“If confidence and the long ball will do it, bet on the Orioles. If pitching will do it, then bet on the Dodgers.” These were the opening sentences from United Press International sports editor Leo H. Petersen’s World Series preview. The surprising Baltimore Orioles won the American League with a 97-63 record, nine games ahead of the second-place Minnesota Twins. The Los Angeles Dodgers finished first in the National League at 95-67, having survived a tight race with the San Francisco Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates breathing down their necks all season. The Dodgers were installed as 8-5 favorites to win the World Series on the strength of a pitching staff led by Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Triple Crown winner Frank Robinson led the Orioles. He hit .316/.410/.637, 49 HR, and 122 RBI and was the AL Most Valuable Player in 1966. Along with Boog Powell and Brooks Robinson, he was one of three Orioles with at least 100 RBI. The Orioles hit 175 long balls to the Dodgers’ 108. But their pitching staff was thought to be too young and green to match up with the Dodgers’ big-name hurlers.
Brooks and Frank Robinson at Fenway Park. They were teammates on the Baltimore Orioles from 1966 through 1971
The Manager
“Odds mean nothing in this game,” Orioles manager Hank Bauer told Petersen. It was the Orioles’ first World Series since the former St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954, but Bauer had participated in seven of them as a member of the New York Yankees from 1948-1959. “That Dodgers pitching isn’t scaring us,” continued Bauer. “We’ll beat ‘em with our hitting. They say they have the pitching. Maybe they have, but we have the hitters, and we have some pitching, too, that can surprise them.” He was a sage.
Bauer was a tough ex-Marine who became the Orioles’ manager by default. He managed the Kansas City Athletics in 1961 and 1962. When he was fired, he joined the Orioles as a coach under manager Billy Hitchcock. When Hitchcock was fired after the 1963 season, the Orioles scoured the baseball world for a replacement. Mayo Smith and Eddie Stanky were considered. When all else failed, they gave the gig to Bauer. He didn’t mind not being the No. 1 choice. “The job’s mine now,” he said at the time. “Just let somebody try to take it from me.”
The Triple Crown Winner
On the same day Branch Rickey died, the Orioles acquired future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson from the Cincinnati Reds in a trade for pitchers Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun, and Dick Simpson. In the end, it was incredibly one-sided in the Orioles’ favor. In 10 years with the Reds, Frank hit .303/.389/.554, 324 HR, 1,009 RBI, and 150 OPS+. The right fielder was the NL Rookie of the Year in 1956, the MVP in 1961, and a six-time All-Star. What possible explanation could Reds general manager Bill DeWitt have? “According to my figures, Robinson is worth a half million in today’s market,” he told UPI. “The three players we got also are worth a half million. I think it was an even deal. . . We thought we needed pitching.” (Applying that logic, he could have traded Robinson for 20 minor leaguers worth $25,000 each and considered that an even trade, too.) The deal was considered a gamble for Baltimore because Robinson was (gasp!) 30 years old and considered a “bad guy.” Said Bauer, “I think he’s a ball player. At least he has been for 10 years.”
After the Series, Robinson told the Associated Press that the “bad guy” rap began to follow him in 1960, after he slid into third base against the Milwaukee Braves in the first game of a doubleheader and ended up in a fight with third baseman Eddie Mathews. Both were ejected. “I guess he figured I slid unnecessarily hard,” said Robinson. “It was the only fight I ever had. I lost. My left eye was almost completely closed. That was enough for me.” However, he played in the second game, had two hits, including a home run, and made a great catch in right field. Hence the label that he played well when mad.
Game 1
Bauer sent 23-year-old lefty Dave McNally (13-6, 3.17 ERA) to face Drysdale (13-16, 3.42 ERA) in the opening game at Dodger Stadium. In the top of the first inning, Russ Snyder drew a one-out walk, and Frank Robinson followed with a two-run homer deep into the left field stands to put the Dodgers ahead, 2-0. The Series was three batters old, and Baltimore would never trail in it from that point. Brooks Robinson followed with another home run even deeper than Frank’s. Frank told the press gaggle that his homer “wasn’t hit that well, but I got enough of it and hit in the right direction.” Brooks said that Frank’s homer made his big blast possible. “Frank took the pressure off everybody, especially me,” said the third baseman.
By the bottom of the second, McNally had a 4-0 lead. However, he gave up a home run to Jim Lefebvre to begin the bottom of the second, and walked the bases loaded with one out in the third. Bauer signaled to the bullpen for veteran right-hander Moe Drabowsky, who had a 2.81 ERA and 0.948 WHIP in 1966.
