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New York Mets left-hander Al Jackson put a damper on St. Louis' hopes for a 1964 National League pennant by throwing a five-hitter in a 1-0 victory Oct. 2, 1964, over the Cardinals. The Cards' lead in the NL race was cut to one-half game.
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By Phil Ellenbecker
The St. Louis Cardinals entered their home contest Friday, Oct. 2, 1964, against the New York Mets leading the National League by one-half game over Cincinnati and 2 1/2 games over Philadelphia. The Mets were 40 games behind the Cardinals and 14 behind the next-nearest team in the league.
The night ended with the Cardinals still clinging to their half-game lead on Cincy but down to 1 1/2 over Philly after being beaten by the Mets 1-0 at Busch Stadium. All of a sudden the final two games of the season between the two teams were looking a lot more crucial for St. Louis.
That's because the Mets' Al Jackson had taken on the Cardinals' ace, Bob Gibson, and in a duel with one of the premier big-game pitchers of the 1960s, "Little Al" out-bigged Gibbie.
Gibson limited the Mets to one run on eight hits and no walks while striking out seven
over eight innings. But it wasn't enough as Jackson stopped the Cardinals on five hits while walking one in a stifling complete-game effort.
And
the 5-foot-10, 169-pound left-hander
needed only two strikeouts to do it, since he was a ground-ball machine, coaxing the Cardinals to get themselves out 15 times on balls beat into the dirt as he improved his final record to 11-16 with a 4.26 ERA. Gibson, who would go on to win two games in the World Series as the Cardinals topped the New York Yankees 4-3, fell to 18-12 and 2.99.
By knocking off the Cards the Mets clinched the best-ever win total by the franchise to date -- all of 52 victories after 40 and 51 their first two years of existence.
The Mets scored all the runs Jackson needed in the third inning when Goerge Altman singled to center field with one out, stole second and crossed the plate on a single to left by Ed Kranepool, a Met from 1962 to 1979 who grew up in the New York borough the Bronx. Altman's theft was the last of four he had on the year.
Meanwhile, Jackson was sailing. He retired the first nine batters he faced, 12 of the first 13. He had five 1-2-3 innings, three more when he faced just four batters.
The only time he encountered trouble came in the eighth inning. With two out Ed Spiezio, pinch hitting for Gibson, singled to left and was replaced on the bases by Dal Maxvill. Curt Flood followed with a single to right that advanced Maxvill to third. Lou Brock then beat out a grounder to third for a third straight single, but Maxville held at third while Flood moved to second.
But with No. 3 hitter Dick Groat up with a chance to put the Cards ahead with a base hit, Jackson escaped when Groat lined out to right.
And it was back to three up and three down in the ninth as Jackson retired Ken Boyer, that year's NL MVP, on a grounder to short, Bill White on a fly to right and Julian Javier on a grounder to third.
Jackson was an equal-opportunity employer when it came to his ground-ball distribution. Second baseman Bobby Klaus and shortstop Roy McMillan had four assists apiece, third baseman Charley Smith had three, Jackson two, and first baseman Kranepool and catcher Jesse Gonder one apiece.
After getting shut up on the field, the Cardinals had some venting to do afterward.
“Oh, did they call me
a bunch of names," Jackson said in a Newsday article in 2008, recalling a reception he received on his way to Cardinals announcer Harry Caray's postgame show. "They said, ‘You guys are 59 games out of first place and
you’ve got to pitch a game like this?’ Man, did they rip me.”
Although Jackson didn't need the help, the Mets had Gibson on the ropes early and were quite close to giving him a cushion. They left the bases loaded in both the first and fourth innings, but Gibson got out of it with a pair of strikeouts in both frames. And after scoring in the third they had runners at first and third before Gibson recorded the third out.
Those early Mets opportunities were helped along by errors committed on the Cardinals' solid infield by Groat at shortstop and at third by Boyer, a five-time Gold Glover. The Cardinals had three errors on the day.
