Mays got 202 and seven.
Wills made history that year with 104 steals, breaking what had been considered the untouchable post-1900 record of Ty Cobb with 96. He also tied for second in runs scored with 130 -- tied with Willie Mays. Beyond that, the only categories he ranked in the top five were hits (third) and triples (four) while batting .299. He did win the league's Gold Glove award for shortstops, one of two he won in his career.
Meanwhile, Mays led the league in homers with 49 (third-highest in his career, playoff homers included in his total), also led in total bases, was second in RBIs (career-high 141), runs and doubles, and third in slugging average while hitting .304. And he won a Gold Glove -- one of a record 12 he won for outfielders (tied with Roberto Clemente). And Mays played on the pennant winner, Wills on the runner-up.
"This may be the weirdest MVP pick of all time," Jonah Keri wrote in an article for espn.com.
Mays got a reprieve of sorts -- or perhaps a make-up -- when he outpolled the Dodgers' Sandy Koufax for NL MVP in 1965, a year in which Mays batted .317 with a career-high 52 homers and 112 RBIs. Koufax was on the pennant winner while Mays was on the runner-up team.
MVP or not, Mays' performance in 1962 probably helped turn the tide in winning over the San Francisco fans who hadn't wholeheartedly embraced "The Say Hey Kid" at the start, favoring instead Orlando Cepeda because he was a homegrown product, not a New York transplant.
As late as 1960, Roy Terrell wrote in Sports Illustrated, on the way Cepeda had enthralled the Frisco faithful in the Giants' first two years there: "This series of events has so endeared Orlando to San Francisco fans that Willie Mays, by contrast, is considered something of a staid has-been and Willie McCovey an upstart who has yet to prove himself. Cepeda and big league baseball arrived in town the same day—April 15, 1958, on which occasion Orlando hit a home run—and San Francisco has been in love with him ever since."
It's not that Mays didn't produce upon arriving in San Francisco. He had between 29 and 40 homers his first four years there and hit between .308 and .347. But with seasons like he kept continually churning out in the '60s, especially '62 and '65, Giants fans had no choice to say, "Hey, gotta love that Willie."
Sources: Play-by-play information came from the Retrosheet account at https://www.retrosheet.org/
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