We’re Not in 1968 Any More, But LA Is Still A Great Big Freeway

So in his recap this week, tfloyd saw reverberations of 1968 in 2024.  1968 not only saw such putrid offenses in both leagues that the mounds were lowered, but Columbia University students occupied Hamilton Hall.  I think it’s safe to say that sort of stuff will never happen again. 

But 1968 was also the year that Dionne Warwick released the classic Bacharach-David tune: Do You Know the Way to San Jose? which includes the famous line pictured at the top:

LA is a great big freeway

Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi wasn’t released until 1970, but I’m here to spread the rumor that whatever Mitchell says the song is about (Hawaii?) in truth when they paved paradise and put up a parking lot, it was the parking lot that surrounds Chavez Ravine. But enough music and LA infrastructure. Return to baseball.

The 1968 batting slump was the culmination of a long slide in offense that started in 1950.  The changes after 1968 (including expansion, which always increases runs scored, given that pitching is a rarer skill than hitting) led to a long period of increasing runs culminating in 2000.  We then had another 14 year period of decline which many people will want to attribute to the steroid crackdown, an attribution that I don’t believe for a minute.  I prefer to attribute it almost entirely to the rise of a sabermetric approach to pitching.  If you disagree with me, fine.  I don’t care. 

The last 10 years has been a broad oscillation within a normal range.  Everything low and high is attributed to horsehide tampering, for very little reason IMO. 

But secular trends in baseball are swamped by team variations within these trends. These two tables which show runs allowed and runs scored for the first 29 games by the Braves post-pandemic ought to convince you that you ought to relax.  Will that make you relax?  Up to you. I will say, though, if it is 1968 all over again, we’ll be bringing up Ralph Garr and Dusty Baker in September.

The Game

Having done everything they could think of to make the regular season completely irrelevant, MLB nevertheless couldn’t suppress having a few games that everyone expects to be playoff previews. That said, the fact that both of these teams are going to make the playoffs ensured that this game had little chance to exhibit playoff intensity. The LA Dodgers enter the game 20-13 with a payroll equal to all the other teams in every sport put together since the Pleistocene Era. This despite the fact that they choose to start at shortstop a guy whose UZR rating on Fangraphs is currently 25th. As I said last week, I really can’t find anything to complain about on the Braves. If I were a Dodgers fan, I’d wonder why with a payroll of over $300 million, they couldn’t employ a major league shortstop. It’s not that it isn’t going to work out for them, but it’s esthetically unsightly.

The Dodgers started Gavin Stone, who as near as I can figure is no relation to 1968 Braves pitcher George Stone. (Not to take away from Gavin, but I suspect George will have had the better career by the time Gavin is done. Maybe not. But I always liked George.) The top of the first began with an Austin Riley hit to the Newhall Pass Interchange pictured above. Had Ronald Acuña Jr. not been awkwardly picked off second base, it would have meant two runs, not one.

The one run lead stayed that way when a Jarred Kelenic javelin nailed Andy Pages trying to score from second in the bottom of the 2nd. It was erased in the bottom of the third when the Will Smith who neither played for us nor hit Chris Rock knocked in a wealthy Japanese salaryman. The ex-Brooklynites, however, took a lead in the bottom of 4th on a homer by Teoscar Hernandez. Hernandez had struck out two innings before on a ball that hit in the opposite batter’s box, but that’s Uncle Charlie for you. The key to his game, though, is to hold the homers to solo shots. That was the 100th solo shot he’d allowed in his illustrious career. He threw 6 nice innings with only two real mistakes: the homer and a hit-by-pitch against the presently punchless Gavin Lux. (The Dodgers currently hold the record for simultaneous Gavins with two.)

When you get picked off second with what would have been the tying run in the first inning, you pretty much need to redeem yourself with a tying solo homer in the eighth. That’s what RAJ did.

Aaron Bummer, A.J. Minter and Joe Jimenez combined to send the game into extra innings. In the 10th, Luke Williams was inserted as the Manfred Man and it paid off when he managed to tag up on a deep left field fly and reach third, scoring on the next play when Orlando Arcia hit another deep fly to left. That left Raisel Iglesias to try and maneuver his way through the 1968 Girl Group: Mookie, Shohei and Freddie. He got Mookie, but Shohei tied it with a single.

By the 11th, everything goes more or less random. Something called Michael Grove retired RAJ, Ozzie and Austin to look more like Lefty Grove. This left it to Jesse Chavez to pitch in his Ravine until the game ended. It didn’t take too long. A fielder’s choice and a bloop ended it.

So with a low-scoring game like that you might be tempted to think it’s really 1968. But on May 2, 1968, the Braves came to Dodger Stadium and lost 2-1 in 17 innings. Hank Aaron went 0-6. That’s how tough 1968 was.

Life Advice

People often ask me for life advice. (My friends are now laughing… No one has ever asked me for life advice.) I rarely know how to respond.   Now I do, however.  Listen up carefully.  I would advise everyone to graduate from the Westminster Class of 1974 and make sure you attend the 50th Reunion.  Your entire outlook will be transformed for the better. Like standard financial advice, however, past results are no guarantee of future returns.  So you’ll have to wait for the invention of time travel and you’ll have to figure out how to be of high school age in the early ‘70s.  But that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.