Maury Wills "Goes"
The Giants' Number One Nightmare, Maury Wills
By James Rodrigues
Go! Go! Go! Screamed fifty thousand Dodger Stadium voices as my San Francisco Giants' arch-enemy, Maury Wills, moved a few steps from first base. Being a dedicated Giants' fan, I knew from experience, if Wills stole second base with no outs, he would probably score the winning run.
The Giant right-handed reliever glanced nervously over his left shoulder. When that shoulder twisted toward home, Wills took off. The announcer on our black and white television shouted, "Wills goes! The pitch is a strike! The throw down...Wills is in there with a head first slide!" The Rodrigues family frowned.
Wills had an incredible variety of slides. Anything to beat his opponents. He and his early sixties Los Angeles crowd had irritated the Giants into imperfect action and imperfect action was never enough to nail Wills.
Now he strolled off second base as Jim Gilliam masterfully tried to move him to third. Second baseman Gilliam was shortstop Wills' counterpart. He often took strikes and sacrificed his own statistics in order to help Wills advance on the base paths.
This time he hit a bouncer to shortstop. In that situation most base runners would freeze at second, but not Wills. He sprinted between the ball and the fielder. His motion distracted the Giant shortstop enough to make him juggle the ball. The throw to first got Gilliam by a half-a-step, but Wills had reached third with only one out. The Dodger crowd roared their approval while my father, my brother and I slumped down into our chairs.
The writing was on the wall. The Giants were forced to bring their infield and outfield "in." Maury Wills always seemed to make you do what you didn't want to do.
The Dodger pitching staff led by Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale would often make a single Wills-built run enough to win. That was fortunate for the Dodgers' because with their "banjo-hitting" ballclub, sometimes one Wills instigated score was all the "Smogville Nine" would put on the scoreboard.
The darth of Dodger scoring was defined by the following road trip incident.With Koufax on the mound that night and Drysdale scheduled to pitch the next evening, the Dodgers had sent "Dandy Don" ahead to the next road trip city to "rest up." An autograph seeker approached Drysdale in the hotel lobby and told him Koufax had just pitched a no-hitter. Drysdale's sincere response was, "Did he win?"
Willie Davis was the hitter as Wills stealthily moved down the line from third. The crowd roared pressure and distraction at the Giants. It was a San Francisco team of hall of famers Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry and of course the greatest player of all time (at that time), Willie Mays. And speaking of hall of famers, Koufax and Drysdale were voted in, but Maury Wills wasn't .
In spite of that fact, if you asked any Giant fan of that era who they least wanted to see on any base at any time, the answer was obvious!
The tense voice of the channel two announcer described the action. "Wills leads down the line from third and here's the pitch! Davis pops it up to short right. Wills is tagging. Alou is under it. Here comes the throw! It's going to be close! Wills slides! He's safe! Dodgers Win! Dodgers win!