The Practical Joker
Drabowsky was born in Ozanna, Poland, in 1935. His major league career began in 1956 when the Chicago Cubs signed him as a bonus player under the rules of the day. He’d pitched for three more teams when the Orioles took him in the Rule 5 draft in November 1965. In the offseason, he was a successful stockbroker. He was also a renowned practical joker. He once hired a plane to fly over Memorial Stadium with a banner that read, “BEWARE OF MOE.” When he was with the Athletics, they once stayed in a hotel that was being remodeled, with the room numbers written in pencil on the doors. The Shriners were holding a convention at the same time. Drabowsky and teammate Lew Krausse erased the numbers and changed them. When the Shriners returned to their rooms in the wee hours, mass confusion ensued.
Drabowsky was also a mimic who had fun with the bullpen phone. Krausse was still with Kansas City when they played the Orioles on May 27, 1966. Drabowsky called the Athletics bullpen, imitating KC manager Al Dark’s voice, and ordered Krausse to warm up quickly. Then he called a few minutes later, again imitating Dark, and ordered him to sit down. He had Krausse going up and down until the A’s figured out they were being pranked. He once called a European hotel and spoke to Sophia Loren, impersonating a foreign fan. “He was basically insane,” Powell once said.
Beware of Moe
But Drabowsky was dead serious on the mound, an early practitioner of film study. He entered Game 1 and promptly fanned Wes Parker, walked Jim Gilliam, and retired John Roseboro. Gilliam’s walk brought in the final run the Dodgers would score in the Series. Firing a sinking fastball, Drabowsky struck out the next six batters, tying a Series record held by Hod Eller of the Reds in 1919. Today’s broadcasters nearly fall out of the booth when a reliever pitches more than one inning. Drabowsky’s performance would have given them heart attacks. He pitched the final 6.2 innings, surrendering one hit and striking out 11, breaking a Series record for strikeouts by a relief pitcher set by the New York Giants’ Jesse Barnes in 1921. Baltimore hung on to win, 5-2.
Orioles catcher Andy Etchebarren estimated that Drabowsky threw “about 85 percent fastballs, with a few sliders and a couple of curves.” Drabowsky told the swarm of media, “I don’t want to talk – go see the hitters.” However, he allowed that he was glad to be on the good side of the record book. “I was the losing pitcher when Early Wynn won his 300th game. I was the guy pitching when Stan Musial got his 3,000th hit.”
Game 2
Game 2 matched up two future Hall of Fame pitchers: Koufax (27-9, 1.73 ERA) for the Dodgers and 20-year-old Jim Palmer (15-10, 3.46 ERA) for the Orioles. Palmer was not yet, of course, the Jim Palmer who would go on to win three AL Cy Young Awards. The Scottsdale, Arizona native was a bonus player. In high school, he was all-state in baseball, basketball, and football. The Orioles felt Pappas was expendable because Palmer was on hand to replace him.
Lester J. Biederman, covering the Series for The Pittsburgh Press, overheard two fans exiting Dodger Stadium after the game. The first man said, “The Dodgers aren’t hitting.” The second fan said, “Not hitting? Why, the Dodgers aren’t even fielding.”
Indeed, the Dodgers committed six errors on this day, three by center fielder Willie Davis in the fifth inning. Through four innings, Koufax and Palmer were locked in a scoreless pitchers’ duel. But not even the great Koufax could overcome six errors. The six errors tied a Series record held by the 1909 Pirates and the 1906 and 1917 Chicago White Sox. In the top of the fifth, with one out and Powell on first, Paul Blair hit a fly ball that Davis dropped. With Blair and Powell occupying second and third, Etchebarren followed with another fly ball that Davis dropped. Powell scored, and Davis threw the ball away trying to nab Blair at third. Blair scored on the error, and Etchebarren advanced to third, from where he scored on Luis Aparicio’s two-out double. Later, Davis told the press gathered around his locker, “I have no excuses. I just lost the balls in the sun. Lost them completely. Oh, I could have turned my back, but often you make a stab at a ball and somehow get it. That’s what I tried. I saw them both until they got in the sun, and sunglasses didn’t help me.”
There were three more Dodgers errors, but they didn’t matter, as Palmer pitched a complete game four-hitter and won, 6-0. Koufax pitched six innings and gave up four runs, only one of which was earned. After the game, Dodgers manager Walter Alston told Petersen, “We never do things the easy way, but I’m afraid it’s going to be a lot tougher to come back this time.”
Wally World
For Game 3, Bauer tabbed 21-year-old right-hander Wally Bunker (10-6, 4.29 ERA) to face Dodgers lefty Claude Osteen (17-14, 2.85 ERA). In 1963, the Orioles signed Bunker out of high school in San Bruno, California. As a rookie in 1964, he was 19-5 with a 2.69 ERA and 1.042 WHIP. He was the runner-up AL Rookie of the Year to Tony Oliva and The Sporting News Rookie Pitcher of the Year. His 12 complete games in 1964 included two one-hitters. Unfortunately, that was his best year in the majors. In 1965, he developed arm and elbow trouble, which plagued him for the rest of his career.
