Jim Palmer's shutout in the second contest of 1966 was his first at the major league level. Palmer had many "firsts" crossed off his major league career by the end of the regular season in '66, but a shutout was not one of them. He'd even hit his first major league home run in May of 1965, his rookie season.
Palmer was just 5-4 in '65, as the Baltimore Orioles were loaded with pitching depth. He'd pitch here and there, but not regularly. How ironic, considering the very man on the wrong end of his shutout in the second game of the World Series a year later could relate to that!
But in 1966 things were different for Baltimore. They had a strong starting staff. They had a great bullpen. Jim Palmer took his game to the next level, whereas the Orioles experiment with John Miller didn't go as planned. Miller had been great in the bullpen for Baltimore in 1965, but a year later, wasn't much as a starter.
So, that opened the door for Palmer. He'd been only 5-4 the year before. Here, in 1966, he went 15-10 in 30 appearances. All of them were starts. Jim's earned run average was 3.46, down from 3.72 from 1965. There was progress. But there was also competition if Palmer wanted to be the ace of the Orioles' staff. You have Dave McNally. You had Wally Bunker. You had Steve Barber. None of those guys won more than thirteen games, however. So many Palmer was better than all of them?
Well, Dave McNally sure didn't look like the ace of the staff when the Fall Classic got going. The Orioles must have been underdogs to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers had Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and a rookie named Don Sutton. There was also the underrated Claude Osteen, who went 17-14. Drysdale, who'd start the opening tilt, was just 13-16.
It seemed like a contest of which pitcher was worse. The big Dodger righty just didn't have it. But neither did McNally. The Baltimore Orioles led 3-0 and 4-1, but the Los Angeles Dodgers seemed to wake up in the bottom of the second and third with comeback attempts. The bottom of the third spelled the end for Dave McNally. Fortunately, reliever Moe Drabowski put a stop to a bases loaded LA rally, holding them scoreless for the last 6 2/3 innings.
So Dave McNally hadn't looked too sharp in the first game. While he'd only given up two hits, Dave walked five batters in just 2 1/3 innings pitched. Drabowski, by comparison, allowed just two bases on balls. The good news was that Los Angeles only managed three hits the entire game. Their bats were in a slump that would last the entire 1966 World Series. But if Baltimore's pitchers were wild, LA could take advantage. They had some speedsters on the basepaths named Maury Wills and Willie Davis.
So this was no doubt on Baltimore's checklist for the second contest. Keep those two batters off the bases. But there was also the trouble with Sandy Koufax. While Jim Palmer won an impressive 15 games, Koufax was from another planet: 27 wins and a fifth straight ERA title!
So that's what confronted Palmer in the second contest. The Dodgers, playing at home, could easily ride the brilliant pitching of Koufax to many-a-win. And in many-a-win for LA, Sandy would only need about one or two runs.
Well, Jim Palmer was up to the task. He took Maury Wills' hard grounder, and knocked it down. The ball bounced to the pitcher's right. But not too far. The result was a quick 1-3 putout to get the leadoff batter out in the bottom of the first. Part of a fine 1-2-3 inning.
The second inning wasn't so good. Ron Fairly, who'd been with the Dodgers since 1958 (And was a part of the three Los Angeles World Series triumphs since then), drew a walk to start the inning. Palmer fanned Jim Lefebvre for the first out. But the next batter was Lou Johnson. Lou always seemed to come up big when Sandy Koufax needed him to. He'd scored the only run in Sandy's perfect game on September 9th, 1965 vs. Chicago. Then he'd hit a home run to put LA up for good in game seven of the World Series that year. Now, here in the second contest in '66, Johnson doubled to right. Just like that, the Los Angeles Dodgers had two runners in scoring position with only one out.
John Roseboro was retired on a pop up. A crucial out. Palmer then walked Wes Parker, his second free pass of the inning. This one was intentional, though. That brought up the light-hitting Sandy Koufax to the plate. Koufax's hitting was nowhere near his pitching prowess. He popped out.
