October 9, 1966: A World Series Sweep for Baltimore

Left to right: Brooks Robinson, Andy Etchebarren, Dave McNally

October 9, 1966: Game 4 of the World Series is played at Memorial Stadium. This could be the clincher for the home team.

From 1902 to 1953, the St. Louis Browns were one of the least successful teams in what would become known as Major League Baseball. They won just 1 American League Pennant, in 1944. In only 3 other seasons -- 1902, 1922 and 1945 -- did they even come within 10 games of 1st place at the end of the season.

For the 1954 season, they were sold and moved, becoming the Baltimore Orioles. In 1960, they got into their 1st Pennant race. In 1964, with Hank Bauer managing them, and 3rd baseman Brooks Robinson winning the AL's Most Valuable Player award, they came within 2 games of the Pennant, behind the New York Yankees, with whom Bauer had won 9 Pennants as a right fielder.

In 1966, they obtained right fielder Frank Robinson. Having won the National League's MVP with the Cincinnati Reds in 1961, he was immediately named team Captain, and he led the O's to win the Pennant by 9 games over the defending Champion Minnesota Twins. The clincher came on September 22, a 6-1 win over the Kansas City Athletics, at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Frank won the Triple Crown, and became the 1st player ever to win the MVP in both Leagues. Through the 2021 season, he remains the only one.

To win the World Series, they would have to beat the defending Champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and their lefty-righty combination of ace pitchers, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. In Game 1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Polish-born reliever Moe Drabowsky had to bail out Dave McNally, and set a Series record for relief pitchers that still stands, with 11 strikeouts. Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson both hit 1st-inning home runs, and the Orioles beat the Dodgers, 5-2.

In Game 2, Dodger center fielder Willie Davis, having trouble seeing a white baseball against the smog-gray L.A. sky, committed 3 errors in 1 inning, enabling the Orioles to win 6-0, and head back to Baltimore with a 2-0 lead. Jim Palmer, 9 days short of his 21st birthday, outdueled Koufax, who struggled with the Oriole bats, Davis' fielding, and the pain in his elbow. Koufax hadn't told very many people yet, but he had already decided that this would be his last major league season, so this was his last game. He was not yet 31. This could be called a "generational hinge" game.

Game 3 was the 1st World Series game played in the State of Maryland. The host Orioles continued their shocking upset, beating the Dodgers, 1-0. Wally Bunker pitched a shutout.

Memorial Stadium, in its 1954-69 configuration

Game 4 was decided by a home run, when Frank Robinson took a Drysdale pitch deep over the left field fence in the 4th inning. The lone run being scored on a homer for only the 5th time in the history of the Fall Classic, and the complete-game shutout thrown by McNally, Baltimore completed the 4-game sweep.

It was the 1st World Championship won by a Baltimore baseball team in 70 years, since the original version of the Orioles won the 1896 National League Pennant. For the Dodgers, 33 consecutive innings without scoring a run is a Series record for futility. Their streak would run to 38 innings before they scored in the 5th inning of Game 1 of the 1974 World Series, and remains a record.

The Orioles went on to win 4 Pennants and the 1970 World Series under manager Earl Weaver, and the 1983 World Series under manager Joe Altobelli. The Dodgers, however, went into rebuilding mode, winning the Pennant again in 1974.

UPDATE: In 2024, Shohei Ohtani, having already won the MVP in the AL, won it in the NL, joining Frank Robinson.

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October 9, 1966 was a Sunday. David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain from 2010 to 2016, now Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, was born on this day.

The only other scores on this historic day were in pro football. In the NFL:

* The New York Giants lost to the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals, 24-19 at the new Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.

* The Washington Redskins beat the expansion Atlanta Falcons, 33-20 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.)

* The Los Angeles Rams beat the Detroit Lions, 14-7 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Chicago Bears beat the Baltimore Colts, 27-17 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. For once, Marylanders didn't care much that the Colts had lost.

* The Dallas Cowboys beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 56-7 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

* The San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers, 21-20 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.

* And the night before, the Cleveland Browns beat their arch-rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, 41-10 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

And in the American Football League, only one game was played on October 9: The Oakland Raiders beat the expansion Miami Dolphins, 21-10 at the new Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

The other 3 games were played the day before. The New York Jets beat the San Diego Chargers, 17-16 at Shea Stadium. The Boston Patriots beat the Buffalo Bills, 20-10 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo. And the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Denver Broncos, 37-10 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Because there were 9 teams in the League that season, one team had to have a bye each week, and, this time, it was the Houston Oilers.

