Friday, Jul. 31, 1964

The One Small Difference

Take a world championship baseball team.Subtract one starting pitcher. Substitute a .270 hitter for a .330 hitter. Drop some flies, fumble some grounders, miss some bunts, leave runners all over the bases. What you have then is the Los Angeles Dodgers, best seventh-place team in baseball.

The 1964 Dodgers may well go down in history as one of the game's enduring mysteries. On paper, they are practically the same club that won the National League pennant last year and swept four straight from the New York Yankees in the World Series. Sandy Koufax is still the slickest pitcher around, and Don Drysdale may be the runner-up; between them, they have already won 27 games this year. Shortstop Maury Wills is the same electrifying base runner who stole a record 104 bases in 1962 (he has 31 so far).Catcher John Roseboro, whose lifetime average is .240, was batting .310before he cut a finger on a foul tip. But still the Dodgers lose: twostraight to the sixth-place Chicago Cubs last week, two out of four tothe ninth-place Houston Colts. Then those hated San Francisco Giants inflicted an 11-3 thrashing, scoring nine runs in one nightmarish inning.

Injuries have hurt, of course. Roseboro will be out of action for a week, and Pitcher Johnny Podres has been idle since May because of a bone chip in his elbow. Outfielder Tommy Davis was hampered early in the season by a shoulder injury--but that scarcely explains how a man who led the National League in batting for two years in a row can be hitting .272 now. Moans Dodger Coach Pete Reiser: "There were at least nine ball games we would have won if Davis could just have hit a long fly."

Last week Manager Walter Alston watched unhappily while the Dodgers lost 1-0 to the Colts--their 19th loss in 30 one-run games this season. Alston was as baffled as everybody else. "You start with the idea that you score so many runs and allow your opponent to score so many," he said. "Last year at this time, we had 23 more runs than we had allowed, and we were 1 1/2 games ahead in first place. This year we have scored 29 more runs than we have had scored against us. The only difference is that we're not winning."

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