A Reluctant Dodger Makes Pitching History

All he had wanted to do, he said afterward, was tie the record.

But 11 years ago tonight in San Diego, Orel Hershiser broke Don Drysdale’s 20-year-old major league record of 58 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings.

When he recorded the third out of the 10th inning, it was his 59th consecutive scoreless inning. And in the mob scene that followed, he noticed a tall, familiar figure on the top step of the Dodger dugout, waiting to congratulate him.

It was Drysdale, then a Dodger broadcaster, who enveloped him in a congratulatory hug.

For Hershiser, the numbers were dizzying:

* He’d just completed six consecutive games without allowing a run, plus a four-inning scoreless stint that started the streak.

* The streak lasted nearly a month. He had last allowed runs Aug. 30, when he gave up two in the fifth inning of a game at Montreal.

At no time in the streak was he more dominating than he was at the finish line, when he went 10 innings, breaking the record when pinch-hitter Keith Moreland hit an easy fly to right field to end the 10th.

When San Diego’s Marvell Wynne singled in the seventh, Hershiser had retired the Padres’ previous eight hitters.

After the record was broken, Manager Tommy Lasorda removed Hershiser from the game.

“I really didn’t want to break it,” Hershiser said afterward.

“I wanted Don and me to be together, at the top. But the higher sources [Lasorda and pitching coach Ron Perranoski] weren’t taking me out.”

Said Drysdale, “I’d have kicked him right in the rear if I’d known that. I’d have told him to get his buns out there and get them.”

Usually forgotten: San Diego’s Andy Hawkins also pitched 10 shutout innings that night and the Padres won in 16 innings, 2-1.

Also on this date: In 1961, Ted Williams, 42, hit a home run, his 521st, in his last major league at-bat. It happened at Fenway Park against Baltimore’s Jack Fisher. . . . In 1920, at Chicago’s trial of the Black Sox, White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte testified, “I sold out the other boys . . . sold them out for $10,000. . . . I threw the game.” . . . In 1923, at Fenway Park, 20-year-old Yankee rookie Lou Gehrig hit his first major league home run. . . . In 1930, the Cubs’ Hack Wilson drove in two runs against the Reds, his 189th and 190th of the season--still the major league record. Research later revealed an RBI that wasn’t counted that season, and in 1999 Wilson’s total was revised to 191. . . . In 1929, in the first USC-UCLA football game, the Trojans won, 76-0.