So the Cards weren't too buttoned-up against their sad-sack opponents, and they showed themselves vulnerable again the next day, as the Mets whacked five homers in a 15-5 pasting against 20-game winner Ray Sadecki and seven other pitchers.
That put the Cardinals into a tie with Cincinnati for first, with Philadelphia a game back, so now St. Louis really had to win. Which they did Sunday by coming from behind, with relief help from Gibson, in an 11-5 decision that clinched the team's first pennant since 1946. Gibson was the winning pitcher.
Jackson's Friday outing was his 11th complete game and third shutout of the year, including a two-hit shutout May 2. It was his third five-hit complete game of the year to go with a three-hitter.
So Jackson was definitely capable of quality performances amid such a sorry team, as had been the case since being the Mets' 11th pick and 22nd overall in the 1961 NL expansion draft. He notched the
club’s first shutout, against Philadelphia, on
April 29, 1962. His second shutout, over
fellow NL newcomers the Houston Colt .45s on June 22 of that year, was the Mets’ first-ever one-hitter. An April 19 whitewashing of Pittsburgh in 1964 was the team's first win in their newly opened Shea Stadium home. His 10 overall shutouts between 1962 and 1965 are still good for sixth on the all-time Mets
career list.
Yet despite showing those capabilities, he was shadowed by his team's ineptitude. Jackson remains
the only Met to ever lose 20 games in a season more than once, and his final overall record with the team was 43-80. Put him on a club that could hit, teammate Gary Kroll suggested in the book "The Amazing Mets: 1962-1969," and “he’d win 20 games every year.”
Things were better for the teams Jackson was with before and after his time with the Mets. His record was 23-19 with other teams in a 10-year career that ended at 67-99 with a 3.98 ERA. Yet bad luck and bad timing seemed to follow him. For instance, after going from the outhouse to the penthouse with a 1965 trade to the Cardinals, he went 9-4 as a spot starter and reliever in 1967, when the Redbirds won their second World Series title of the decade behind three wins by Gibson. But he wasn't a part of actually winning the Fall Classic. Of the 10 pitchers manager Red Schoendist chose to use in the seven games it took to win it, not one of them was named Al Jackson.
Jackson was traded back to the Mets in 1967, and in 1969 he was part of the Miracle Mets team that stunned the world by knocking off the Baltimore Orioles in the Series. Only again, he wasn't part of it, because by the time that Fall Classic arrived, Jackson was long gone, having been sold by the Reds in June.
(More irony: Just after Jackson was cut loose, Tom Seaver won the 44th game of his young career and broke Little Al’s franchise mark for most wins.)
Jackson's near-miss pattern continued in Cincinnati, which launched its Big Red Machine in 1970 by winning the NL pennant. But Jackson was released in April of that season.
This had been going on since the beginning. Jackson, a native of Waco, Texas, broke in with the Pittsburgh organization in 1955 and ascended to brief stints with the Pirates in 1959 and 1961. But he didn't pitch for them in 1960, when they -- you guessed it -- won their first pennant since 1927 and first World Series since 1925.
At least he didn't get teased by any kind of success -- besides his own -- during his tenure with the Mets. But regardless of Jackson's fate and fortunes, he managed to persevere and in the case of pitching for the Mets, he rose above the circumstances.
And was appreciated. Besides his contributions to the organization as a pitcher, he was also the Mets pitching coach in 1999 and 2000.
Longtime Mets beat reporter Marty Noble described him as “as good a man as you could hope to meet in a half-century around the game. By the pitching standards baseball holds so dear, he produced a mostly modest career. But his character, happy demeanor and unsurpassed decency have put him in the pantheon of the exalted and splendid folks who have walked the planet.”
Or, as the Mets' 2018 media guide declared, “No one exemplifies the Mets organization more than Al Jackson.”
And the masterpiece "Little Al" spun against the Cardinals on Oct. 2, 1964, was exemplary, indeed.
Sources:
Jackson biography: https://sabr.org/Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.
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