July 14, 1979: The Carter administration's energy crisis... gasoline shortages ... Los Angeles County deputies are ordered back to work after a two-day sickout ... and Gov. Brown trims the budget by vetoing raises for state employees.
In his final season with the Angels, Nolan Ryan flirted more than
once with a fifth no-hitter. Against the Yankees, he lasted until the
ninth when Reggie Jackson singled.
This would have been a controversial no-hitter since Jim Spencer's
liner to center in the eighth was ruled an error on center fielder Rick
Miller. The Yankees were furious and even Angel general manager Buzzie
Bavasi told official scorer Dick Miller of the Herard-Examiner,
"There's no doubt about what it was."
Baseball doesn't use newspaper reporters as official scorers anymore and that's probably a good thing for all concerned.
July 12, 1969: Akron has hip-huggers ... guitars ... clock radio/desk lamps.
How wide was the gulf between the Angels and Dodgers? Consider this
item from The Times' radio columnist, Don Page, discussing Gene Autry's
troubles:
"This should be a particularly depressing week for Autry, the Angels
and Channel 5. By Sunday, Channel 5 will have dispensed five Angel
telecasts into Southland parlors--all opposite Dodger radio games when
Vin Scully is describing the hottest week of the L.A. team's season.
Pity the Angel ratings."
There was plenty of speculation that Autry was going to tap Channel
5 general manager Doug Finley to become president of the Angels.
Finley's most recent claim to fame was boosting Channel 5 news ratings
by hiring former LAPD Chief Tom Reddin.
July 10, 1959: A heatwave sears Southern California as a fire threatens homes in the Linda Vista neighborhood of Pasadena.
More attacks are feared in Vietnam after a bombing kills two American advisors.
An Inglewood police officer putting a ticket on a car that hadn't been moved for two days discovers the partially clothed body of a missing Fresno woman in the trunk. On the front seat is a sweater and a pair of Capri pants, a front tooth and blood.
The victim is identified as Mary Jean Prestridge, 26, the wife of a truck driver and the mother of two children.
Police are looking for a young man seen with Prestridge in Fresno shortly before she vanished.
The Dodgers' games against the Milwaukee Braves are fascinating to
study since the teams finished the regular season tied and faced each
other in a playoff to decide the 1959 National League champion.
In a typically close game, the Dodgers edged the Braves, 4-3, in 13
innings. The Dodgers moved into second place with the victory, wedged
between the first-place Giants and the third-place Braves.
What stood out was how pitching has changed. Milwaukee's Warren
Spahn took the loss after pitching 5 2/3 innings in relief of starter
Joey Jay.
Spahn was still a top pitcher. He would win 21 games in 1959, the
fourth of six consecutive seasons with at least 20 wins. What was he
doing coming out of the bullpen?
The Dodgers' relief staff was similarly quiet. Roger Craig was the
winning pitcher and he really earned it, pitching the final 11 innings.
There's a reference in the story to how few pitches Craig threw, but 11
innings is a lot under any circumstance. Wonder how many pitchers the
Dodgers and Braves would use in a similar game today.
And this wasn't a rare case. The next afternoon, Don Drysdale came
out of the bullpen to pitch the Dodgers past the Braves in the final
game of the series. Drysdale had pitched two scoreless innings the
night before, but the game was rained out in the third inning. He was
scheduled to pitch the first game of the next series in Cincinnati but
was called in when Sandy Koufax struggled. There was no one else?
Drysdale pitched six innings.
It's impossible to imagine a current manager juggling such a star pitcher.
July 8, 1959: The state Supreme Court upholds Caryl Chessman's death sentence. A fire breaks out at the compressor plant at Kanola and Fullerton roads in Union Oil's drilling field.
Kanola and Fullerton via Google maps' street view.
Don Drysdale was the starting pitcher in the National League's 5-4
victory over the AL at Pittsburgh. He pitched three perfect innings and
edged Willie Mays for the honors as the game's top player.
Drysdale struck out Nellie Fox, Al Kaline, Rocky Colavito and pitcher Early Wynn.
Mays' triple made the difference in the eighth inning off the Yankees' Whitey Ford.
The all-stars would visit Los Angeles later in the summer, since
1959 was the first of baseball's short-lived experiment with two
all-star games each season.
July 2, 1969: The Sacramento debating society recesses without passing a budget. Why is crime down? Police credit the Neighborhood Watch program.
Photograph by Steve Dykes / Los Angeles Times
Feb. 13, 1992: Dodgers batting instructor Matty Mota, left, and his son Jose discuss the finer points of hitting in a workout at Dodger Stadium.
Manny Mota was the new kid on the block then, trying to stay in the lineup no matter how he felt.
It's hard to picture Mota as the Dodgers' new guy since this season marks his 30th as a Dodger coach, according to dodgers.com.
Mota, who played for the Dodgers until 1980 with one at-bat in 1982, was acquired in the same trade with Montreal that brought Maury Wills back to Los Angeles.
Mota was still in the outfield then, not the premier pinch-hitter he would eventually become for the Dodgers. Despite playing with a painful elbow, Mota hit an inside-the-park home run that was a key blow in a 4-1 victory over the Astros.
