Fascinating Photo

This photo showed up on a Met website recently with very little description. Obviously, a Met-Dodger game in Los Angeles. That's Casey Stengel standing near the plate.

Okay, that was enough info for me. Given Casey is there, we know the photo is during a West Coast road trip sometime before late July 1965 when he broke his hip and stopped managing.

Back in those days, the Mets made three annual trips to the West Coast. The score is 0-0 in the bottom of the eighth. That's a Dodger at bat. Another clue? The sparse crowd would signal that this is a weeknight game. Note the original yellow color of the Dodger Stadium field level which has recently been restored.

One more hint? I needed to find a game that had very little hitting. The auxiliary scoreboard shows a total of three hits in the game. The Dodgers had already committed two errors.

After a quick pass through Retrosheet.com, I figured it out.

This game is happening on Monday night, June 21, 1965. The Mets would win it in the ninth with a Billy Cowan homerun as Al Jackson outdueled Claude Osteen for the win. The attendance was indeed small. 18,887.

Three thousand miles away, I am probably buried with a transistor radio under my pillow. That's how I listened to all the Mets games in California.

I am super impressed by my detective work here.

And you don't need a private eye to figure out that I have way too much time on my hands.

Dinner last night: Salad bar from Gelson's.