That had been a rough inning. But things were suddenly looking up for Jim Palmer. He kept not only Maury Wills and Willie Davis off the bases in the bottom of the third, he had another 1-2-3 inning.
If you were wondering how Koufax was faring with all this going on, it was just another typical Sandy outing - until the fifth, that is. The Dodgers pitcher had allowed one hit and one walk through four. Koufax had even shown Baltimore what happens when you get on: Following Luis Aparicio, single off him in the first, the LA pitcher picked him off! So Koufax had faced thirteen batters in four innings. Essentially, the great Dodger was picking up where he'd left off a year earlier. Koufax had thrown shutouts in games five and seven on the 1965 World Series. He was up to 22 consecutive scoreless frames in the Fall Classic.
Palmer, though, had another 1-2-3 inning of his own in the bottom of the fourth. He was giving the Orioles momentum. It carried over to the fifth frame. Baltimore surprised the Los Angeles fans' by scoring three times on two hits and three errors (All by Dodger centre fielder Willie Davis). Jim, as it turns out, had all the run support he needed. The O's didn't stop there. They scored a four run off Sandy Koufax in the sixth, but it was the only earned run the Dodgers' lefty would allow. Sandy averted further trouble by getting Andy Etchebarren to ground into an inning-ending double play with the sacks full. No one knew it at the time, but Sandy Koufax had faced his last major league batter.
The rest of the game wasn't much of a sweat for the Orioles' pitcher. Jim Palmer finished the game with a four-hitter. Baltimore got him two more runs, and Los Angeles lost 6-0. The Dodgers finished the game with a total of six errors.
Jim didn't make another appearance in the 1966 World Series. Wally Bunker edged Claude Osteen 1-0 in game three. Dave McNally made his second start a lot better than the first, and out-dueled Don Drysdale in a rematch from the opening tilt, 1-0. Sandy Koufax had been slated to go in the fifth contest, but now his team had been swept!
True, Moe Drabowski had started the Dodgers down the hole of bad hitting, but Jim Palmer got the starting pitching of Baltimore on a roll in this short series. Palmer might have had to share the spotlight with a terrific reliever and fellow starter Wally Bunker in throwing "0's" for the O's, but this was his first blanking at the big league level.
Palmer didn't really get much of a chance to savior the shutout, though. The Orioles came down to earth in 1967, and so did Jim. He nearly shutout the Minnesota Twins on April 13th, Palmer's first start of '67, then seemed to reach new heights as April turned into May. Jim's first start of the new month saw him go six strong innings and hold Detroit to just one run. Then, the big moment. May 12th. Jim Palmer of the Orioles against Whitey Ford of the New York Yankees.
The game stayed close, for a while. But a four-run uprising in the top of the fifth turned a 1-0 lead into a five-run cushion. Baltimore strafed the New York bullpen for nine more tallies in a 14-0 laugher. Whitey Ford, by the way, would last three innings, giving up just one run. He was beginning to experience shoulder pain, and had precisely one last major league game in him. But nonetheless, Whitey's earned run average in 1967 was just 1.47 after this loss. So Palmer beat an old pro who could still bring it.
Same scenario as had last Fall. This shutout, though, was one-hitter by the Baltimore star.
Ford wasn't the only pitcher who was hurt, though. Palmer himself would not do much in 1967, going just 3-1. Stiffness in his shoulder led to a demotion to the minor leagues. It took stints at Miami and Rochester to get back to the bigs in September.
The Orioles slump continued on into 1968. Palmer didn't make it back, despite time in Rochester, Elmira and Miami. However, Baltimore made a move that seemed to help Jim Palmer in the long run. Manager Hank Bauer was fired, and was replaced with Earl Weaver. Jim was back with Baltimore in 1969, he went 16-4, and remained an Oriole until his 1984 retirement.
References
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