"The man is remarkable," Wills told The Times' John Wiebusch. "In all those years in Pittsburgh, when he hit so well but played so little, he never said a word. ... It's too bad he couldn't have gotten here five years ago. He'd be an idol here now."
Mota, a career .305 hitter, finished with a .323 average for the Dodgers in 1969.
July 1, 1959: Coming soon, "Porgy and Bess" and "Anatomy of a Murder"
David Williams became the first African American federal judge west of the Mississippi.
At left, African American Judge David Williams is overruled in dismissing cases against blacks. Williams infuriated Chief Parker by saying that enforcement of gambling laws was biased. At one point, Williams said that if blacks wanted to gamble they should go into white neighborhoods, because the laws weren't enforced there.
World War II veteran Dennis Farrell has become the Griffith Park hermit.
Farrell was committed to the VA hospital for psychiatric treatment.
The court fight to stop the Dodgers from building a ballpark in Chavez Ravine apparently wasn't over after all.
Louis Kirschbaum asked the Supreme Court to reverse the California
Supreme Court's ruling that effectively started the plans rolling for a
new baseball stadium, The Times covered the story with a short wire
report.
Maybe I missed it, but I would have thought a story on Kirschbaum
and the other principals who tried to block the Dodgers' move would
have made a good story. I never found one--and would love to be proved
wrong if I've missed it.
June 29, 1969: The Dodgers gained a share of a National League record thanks in large part to their struggling young neighbors to the south, the Padres.
The Dodgers scored 10 times in the third and demolished the Padres, 19-0, equaling the largest winning margin ever in a National League game. The Dodgers scored and scored and it wasn't pretty. They needed only six hits in the 10-run inning. The Padres contributed six walks and five wild pitches.
How bad were the Padres?
"The Mets of 1962 lost 120 games, a record figure, and historians will tell you there has not been a poorer team," wrote The Times' John Wiebusch. "That's the trouble with historians, they're always looking at the past. Someone had better start watching the San Diego Padres of 1969."
Aug. 19, 1961: Jerry Doggett, left, Wally Moon and Vin Scully.
Photo by Joe Kennedy / L.A. Times
July 26, 1960: Wally Moon playing Texas Hold 'Em? No, it's just an innocent game of solitaire.
Wally Moon's home run made the difference in the Dodgers' 9-6 victory over the Phillies.
Moon became known for the home run during his years in Los Angeles.
He was acquired to give the lineup some left-handed power and moving
the fences in part of the Coliseum was seen as a boost for Moon and
Duke Snider. But he became famous in L.A. for his "Moon shots' over the
left-field screen.
He also had a reputation as a scholar of sorts. The Times' Jeane
Hoffman profiled Moon a couple days after the home run, stressing his
educational background. Moon held a master's degree in administrative
education from Texas A&M. Probably wasn't a lot of players with
master's degrees in 1959--wonder how many there are today.
"I look upon an education as an end to itself; it's a sort of
insurance policy against the day when I don't get to round third as
often or see that curve coming," Moon said. "Baseball life doesn't last
long. Then I can go back to teaching and not have to worry about where
my next decimal point is coming from!"
Moon hit .302 for the Dodgers in 1959, with 19 home runs and 11 triples.
Democrats draft a plan to avoid a walkout by Southern delegates at the 1960 presidential convention, to be held in Los Angeles.
Four white men are sentenced to life in prison for raping a black coed.
Scientists say paint and solvents contribute to smog.
Fallout from a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would not make the human race extinct, a Defense Department scientist says. But half of the homes in the U.S. would be badly damaged.
Maybe there's a reason Detroit didn't take imported cars seriously.
Chavez Ravine update.
Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood on water skis! Chuck Courtney?
Sandy Koufax tied a team record and set an obscure major league record with 16 strikeouts in a 6-2 victory over the Phillies at the Coliseum.
Koufax had a shot at the major league and National League records but failed to strike anyone out in the ninth. He settled for the most strikeouts in a night game and a share of the Dodger record, which according to The Times' Frank Finch was set in 1909.
At left, George Reeves' mother hires Jerry Giesler to investigate his apparent suicide. Above, Richard Ingledue kills Charles De Long in a fight over Dolores Mayfield. The judge sentenced Ingledue to a year in jail, calling him a "spoiled brat."
Abe Ben Fisher kills one man and wounds two others before committing suicide. "He just put the gun to his head and fired," says Donald T. Giertz, who was shot in the mouth.
Newspapers in the 1950s often ran contests featuring peculiar puzzles -- like this one.
Ballet is like baseball -- except I don't think dancers spit nearly as often.
Don Drysdale leads the Dodgers to a 9-2 win over the Reds, bringing the Dodgers within 2 1/2 games of first-place Milwaukee.
Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.
Keith Thursby. Keith has been an editor at The Times in news, sports and design since 1986. The Rams moved to St. Louis on his first day as assistant sports editor of the paper's Orange County edition. He grew up in Norwalk and lives in Irvine.
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Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.
Keith Thursby. Keith has been an editor at The Times in news, sports and design since 1986. The Rams moved to St. Louis on his first day as assistant sports editor of the paper's Orange County edition. He grew up in Norwalk and lives in Irvine.