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.
Keith says: There's also a scene in which Babe Ruth goes into a bar and orders milk.
So Larry and I were discussing the Mystery Photo one day and I
commented on actor William Bendix, who was in a shot with the
then-mysterious Noreen Nash. Bendix once played Babe Ruth in "The Babe
Ruth Story" a film I said was without question the worst baseball movie
of all time.
Oh really, said Mr. Harnisch. And before I knew it, a survey was born,
We'd like to know your pick for the worst baseball movie. Since this
is The Daily Mirror, let's limit the field to black and white
productions.
Here are some suggestions:
--"Angels in the Outfield," the 1951 version with Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh. Not the Disney remake with Danny Glover.
--"Fear Strikes Out," with Anthony Perkins as troubled Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall.
There are tons of others--I'm not including some of my personal
favorites. There's even another candidate with Bendix called "Kill the
Umpire." Here's a glimpse of Bendix playing Ruth the way Jackie Gleason
might have played President Taft.
--Keith Thursby
Update: Author James Curtis says: Worst baseball movie, I'll be curious to see if anyone mentions "Roogie's Bump,"
which I saw one time at a Saturday kids' matinee.
Alexa Foreman, researcher for Turner Classic Movies, says: "The Slugger's Wife."
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.
The Dodgers climbed back into first place in the National League West by sweeping the Atlanta Braves in a Dodger Stadium doubleheader, 5-3 and 4-3. Mota led the way with four hits in each game.
He won the nightcap for the Dodgers with a bases-loaded single that went over the head of Atlanta's right fielder, none other than Henry Aaron.
"It is the greatest thrill of my life," Mota told The Times' John Wiebusch. "A Dodger I always want to be and now I am one and we are in first place. I want to play on a champion."
New Manager Lefty Phillips tried to get his players' attention by attacking their wallets. Five players who missed curfew were fined. Then pitcher Phil Ortega was charged $500 for being found in a Kansas City hotel lobby allegedly wearing only underwear (that costs you only $500?).
Pitcher Bob Priddy fought back, going public after he was sold to the Angels' minor league team in Hawaii. "I could no longer play for Lefty Phillips," Priddy told The Times' Ross Newhan. "I've played for many managers, but he's the worst."
Priddy wasn't exactly Cy Young. He was 0-1 with the Angels after coming with Sandy Alomar in a trade with the White Sox for Bobby Knoop.
The Angels said Priddy had publicly criticized his coaches and, besides, had told Phillips he was going to retire. "I've never heard a player talk about other players like he did," Phillips said about his confrontation with the pitcher. "He broke a code. I lost all respect for him."
Newhan saw the developing trend and wrote a smart story about the struggling franchise.
"It has been seven weeks ago that Dick Walsh ... appointed his friend, Harold Phillips, as manager of the tottering Angels. The 'big' stories continued to occur off the field.
"They have, for the most part, involved fringe players and the question is, are they symptomatic or should they be forgotten? Are they indicative of dissension within or simply a change in style from the laissez-faire policy of Bill Rigney?"
It's not every day you find baseball players accusing their manager of a "reign of terror." Others suggested that the Angels were a last-place team and the manager could do what he pleased.
July 5, 1959: Vice President Richard Nixon waves during the dedication of the Sports Arena.
It has been a long time since anyone referred to the Los Angeles Sports Arena as a "marvel of modern design."
But that was the Mirror-News' view in an editorial celebrating the arena's dedication. This would be a sports arena without a team--the Lakers were still a part of the city's future. Shoot, people were still getting used to having the Dodgers in town.
Vice President Richard Nixon was the keynote speaker, mixing sports metaphors with a preview of the stump speak he'd use in his run for the presidency.
The Times' story included Nixon's three rules for participants in all sports:
"No. 1: Never quit, no matter how tough the going. No. 2: The best defense is a good offense. No. 3: Play to win. Don't play a defensive game."
He was talking about sports, but sure sounded a lot like his brand of politics too.
Having Nixon speak at the dedication of an arena that would host the Democratic National Convention was a nice piece of irony. Nixon said the convention "may turn out to be the battle of the century."
The Times published an Associated Press account of Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at Yankee Stadium, the tribute to the stricken first baseman who had been a symbol of consistency and endurance. Any baseball fan has seen Gehrig's famous speech, the real thing or the movie version portrayed by Gary Cooper.
The story couldn't match those visuals, real or imagined. Here's the first paragraph:
"A bunch of boys whooped it up at the Yankee Stadium today for the guy who's known as Lou." Somebody get me rewrite, and hurry.
Here's the movie version from YouTube. Hard to miss the real Babe Ruth in the background as Cooper speaks.
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.
"But others say Metro Rail will not be heavily used by poor people because it will not take them where they want to go--to jobs scattered throughout the Los Angeles area," The Times' William Trombley wrote.
"The traffic patterns of low-income blacks and Hispanics are diffused," said George W. Hilton, professor of economics at UCLA. "They are highly auto-dependent and are likely to remain so in the foreseeable future." Hilton also said: "We aren't going to run out of fossil fuels. There's no economic point in finding more than a 20-year supply at one one time. As prices rise, other sources will be found."
Mr. Modular was working on these pages. They look like bento boxes.
Well, of course, the subways work in Los Angeles, but nobody knew it in 1984. Tunneling beneath the city was not without problems, as anyone who recalls the partial collapse of Hollywood Boulevard during construction of the Red Line will remember.
And people with long memories will recall that traffic congestion during the 1984 Olympics was much less than expected.
The 1984 Olympics united Southern California residents over a familiar topic--traffic.
Bob Pool's story focused on concerns in the San Fernando Valley with
the Games starting in less than a month. "We're going to have problems
if 70% of the people going to the Olympics don't take the bus. If 50%
of them go by car, we're going to have total gridlock," David C. Royer,
senior Los Angeles city transportation engineer for the Valley, West
Los Angeles and LAX, told a group of Encino homeowners.
The worries weren't limited to the Valley, of course. Events were
scheduled across the Southland so if you lived somewhere in Southern
California, you were planning for the worst-case scenario.
Royer said residents should ask their employers for flexible working
hours during the Olympics and people with tickets should start
reserving seats on RTD buses.
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.