Bunker was a low-key, sleepy-eyed presence who slouched as he walked slowly to and from the field. “I’ve always been that way,” he told the AP. “I was told by a general manager of one club that a scout on another team wouldn’t even look at me because he thought I didn’t care when I was pitching.” He didn’t seek the spotlight, and it’s hard to find an article from the period where he revealed much about himself. That might be why, even though Bunker was still an active player in 1971, he’d become such an afterthought that, when producer Norman Lear was developing All in the Family, the name originally chosen for the main character was Wally Bunker. The character was renamed Archie Bunker when de Forest Research, Inc., the company responsible for determining whether TV character names are legal to use, discovered a Wally Bunker living in Queens. It apparently never dawned on them that it was also the name of a major league pitcher.
Game 3
Bunker revealed his game plan to the AP before the game. “I don’t throw as hard as Drabowsky or Palmer,” he said. “I rely more on control. But after seeing the success their fastballs had in the first two games, I don’t think I’ll worry about aiming for corners. I just want to get more on the pitch and make sure it’s a strike.”
The scene shifted to Memorial Stadium, where Game 3 drew 54,445 fans, the largest crowd ever to see a baseball game there. Osteen pitched seven innings and gave up just three hits, but one of them was Blair’s fifth-inning solo home run. Ironically, Blair, who hit just six home runs during what Dodgers announcer Vin Scully called “the regular year,” attended a Dodgers tryout camp in 1962 and never heard back. Bunker pitched a complete game, scattering six hits and walking one, and the Orioles won, 1-0, in an hour and 55 minutes. During the regular season, he pitched just three complete games and didn’t have a shutout. The only extra-base hit by the Dodgers was Parker’s book-rule double in the fourth inning.
The most the media could get out of the reticent Bunker was, “I’ve never been better.” Years later, he told Ted Patterson of Baseball Digest, “I don’t remember a whole lot about the ’66 Series other than how much fun it was. . . To win feels good and to have personally won, 1-0, is something I’ll never forget.” That was as good as it gets from Bunker.
Alston remained confident after Game 3. When Bob Myers of the AP mentioned that no team had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a Series, Alston corrected him. “Portsmouth, Ohio, did it against Akron in the Middle Atlantic League,” said Alston, a first baseman for Portsmouth at the time. “Don’t ask me what year it was.” It was 1940.
Game 4
Hurricane Inez barreled toward the southern Texas border. In calmer weather, Game 4 was a rematch of the Game 1 starters, McNally and Drysdale. It followed a similar plot to Game 3. Drysdale pitched a complete game and gave up four hits, but in a familiar refrain from Game 3, one was a solo homer by Frank Robinson in the fourth inning. It could have been worse. It appeared that Powell launched a home run over the center field wire fence one out later, but Davis, he of the infamous three-error inning, leapt high above the fence and robbed Powell with the greatest play of the Series. McNally did a little better than Bunker; he pitched a complete game four-hitter and also won the game, 1-0, and did it in an hour and 45 minutes. All four hits were singles. He walked two.
McNally needed some help from the Baltimore defense. Lefebvre led off the top of the fifth with a line drive single to center. Parker followed with a sharp high hopper that was destined to bound into left field. However, Brooks Robinson snared it as only he could and started a double play.
Although it was Alston who’d eventually enter the Hall of Fame as a manager, little he did in the Series panned out, while everything Bauer touched turned to gold. In the eighth, Bauer inserted Blair, who didn’t start the game, into center field. Lefebvre tested Blair right away when he led off with a drive to center field, where Blair made a spectacular one-handed grab against the fence. When Blair gloved Lou Johnson’s easier fly ball to end the game, the World Series was over. In sweeping the Dodgers, Baltimore used only 13 players. Orioles reliever Stu Miller warmed up in every game and was perhaps the busiest player never to appear in a Series. By holding Los Angeles scoreless for the final 33 innings of the Series, the Orioles blew away the previous record of 26 by the New York Giants over the Philadelphia Athletics in 1905.
— Kevin Brotzman (@brotz13.bsky.social) 2024-11-23T18:17:46.036Z
“You don’t win when you don’t score,” said Alston, who held a Ph.D. from the Greater Los Angeles Institute for Stating the Obvious.
“He Asked Me to Autograph the Ball”
Although Palmer and McNally would go on to have long, successful careers with the Orioles, Bunker wasn’t so lucky. His arm miseries continued. Bunker went to the Kansas City Royals in the 1968 expansion draft, as did Drabowsky. The Royals sent Bunker to Triple-A Omaha in 1971. He retired the next season at age 27.
“The final insult was with Omaha when a little left-handed-batting first baseman from Puerto Rico got a hit to knock me out of a game in Tulsa,” he related to Patterson. “The next day he asked me to autograph the ball. He had called his mother and said he got a hit off Wally Bunker, the World Series star. I was so embarrassed I walked into the manager’s office and quit.”