October 6, 1966: The Smoggy Sendoff of Sandy Koufax

Sandy Koufax (left) and Jim Palmer

October 6, 1966: Game 2 of the World Series. Los Angeles Dodger outfielder Willie Davis, having trouble seeing a white baseball against the smog-gray Los Angeles sky, commits 3 errors in 1 inning, enabling the Baltimore Orioles to win 6-0, and take both World Series games at Dodger Stadium, and head back to Memorial Stadium with a 2-0 lead.

Jim Palmer, days short of his 21st birthday, outduels Sandy Koufax, who struggles with the Oriole bats, Davis' fielding, and the pain in his elbow.

Koufax has told only a few people yet, but he's already decided that this is his last major league game. He is not yet 31. This could be called a "generational hinge" game. To put it another way: Koufax had won 169 games, including 4 in the World Series, but would never win another; Palmer, if you count this game, had won 21, and 255 more would follow.

To this day, the Orioles have never won a Pennant without Palmer on their staff. But they won 6 with him, including the 1966, 1970 and 1983 World Series. He is the only pitcher to win a World Series game in 3 different decades. His 186 wins during the 1970s made him the winningest pitcher of the decade. By a weird coincidence, the scout who discovered him was Hal Newhouser, whose 170 wins during the 1940s made him the winningest pitcher of that decade.

Many American cities have had, and some still have, smog issues, due to topography. New York's used to be bad, up until the 1970s, when the effects of the environmental movement helped. Denver's is bad, because of the Rocky Mountains.

But Los Angeles is widely known for smog, because it's the American city most identified with driving as opposed to public transportation, and all that car exhaust flies east with the prevailing wind in the Northern Hemisphere, and runs smack into the San Gabriel Mountains, trapping it. To make matters worse, the city gets an average of only an inch and a quarter of rain per month.

On July 26, 1943, the smog in L.A. was so bad! (How bad was it?) It was so bad, people began calling the police, thinking that the Japanese were conducting chemical warfare as part of their effort in World War II. The Japanese military never developed anything like that, but America didn't know that at the time, and it had only been 25 years since World War I and Imperial Germany's use of poison gas..

On October 21, 1954, the smog in L.A. was so bad, the City actually closed its public schools for several days.

On October 16, 10 days after this World Series game, comedian Allan Sherman appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sherman, a Chicago native famed as a game show producer and a song parodist -- the "Weird Al" Yankovic of his time, many of his rewrites reflecting his Jewish heritage -- mentioned that he once lived in the L.A. suburb of Van Nuys, and sang this, to the tune of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes": 

They ask me through the years

why I shed these tears.

I, of course, replies:

When you live in Van Nuys

smog gets in your eyes.

I thought I'd play it wise

so I closed my eyes.

Then, what do you suppose?

When both my eyes I close

smog got in my nose.

I went to price

an anti-smog device

to fit behind my car.

But, all too quick

the smog became so thick

I could not find my car.

Ten thousand cars provide
carbon monoxide.
If they’d all drive a horse
there’d be no smog, of course…
But there’d be something worse!

In 1971, on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, taped outside Los Angeles in what they mockingly called "Beautiful Downtown Burbank," co-host Dan Rowan saiid this as part of his regular "News of the Future" sketch: "Los Angeles, two years from now: Race relations were solved in Los Angeles, when the smog became so thick, nobody could tell what anybody's color was!" (That didn't happen in 1973, but the city did elect its 1st black Mayor that year, Tom Bradley.)

The founding of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the passage of the Clean Air Act, both in 1970, helped. So did an additional Clean Air Act in 1990. L.A.'s last Stage 1 Smog Alert was in 1974; its last Stage 2 Smog Alert, in 1988. Then again, the American Lung Association still ranked L.A. as the nation's most-polluted city as recently as 2013.

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October 6, 1966 was a Thursday. Also on this day, LSD was declared illegal throughout the United States. And Irish soccer star Niall Quinn was born.

Football was in midweek. The NBA season wouldn't start for another  9 days; the NHL season, for another 13. Therefore, there were no other scores on this historic day.