A tracer on Sandy Koufax, Joe Christopher and the Mets

Most of us have memories that we treasure. And we also have memories of random things that stood out for one reason or another. One random memory of mine was being at a game where Dave Kingman homered and getting so excited because I just punched his name out on a bunch of All-Star game ballots, which I proudly showed to the guy sitting next to me. Don’t remember anything else about the game but this little incident has always stayed with me for one reason or another.

Ballplayers are known for recalling things that happened during their career. You hear Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez talk about stuff that happened to them back in the 1980s and they’re filled with details. The thing is -frequently these details are, um, wrong. We can be nice and attribute these to faulty memories. Or we can be a little less kind and say that the players likely embellish the story. I had an old roommate who was a great guy but if you ever heard him tell one of his stories more than once, you never heard the same version. He was always crafting it, trying to make it the best version possible. My guess is that ballplayers do some of that, too.

Bill James and Rob Neyer used to go and do what they called “tracers.” These tracers would take a story told by a ballplayer and go back and try to see if they could find the game where the story took place. Chris Jaffe did some tracers on items from Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four.” Now, while that was a diary of his 1969 season, Bouton included tales from earlier in his career. Let’s quote Jaffe doing a tracer on one of Bouton’s stories for an example of how this works.

I remember one time [Mickey Mantle]’d been injured and didn’t expect to play, and I guess he got himself smashed. The next day he looked hung over out of his mind and was sent up to pinch-hit. He could hardly see.

So he staggered up to the plate and hit a tremendous drive to left field for a home run. When he came back into the dugout, everybody shook his hand and leaped all over him, and all the time he was getting a standing ovation from the crowd. He squinted out at the stands and said, “Those people don’t know how tough that really was.”
– Jim Bouton, Ball Four, March 4th entry.

Let’s see, seven of Mickey Mantle’s 536 career home runs were pinch hit, five of which took place when Bouton was on the Yankees.

Narrowing it down further, the shot must’ve happened at Yankee Stadium. Otherwise, there’s no reason for the fans to cheer as loud and as long as Bouton says they did. Three of the five pinch-hit homers for Mantle were at home.

Also, the blast should’ve been a day game. While it’s always possible for someone to still be hung over at night from his previous night’s festivities, given how incredibly wrecked Bouton depicts Mantle—staggering and nearly blind—you’d certainly hope it wasn’t eight o’clock at night.

As it happens, only one of the remaining three pinch-hit homers came in a day game: A solo shot in the bottom of the 7th on August 4, 1963 against Baltimore’s George Brunet that tied the game, 10-10.

Digging a little further, it’s clear this must be the game Bouton had in mind. Bouton said that Mantle was injured and didn’t expect to play. That’s an understatement. That pinch-hit homer was his first time on the field since injuring his foot in early June. No wonder the crowd went so crazy.

Finally, checking ProQuest, The Sporting News account of the home run notes that the shot was a long one to left, just as Bouton said. Everything lines up: The August 4, 1963, shot was Mantle’s hangover homer.

Jaffe’s article had other Bouton tales where the details didn’t quite fit like the example above. That’s not a surprise. And, really, we shouldn’t expect perfect memory from anyone. And we shouldn’t be shocked if there’s some embellishing going on, too. After all, we want a memorable story and sometimes you need to take a little poetic license. Certainly, my story about Kingman’s home run would have been a lot more interesting if I said it came in the bottom of the ninth and carried the Mets to the win.

Anyway, all of that is a setup to me doing a tracer on a recent post by uber commenter Wobbit. Now, I reached out to him yesterday, explaining what my plan was for this article. He graciously agreed to the premise. Not only that, he even re-posted his original comment, which got deleted from the site as we had to reinstall to a previous day to fix a 404 error. So, kudos all around to Wobbit.

Anyway, earlier a Card of the Week entry was posted on backup Mets catcher in the mid-60s, Johnny Stephenson. Wobbit posted this on the Stephenson story:

I have two distinct memories of Johnny.

He was the final out, struck out looking (check swing), in Jim Bunning’s perfecto on Father’s Day, June 14, 1964.

The other memory is far better. Mets were going against Sandy Koufax, who had never lost to them up to that point. Late in the game, scored tied, and Joe Christopher (who wound up hitting .303 that year, along with Ron Hunt who hit .301) reaches first with two out. Johnny then hit a ball up the gap in right center, and I commenced to scream for Christopher to score…”c’mon Joe, c’mon Joe…” because I knew this was the Mets only chance to beat Sandy K.

Christopher beat the throw home and the Mets won the game and handed Sandy probably his only loss against the feeble Metsies. Johnny’s storied career was thereby validated.

The first one is really easy to do a tracer. And Wobbit’s memory is correct. Baseball-Reference has the play-by-play of the game and Stephenson did, indeed, strike out to end Bunning’s perfect game. You can see the details here but you’ll have to scroll down past the box score to view the play-by-play info:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196406211.shtml

The second one is a little more involved.

According to B-R, the lefty-hitting Stephenson never faced Koufax. Here are the LHP he faced from his MLB debut in 1964 thru Koufax’ last season in 1966:

Joe Gibbon, Billy O’Dell, Ted Davidson, Hal Woodeshick, Joe Nuxhall, Denny Lemaster, Bob Hendley, Gerry Arrigo

https://stathead.com/baseball/batter_vs_pitcher.cgi?request=1&order_by_asc=0&order_by=PA&then_order_by_asc=0&then_order_by=Name&year_min=1964&year_max=1966&batter=stephjo02&throws=L

Now, it could be that Wobbit remembered the game but just got confused about the pitcher. Stephenson was 0-7 against the Dodgers in ’64 and had one hit against them in both ’65 and ’66. In the 1966 game where he got a hit, the starting pitcher was Don Drysdale, who gave up 11 hits in six innings and got a no-decision in a game that The Vulture – future Mets’ pitching coach Phil Regan – blew the lead in the eighth inning but ended up getting the win. Stephenson did not have an RBI in this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196607150.shtml

His hit in 1965 was a pinch-hit, bases-clearing double off Bob Miller in the bottom of the 9th inning, giving the Mets a 4-3 come-from-behind win. And the runner Wobbit mentioned – Christopher – scored from first base on the hit, making this likely the game he remembered. For what it’s worth – while Stephenson didn’t start this game, neither did Koufax. The Dodgers’ starter on August 24 was Howie Reed.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196508240.shtml

For a memory of a random game from 56 years ago, this was pretty darn good. Stephenson did get a big hit in the late innings against the Dodgers and Christopher did race home with the winning run. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, so to recall these things from a baseball game played by the 95-loss Mets in 1965 isn’t pretty darn good – it’s pretty remarkable.

Sure, it would have been nice if it had been off Koufax. But let’s just say that was an embellishment to create a better story. And Koufax was 17-2 lifetime against the Mets. He won his first 14 starts against the expansion Mets. The Mets finally broke thru on 8/26/65. If you want to win a bar bet, ask someone to name which player was both the starting and winning pitcher for the Mets that day. It’s definitely a guy you’ve heard of, so don’t guess Gary Kroll or anyone like that.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196508260.shtml