Don Drysdale strode into the record book 50 years ago this month, and his was the first clue that 1968 would, indeed, be the Year of the Pitcher.
Monday was the golden anniversary of the Dodger right-hander’s sixth consecutive shutout, a whitewash of Pittsburgh that broke Guy “Doc” White’s record of five straight shutouts set in 1904. This Friday it will have been 50 years since Drysdale eclipsed Walter Johnson’s record of 55 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings, running his total to 58 2/3 (later rounded down to 58 in the official record book) before Phillies pinch-hitter Howie Bedell broke the streak with a scoring fly ball.
Twenty years later, of course, Orel Hershiser matched the first record and broke the second with a 59-inning string of zeroes, with Drysdale in the Dodgers broadcast booth quietly rooting him on. That record still stands.
But this is a good time to not only remember Drysdale — who won 209 games and a Cy Young Award and teamed with fellow Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax on the dominant Dodger staffs of the 1960s — but to consider what he and his fellow pitchers did in ’68, and the aftermath.
Drysdale set the record in June. Bob Gibson had a shot at breaking it less than a month later, carrying a sixth straight shutout into a July 1 start at Dodger Stadium against Drysdale. The Dodgers scored a first-inning run to end his streak at 48.
Gibson wound up with a 1.12 ERA that season, the fourth best in history, with 13 shutouts among his 22 victories. Denny McLain won 31 games for Detroit, the most in a season since 1931. Juan Marichal won 26, with 30 complete games. Seven pitchers — Gibson, Luis Tiant, Sam McDowell, Dave McNally, McLain, Tommy John and Bob Bolin — had ERAs under 2.00. Seven pitchers won 20 games. There were 897 complete games and 279 shutouts.
You can guess what happened next, can’t you?
The mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10. The definition of the strike zone was rewritten in the rule book, the upper limit moving from the top of the shoulder to the armpit, and the bottom of the zone moving from the bottom of the knee to the top of the knee.
The MLB-wide ERA jumped by nearly a full run the following year, from 2.98 to 3.61. It has been under 4.00 only three times since and not at all since 1976, two seasons after the DH was introduced.
“I guess the majority of people would rather see offense than pitching,” Drysdale said of those rule changes in a 1988 interview. “They’d rather see a 10-9 game, with a lot of doubles and triples. But I think the true fan appreciates a 1-0 or 2-1 game just as much.”
It was already a different game when he spoke, two decades after the Year of the Pitcher. In today’s environment, such sustained dominance seems inconceivable.
In 1968 there were 1,995 home runs all season. Through Sunday’s games, according to Baseball-Reference.com, the 2018 total is 1,996. All hail the launch angle.
The strike zone, of course, has shrunk even further. The Official Baseball Rules now define the top of the zone as “a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants.” In reality, anything above the belt is usually called a ball.
Given the concern over pace of play and time of game, wouldn’t going back to that higher strike — i.e., forcing hitters to swing the bat more often — make games move a little quicker? The devotees of Three True Outcomes might have issues with it, but putting the ball in play is seldom a bad thing.
What would Big D have thought of today’s baseball?
He learned well from Sal Maglie as a young pitcher in Brooklyn, and throughout his career he wasn’t hesitant to knock hitters down as needed. As a broadcaster, up to his untimely death of a heart attack in 1993, he was equally adamant about the necessity of demanding not only the inner half of the plate but six to nine inches beyond that.
“I don’t think any of those pitchers now think the way I used to — that two of the other team’s guys should go down for one of our guys,” he wrote in a 1990 autobiography. “I don’t know how many of these modern-day pitchers are even told about keeping hitters on their toes, and I don’t know that they would have the fortitude to brush hitters back even if they were told.”
It is worth noting that 14 months after Drysdale’s streak ended, he retired at 32 because of shoulder issues. If he’d had the benefit of later advances in sports medicine, rotator cuff surgery might have kept him around a few more years.
Early in the 1988 season, while reminiscing about the 1968 streak, I asked him if it would be challenged.
“It could,” he said. “You have guys like (Roger) Clemens or (Dwight Gooden). I think it would be a power pitcher. Then again, the way the game is today, maybe it would be some real good relief pitcher stringing together 58 1/3 innings.”
Turned out, it was a guy Drysdale was watching every five days. And after Hershiser completed his own streak later in 1988, he said this:
“Maybe I’ll be up in the booth when the next guy breaks it.”
It was quite a feat then. It would be monumental now.
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