Pitching Key Ingredient in Oriole Series Sweep

Was it a case of ineptitude by the Dodgers or brilliant pitching by Baltimore?

Probably both, most agreed, after the Orioles completed a sweep of the Dodgers in the World Series 33 years ago today.

Go figure. The Dodgers won the National League pennant with a 95-67 record, led by the best pitching staff in the league. In fact, the Dodgers’ staff that year led the major leagues with an earned-run average of 2.62. Six clubs had better staff ERAs than Baltimore.

But it was the Orioles’ Dave McNally, Jim Palmer, Wally Bunker and Moe Drabowski who were tossing zeros in October, not the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax or Don Drysdale.

Baltimore won the first game, 5-2, then the next three by scores of 6-0, 1-0 and 1-0. The 33 consecutive scoreless innings pitched remain a World Series record. In Game 2, Palmer, 20 years 11 months, became the youngest pitcher to throw a World Series shutout.

From the start, Baltimore’s stars seemed in proper alignment.

In the first inning of Game 1 at Dodger Stadium, Frank Robinson hit a home run off Drysdale and the Orioles never looked back. In fact, Robinson’s home run in Game 4, also off Drysdale, was the only score in the clincher.

The Dodgers, who hit .256 as a team in the regular season, hit .142 in the Series.

Summing it up , the late Jim Murray wrote: “A lot of hitters die on third base. The Dodger hitters died at home plate.”

Also on this date: In 1934, Dizzy Dean pitched the St. Louis Cardinals to an 11-0 win over Detroit in the seventh game of the World Series, making good on his prediction that “Me and Paul” [his brother] would win all four games. . . . In 1916, Boston’s Babe Ruth pitched a 2-1, 14-inning win over the Dodgers in the World Series. In that game, he began his streak of 29 2/3 scoreless Series innings, a record that stood until Whitey Ford broke it in 1961.