Dodger Thoughts

Jon Weisman's outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball and life

Tag: Tommy Davis

Hyun-Jin Ryu struggles in return

Image-1[38]

By Jon Weisman

The question with Hyun-Jin Ryu tonight, or at least one of the big ones after he spent more than a year recovering from shoulder surgery, was about the effectiveness of his fastball.

The San Diego Padres didn’t have much trouble answering it, knocking eight hits and scoring six runs over 4 2/3 innings, the length of Ryu’s first big-league appearance since the 2014 playoffs, in a 6-0 victory.

Read More

Remembering ’65: Tommy Davis goes down, ‘Sweet Lou’ comes up

remembering-65-wide-v1-grass

By Jon Weisman

By May 1965, the Dodgers had already survived one major injury scare with Sandy Koufax, who came back to pitch 29 innings in the first month of the season with a 2.17 ERA and 29 strikeouts.

With outfielder Tommy Davis, they would not be nearly so fortunate.

tommy_davisDavis, who had 574 hits and a 132 OPS+ over the previous three seasons, started slowly in ’65 — 9 for 49 with one double and two walks through April 28 — but he had begun to come out of it by going 6 for 10 with a triple and a steal in his next three games.

Then came May 1. May Day.

Wrote Frank Finch in the Times:

The Dodgers beat the Giants for the third straight time Saturday night, 4-2, but they may have lost the pennant.

Cleanup hitter Tommy Davis, major league batting champion in 1962-63, broke and dislocated his right ankle on an ill-fated slide into second base in the fourth inning.

Dr. Robert Kerlan said the big bopper will be out of action for at least three months and, possibly, the rest of the season.

Tommy, who’d made six safeties in his last nine trips, beat out an infield hit and on Ron Fairly’s bouncer to Orlando Cepeda he took off for second base.

Davis hit the ground prematurely, his spikes caught in the dirt, and he never reached the bag. … Trainer Wayne Anderson sprinted over to take care of Tommy.

“When I got there, the bone was sticking out at a right angle, and I popped it back into place,” said Andy.

Carted off the field on a stretcher, the 26-year-old slugger said ruefully, “I don’t know what happened. I thought there was going to be a play on me and I came in with a new kind of slide. When I looked down, I thought my ankle was in rightfield.”

Three days later, the Dodgers brought up Lou Johnson from Spokane. Johnson was 30 but hadn’t been in the Majors since 1962 and in his entire big-league career had played only 96 games with 47 hits.

johnson_head“I thought Peter O’Malley was kidding when he telephoned me Monday and told me I’d been purchased by the Dodgers,” Johnson told the Times.

Said Pete Reiser, who began the season as Spokane’s manager: “Lou’s a good hitter and outfielder, but you’ve got to play him day in and day out.”

In fact, Johnson came off the bench in five games before making his first Dodger start on May 10, singling and scoring the winning run in the 10th inning of a 3-2 victory over Houston. By May 19, when he went 4 for 6 with two doubles and a game-tying eighth-inning single in what would be a 14-inning Dodger victory over the Astros, “Sweet Lou” was a fixture in the Dodger lineup — and of course, a future World Series hero.

Coincidentally, the Dodgers moved into a tie for first place in the National League the day Johnson arrived, took over sole possession the night of his first game and didn’t give up the lead for more than two months.

In case you missed it: Upside down, boy you turn me

By Jon Weisman

One week until it’s time for Dodger (Spring Training) baseball …

  • Injury updates on several Dodgers are provided by Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. It could be a couple of weeks before we know more about Matt Kemp.

    … Kemp has had monthly MRI exams since having surgery to remove torn cartilage in his left ankle in October. Mattingly said the last exam was roughly two weeks ago, so we could have another two weeks or so before hearing anything new. …

  • More encouraging news — and a great quote — are coming from Josh Beckett and Dan Haren, according to Mark Saxon of ESPN LosAngeles.

    … “I said, ‘Did you ever dream you’d be watching a guy with a beard like Brian Wilson pitch with Sandy Koufax standing 10 feet from you?’” Beckett said. “Dan Haren’s like, ‘Yeah, it seems like there should be a unicorn somewhere.’” …

  • Since before the beginning of Spring Training, it’s been apparent that there might not be a full-time starter at second base come March 22. As Saxon and Stephen report, nothing has changed on that count.
  • Proclamation time:
  • “There’s no reason not to be confident” in Paco Rodriguez, despite the fact that he ran out of steam last fall, Don Mattingly told Ken Gurnick of MLB.comalong with Stephen.
  • In this Gurnick news feature about Don Mattingly, managers and long-term contracts comes this tidbit: “Jamey Wright has played for 29 managers in his 21 professional seasons.”
  • Yasiel Puig’s signing could have an impact for the Dodgers’ future international efforts, reports Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com.

    … “The way it works down there, [amateur] players come to tryouts at your camp, and we had a hard time getting players to come to the academy [in the Dominican Republic] until we signed Puig,” (Ned) Colletti said. “I was down there about three weeks ago or so, and it was probably the best group of players that I’ve seen. A lot of it has to do with our ability to spend, and we’ve increased our scouting internationally three-fold from where it was. We have the finances to be competitive with players from Cuba and amateurs in other countries. Puig was a very key sign for us in more ways than just his talent.”

  • Tommy Davis is the latest to be featured in Ernest Reyes’ 1961 Union Oil Family Booklet series at Blue Heaven.
  • Joe Morgan talked with Bill James? It’s more than 80 minutes (via Baseball Think Factory), but this I gotta hear. “A lot of you may not know him as well as I do,” Morgan said, “but he is the father of sabermetrics, so to speak, and a guy that I really have a lot of admiration for. I don’t agree with a lot of sabermetrics people, but I’ve rarely disagreed with Bill.”

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén