In Old Days, They Fought Back With Bats

Former Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine remembers when pitchers owned the strike zone and knockdown pitches didn’t start brawls.

In 1958, the Dodgers lost their first two games at San Francisco, then returned home for their first game in the Coliseum, also against the Giants. Jim Davenport, a rookie, had hammered Dodger pitching in the first two games at Seals Stadium.

“(Dodger Manager Walter) Alston called me in the day before the game,” Erskine said. “He said to me, ‘I know you don’t like to do this, and I’m not going to ask you to do it. I’m going to order you to do it. I want you to get a strike on Davenport and then I want him flat. We’ve got to shake this kid up. He doesn’t know he’s in the National League.’ ”

Erskine threw the first pitch for a strike, then followed Alston’s orders.

“The second pitch was a good knockdown,” he remembered. “I mean, Davenport went upside down. His cap went one way and his bat the other.”

The game continued--without a fight, without a bench-clearing brawl and without a warning from the umpire. Davenport, meanwhile, “got up, dusted himself off and then doubled offthat left-field screen in the Coliseum,” Erskine said.

“I looked over at the dugout and Alston shrugs his shoulders like he was saying, ‘What are you going to do?’ ”

Student-athletes: The University of Wyoming recently dropped skiing from its program, even though there were 10 All-Americans on its roster and the school had won two NCAA championships.

“The skiers fell victim to an athletic department that was big on football but had little understanding of the benefits of skiing,” said Kurt Smith, the ski director. The cumulative grade-point average of the ski team was 3.2 with a 100% graduation rate.

Trivia time: Jeu de Paume was once a sport in the Olympic Games. What is it?

Have you got one? Nearly 6 million tickets have been printed for the Barcelona Olympics. The Amateur Athletic Foundation of L.A. offers this illuminating data: The tickets weigh 12 tons, would cover about 1,000 tennis courts, would stretch twice the distance between Barcelona and Madrid if laid end to end, and would double the height of the Eiffel Tower if stacked on top of each other.

Add Olympics: Tickets for the opening ceremonies July 25 are being offered by brokers forup to $7,000, compared to the $450 charged by the organizers for the best seats in the house.

Grand grand slams: Dusty Baker, the San Francisco Giants’ batting instructor, has pegged the problems of the slumping Giants’ batters: “I think everyone’s trying too hard to hit five- and six-run homers.”

Snake in the wires: A snake that coiled near a transformer at Charlestown Race Track in West Virginia shut off the lights and caused a half-hour delay in the thoroughbred racing program. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a horse on the card with a reptilian name for the hunch bettors.

Trivia answer: A form of court tennis, a forerunner of the modern game. It was played only in the 1908 Games in London and won by Jay Gould of the United States.

Babe a thief: How many times have any of today’s home run hitters stolen home? Babe Ruth did it 10 times.

How about Fort Knox? Reader Dan C. Pedersen of Des Moines, Iowa, asks: “If Roger Clemens goes to arbitration, will the Red Sox need to secure a U.S. Treasury loan?”

Quotebook: Indy car driver Bobby Rahal, on chief rival Michael Andretti: “I’m looking forward to the day he goes to Formula One.”