Forget 1962, Speier Recalls Giant Fall of ’71

The nameplate above the locker reads: “McCOVEY.” Sometimes, Willie still comes by and works out with the guys, so clubhouse attendant Mike Murphy keeps his Candlestick Park cubicle nice and clean.

“He was in here the other night, just to say good luck,” Murphy said Sunday. Then he pointed to another corner of the clubhouse. “I kept Mays’ name up over there, too, until the younger guys got called up and we needed the space.”

Memories. There are memories stored inside these lockers, mothballed like old clothes. Memories of the World Series. San Francisco’s last World Series. San Francisco’s only World Series.

Sounds and scenes from the season of 1962: Russ Hodges behind the KSFO microphone. Ten National League teams--including the Houston Colt 45s and those klutzy New York Mets--instead of the usual eight. Baseball’s first 162-game schedule. Then the 163rd, 164th and 165th games--a pennant playoff with the Dodgers. Then a seven-game World Series with the New York Yankees that took 13 days to play, because of rain. And ultimately, McCovey’s wicked line drive, right at Bobby Richardson. The unhappy ending.

Oh, well, San Franciscans said. We’ll get ‘em next time.

Next time. There were no next times. A quarter of a century went by, but the World Series didn’t return to Candlestick. Chris Speier returned, but the Series absolutely refused. He was a sixth-grader at Haight Elementary School in nearby Alameda when the Giants got there in 1962. He was a 21-year-old infielder when he and the Giants came close in 1971. He left his heart in San Francisco more than once, this guy.

Now, here he goes again. He and everybody else by the bay.

One more win. One more win will get them there. One measly little win over the St. Louis Cardinals, Tuesday or Wednesday, take your pick, will put San Francisco back in wonderland, back in a World Series world that hasn’t been conquered since the town had the Willies.

How long ago that seems.

“Ages,” Speier said.

He wasn’t much in a mood for nostalgia, to tell the truth. “Don’t tell me you want to get into all that again,” Speier said, rolling his eyes, after Sunday’s 6-3 success pushed San Francisco one step closer to the pennant.

Speier is 37, a utility infielder who rarely plays, back for one more tour of duty with his boyhood team. He did get up to the plate more than 300 times for the Giants during the season, but, in five playoff games so far, he has batted only once. Maybe that was on his mind. Or maybe he was just all talked out on the subject of the olden days.

“What do you remember most about the ’62 World Series?” he was asked.

“I can’t remember anything,” Speier said.

Nothing?

“Most of the games were in the afternoon. I must have been in school,” he said.

Which school?

“Now what’s the big deal about that?” Speier asked, a little snip in the air.

The big deal, we suspect, is that some of us have misconceptions about the importance of a big event in a young boy’s life. When your city has suffered, and both your ballclub and your ballpark have been ridiculed, and when the men who run that ballclub are even threatening to pack their mitts and bats and move the whole shebang to Denver, some of us wrongly assume that a local boy would know everything there is to know about that team, remember every detail, recite every fact and figure, love to reminisce about that hated moment when McCovey lined to Richardson.

Speier has been known to have such memories. At least of 1971, when he was playing, his recall is total.

The Giants had to win at San Diego to avoid another playoff with the Dodgers. Juan Marichal went forth to get it. He gave the Padres five hits. He got support from a double by the aging Mays and a homer by the new kid, Dave Kingman. And with one out to go, one batter standing between the Giants and a division championship, the rookie shortstop, Speier, was out there behind Marichal, shouting: “Make him hit it to me!”

Nate Colbert obliged, and Speier scooped up the grounder and threw. Second baseman Tito Fuentes, sensing the end was at hand, prematurely sprinted toward the dugout. Speier’s throw to first base nearly nailed Fuentes in the head.

Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Gaylord Perry . . . not a bad little ballclub. But not a World Series ballclub.

“Shows you, doesn’t it?” Speier said Sunday.

Shows you what?

“Shows you it takes more than just five or six good people. Our starting pitching, for example. Marichal and Perry, right? OK, name me the other pitchers on that club. Tell me who the third starter was, who the closer was. Can’t do it, can you? Jerry Johnson and Don McMahon were our relief pitchers that year. They worked their tails off for us.”

And Ron Bryant, Don Carrithers, John Cumberland and Steve Stone were the other starting pitchers.

“Everybody contributed,” Speier said. “We had to. We weren’t the greatest team ever, so everybody had to pitch in.”

Sixteen seasons later, he finds himself on a club with fewer future Hall of Famers, but greater balance. This is a nice little lineup the Giants have, one that has been outslugging, outrunning and generally outplaying the Cardinals, and probably should have hoisted the National League pennant by now. The series is probably theirs.

Will it be a baseball team to remember? Or will today’s San Francisco grade schoolers go blank when they turn 37 in the year 2012? Most of the World Series games will be played in prime time, so there will be no horror stories about teachers who refused to permit them to smuggle transistor radios into the classroom.

Speier insisted Sunday: “I honestly don’t remember 1962 at all. I was probably out playing baseball myself, not watching it.”

And to think those poor kids in Denver didn’t even have a team to watch.