Free Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever by Tim Wendel Page A

Kennedy’s press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, sent telegrams to Pappas, Wills, Staub and Aspromonte, and manager Gil Hodges on behalf of the entire Mets team. “Please accept my personal admiration for your actions,” it read. “Senator Kennedy indeed enjoyed competitive sports, but I doubt that he would have put box-office receipts ahead of national mourning.”
    Less than seventy-two hours later, Pappas was traded as part of a six-player deal to Atlanta. Reds general manager Bob Howsam denied that the move was linked to Pappas’s position on the Kennedy funeral and the day of mourning. “ We had been working on a trade of this kind since May 17,” Howsam said. “ We wanted to strengthen our pitching staff, and we had made it known then that Pappas was among those we would consider trading.”
    Meanwhile, the confusion and disjoined action by the commissioner’s office resulted in criticism from many quarters.
    “Baseball again returned to normalcy—confusion,” wrote Les Biederman, sports editor for the Pittsburgh Press .
    “Baseball’s observance of Senator Kennedy’s death was disorganized, illogical and thoroughly shabby,” added Bob August in the Cleveland Press .
    Dick Young, columnist for the New York Daily News , went further, calling for commissioner Eckert to resign. “This is the portrait of a commissioner trying to please everyone,” Young wrote. “I have funny, old-fashioned notions that students should not run universities, inmates should not run asylums, and ballplayers should not tell owners when they will play.... When that happens, the commissioner looks bad. When that happens, baseball looks bad.”
     
     
    With his teammates wearing black armbands on their uniforms’ left sleeve to honor Robert Kennedy, Don Drysdale’s next start took place at Chavez Ravine against the visiting Philadelphia Phillies. The practice of wearing such memorial markings in baseball dated back to 1876, the first year of the National League, and ballplayers Ray Chapman and Ed Delehanty, and President Franklin Roosevelt were among those so honored. The Dodgers would wear the armbands in honor of Kennedy through the remaining games of the homestand on June 12.
    In the top of the third, Los Angeles third baseman Ken Boyer made a great play on a hard-hit smash by Roberto Pena, assuring that the inning stayed scoreless and that Drysdale would break Walter Johnson’s major league scoreless record.
    In the fifth inning, the streak ended as quickly as it began. The Phillies’ Tony Taylor singled and went to third on Clay Dalrymple’s hit. With one out, Howie Bedell stepped up to the plate as a pinch hitter for pitcher Larry Jackson. He had appeared in fifty-eight games for Milwaukee back in 1962 and was now up for a cup of coffee with the Phillies. He hardly seemed like a dragon slayer. Yet Bedell, who would have only seven at-bats that season, collecting one hit in the process, lofted a high fly ball to left-center field. Even though Dodgers outfielder Len Gabrielson easily caught it, the drive was deep enough to score Taylor. With that, Drysdale’s streak was over.
    Moments later, after Drysdale got the third out of the inning, Philadelphia manager Gene Mauch requested that home-plate umpire, Augie Donatelli, check Drysdale for foreign substances. The umpire took Drysdale’s hat and then ran his fingers through Drysdale’s hair.
    “Usually when someone runs their fingers through my hair,” the pitcher said, “she gives me a kiss, too.”
    With that Drysdale pursed his lips.
    “Get out of here,” Donatelli said. “Go back to the dugout. You’re OK. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
    Later, Drysdale decided that Mauch had instigated the whole thing. The Phillies manager bided his time until the streak was over before insisting that the men in blue pat down the pitcher one more time. “That’s baseball, folks,” Drysdale wrote in his memoir Once A Bum, Always A Dodger. “I probably had stretches