August 19, 1965: In the 1st game of a doubleheader at Wrigley Field in Chicago, the Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 1-0 in 10 innings. Leo Cárdenas won it with a 10th inning home run.
Reds pitcher Jim Maloney, who had previously pitched 10 no-hit innings against the Mets that season, but lost the no-hitter and the game in the 11th inning, this time goes 10 innings and keeps the no-hitter and the win. It was hardly a perfect game: He hit a batter and walked 10, but struck out 12. He also went 2-for-4 in his own cause. In other words, he had 2 more hits than he allowed.
Maloney threw 187 pitches. Do not show this fact to Yankee general manager Brian Cashman, or he may well have a stroke. Larry Jackson went the distance for the Cubs, allowing only that 1 run on 9 hits. He didn't walk anybody, but struck out 5.
Surprisingly, given the high cost of videotape, especially in those days, there is surviving color footage of this game, the WGN, Chicago Channel 9, broadcast, with Jack Brickhouse.
In the 2nd game, the Cubs trailed the Reds, 4-0, but scored 3 runs in the 8th and 2 in the 9th to win it, 5-4. Billy Williams homered in the 8th, and Don Landrum homered off Billy McCool in the 9th, making a winning pitcher of Lindy McDaniel in relief of Cal Koonce. Over the 2 games, Frank Robinson went 3-for-8 with an RBI, and Pete Rose went 2-for-9 with a walk. For the Cubs, Ernie Banks went 0-for-9.
Maloney would pitch a 3rd no-hitter in 1969 (but MLB only gives him credit for the last 2, even though he did pitch at least 9 no-hit innings in the 1st one). Born in Fresno, California in 1940, he was the 1st pitcher from that city to throw a no-hitter for the Reds. But he wouldn't be the last: Tom Seaver did it in 1978.
Maloney pitched for the Reds from 1960 to 1970, winning a Pennant with them in 1961, and nearly another in 1964. He might have been the fastest pitcher of the 1960s, throwing in excess of 100 miles per hour. In 1963, he went 23-7. In a game against the Milwaukee Braves, he struck out 15 batters, and Hank Aaron said, "He was faster than anyone else I've seen this season. Yes, he was faster than Sandy Koufax." Two months later, he pitched a shutout against the San Francisco Giants, and their manager, Alvin Dark, called him "a right-handed Sandy Koufax."
Jim O’Toole, also in the Reds' 1960s starting rotation, said, "Maloney had such a great fastball and curve that he was unhittable if he got them both over. He was as good as Koufax." Bob Gibson said, "I don't throw as hard as Jim Maloney. Nobody throws as hard as Maloney. He's the only guy who can simply overpower you. You know he's going to throw the fastball, you set for it, but you still can't catch up with it."
But in a pitching-rich decade, with Hall-of-Famers Gibson, Koufax, Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal, Jim Bunning, Ferguson Jenkins and Phil Niekro all in the National League, Maloney made just 1 All-Star Game, in 1965. He ruptured his Achilles tendon in a game on April 16, 1970, and barely pitched the rest of the season. He was not on their postseason roster as they won another Pennant.
His 100-mile-per-hour fastball was gone. He pitched the 1971 season with the California Angels, and was released. The Angels then traded for the pitcher who gave them what they had hoped to get from Maloney: Nolan Ryan. Maloney was stuck in the San Francisco Giants' minor-league system in 1972. When no team pursued him by the trade deadline, he retired, only 32 years old.
For his career, he was 134-84, with a 3.19 ERA and 1,605 strikeouts. His total of 1,592 strikeouts with the Reds remains a team record. They elected him to their team Hall of Fame, although his Number 46 remains in circulation. Like Seaver, he was a good hitter for a pitcher, batting .201 with 7 home runs and 53 RBIs.
As so often happens to retired players, the adjustment to not being part of the game was difficult, and he started drinking too much. "I sort of had a hard time sliding back into society," he told The Cincinnati Post. The Giants hired him to manage their Fresno farm team in 1982, but the club had a bad year, and he was out of baseball again. In 1985, he underwent treatment for alcoholism. He completed the program and went on to become director of Fresno’s Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Council. As of August 19, 2022, he is still alive.
In addition to Maloney and Seaver, graduates of Fresno High School have included Cubs pitcher Dick Ellsworth (who was in the other dugout during this doubleheader), Baseball Hall-of-Famer Frank Chance, 1930s Yankee pitcher Monte Pearson (who also pitched a no-hitter), pitcher Dick Selma (a rookie with the New York Mets at this time), major league manager Pat Corrales, later Mets pitcher Bobby Jones, Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Les Richter, Mannix star Mike Connors, film director Sam Peckinpah, Chipmunks creator Ross Bagdasarian, and author William Saroyan. (Fresno has a large community of people of Armenian descent, including the Bagdasarian and Saroyan families. Connors' real name was Krekor Ohanian Jr.)
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August 19, 1965 was a Thursday. Actors Kevin Dillon and Kyra Sedgwick were born. And these 6 other baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the California Angels, 3-1 at Yankee Stadium. Mel Stottlemyre outpitched Marcelino López. Clete Boyer hit a home run. Mickey Mantle went 1-for-1 with 3 walks, before being replaced by Ross Moschitto, the backup outfielder who replaced him so often, he became known as "Mickey Mantle's Legs," just as Sammy Byrd had been nicknamed "Babe Ruth's Legs" over 30 years earlier.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 11-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Jim Lonborg outpitched Wally Bunker. Jim Gosger hit a home run for the Sox. (Yeah, surrre!) No, really, Ball Four fans, he did. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-3 with 2 walks. Boog Powell hit a home run for the O's, but Brooks Robinson went 0-for-5.
* The Minnesota Twins swept a doubleheader from the Detroit Tigers, 8-3 and 2-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Jim "Mudcat" Grant and Jim Kaat were the winning pitchers. Al Kaline left the 1st game with an injury before coming to bat, and was replaced by Don Demeter, who hit a home run. Don Mincher and Rich Rollins homered for the Twins. Harmon Killebrew did not play in either game.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Braves, 5-4 at the 1st Busch Stadium (formerly the last Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Bill White hit a home run. Lou Brock went 1-for3 with a walk and a stolen base. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4.
* And the Los Angeles Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 8-5 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The Giants scored 2 runs in the bottom of the 9th to send the game to extra innings, but a Lou Johnson home run off Gaylord Perry was the start of 3 runs for the Dodgers in the top of the 15th. Willie Mays went 1-for-6 with 2 RBIs, including the 478th home run of his career. Willie McCovey went 0-for-5 with a walk.
Ron Perranoski pitched 4 innings in relief of Don Drysdale for the win. Former Braves ace Warren Spahn made the 694th appearance, and the 629th start, of his legendary career. He would make 10 more appearances, 6 of them starts, that season, and retire at age 44.
This was the start of a series that concluded 3 days later, with the awful incident between the Giants' Juan Marichal and the Dodgers' John Roseboro.
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