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| Frank Robinson and Willie Mays |
From pretty much the time I could walk until about ten years ago I was an avid baseball fan, particularly enamored of the San Francisco Giants. But old dogs can learn new tricks and lifelong tastes and preferences can change. I barely pay the slightest attention to the National Pastime anymore and haven’t been out to the ball yard in several years. My obsession now is with proper football (soccer to you Yanks) particularly the variety played in England and most especially by my favorite club, Arsenal.
Despite this greatly diminished interest in baseball I still love stories about its past and know a fair amount of history of the game. In days of yore I regularly read books about baseball history including biographies of players and stories of eras, games and seasons. I know a lot of baseball trivia and can name the World Series winner from most seasons.
All this is to say that while I’m not a leading authority, I’m qualified to write this post which is based on a conversation I had with a fellow connoisseur of the game's storied past. It was my contention that the best decade of baseball was the 1960s. There is some inherent bias in my believing this n because I came of age as a baseball fan in the Sixties. We often put a golden hue around the time we grew up. But I have sound reasons. On with it.
Previous decades can be eliminated right off because the game was not integrated. Integration began in the late forties and continued through the fifties. By the mid-1960s integration was essentially complete and the number of African-American players in the majors was far higher than it is today. Not only were blacks from the fifty states playing but also Latins from places like the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
There were games on the West Coast making it a truly national game with teams in San Francisco, Los Angeles and later Anaheim.
The 1960s were not dominated by a team or two or three as it has been in other decades. Seven different teams won the World Series (Pirates, Yankees, Dodgers, Cardinals, Orioles, Tigers, Mets). True the Yankees won the first five American League pennants but four other teams won the next five (Twins, Orioles (two), Tigers and Red Sox). Meanwhile in the National League six teams won the pennant — The Pirates, Reds, Giants and Mets once and the Dodgers and Cardinals three times each. So there were perennial winners (which is good for the games) but no one running roughshod over the game like the Yankees did in the fifties for example, which I think is bad for the game.
There was expansion in the sixties but the biggest was not until the last year, thus the game’s talent pool had not yet been diluted. There were excellent players on all teams and some (as I’ll note later) were rife with some of the game’s greats.
The age of the cookie cutter stadium and abominable Astro turf fields had not yet marred the game. There were still some of the game’s grand ole ballparks in use such as Crosley Field, Forbes Field, Connie Mack Stadium, old Tiger Stadium, the original Yankee Stadium and of course Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.
There were several compelling World Series in the decade. Six of ten went seven games (’60, ’62, ’64, ’65, ’67 and ’68). 1960 ended with a walk off home run. 1962 ended with a one-run game. The see-saw 1964 series was dramatic enough to inspire David Halberstam’s New York Times bestseller October 1964. The 1969 series only went five games but was one of the greatest upsets in Series history.
The decade had some great pennant races. The NL race in 1962 went down to and past the wire necessitating a playoff that the Giants won over the Dodgers in a come-from-behind game three. The ’64 NL race was a wild free-for-all featuring four teams. The ’67 AL race was also dramatic and featured the Red Sox Impossible Dream team. Other races throughout the decade were also close.
There was no designated hitter. Baseball has been forever tarnished by the addition of the DH. In the sixties pitchers batted. They also completed their work. There were an average of between 700-750 complete games a season in the majors that decades. By comparison last year there were twenty-nine by all teams combined. We did not get an endless procession of relief pitchers; games moved right along — without a damn clock.
(Worth noting: In 1968 Juan Marichal threw 325 innings. Last season the Giants Logan Webb led the majors in innings pitched with 207. For the math challenged that's a different of 118 innings.)
But what really made the 1960s baseball’s best decade was the amazing number of superstars who played in those ten years. Forty-one members of baseball’s Hall of Fame played in at least five of the decade’s ten seasons. This includes the likes of Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Eddie Mathews, Willie McCovey, Lou Brock, Juan Marichal, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn, Ferguson Jenkins and Whitey Ford. A few others played three seasons, Johnny Bench, Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson and Tom Seaver. Nolan Ryan played for four of the years. In total sixty-nine Hall of Famers played at least one season in the decade. There were some of the game's greatest sluggers and some of baseball's greatest pitchers.
(In at least one game — played on July 2, 1963 between the Giants and the Braves— there were nine Hall of Famers on the field. From San Francisco: Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Orlando Cepeda and in relief Gaylord Perry. From Milwaukee: Aaron, Mathews, Spahn and Joe Torre.)
Final note: The decade featured the person who, for me (after Babe Ruth), is the greatest player of all time playing at his peak: Willie Mays.
During the decade 1960–1969, Mays:
Hit 350 home runs
Scored 1,011 runs
Stole 179 bases
Won 8 Gold Gloves
Made 10 All-Star teams
Most remarkably, he averaged roughly: 35 home runs and 100 runs scored per season while playing elite center field. To put that in perspective: Many Hall of Fame sluggers never hit 350 home runs in their entire careers. Mays did it in one decade. And this wasn’t just a hitter padding numbers in a hitter’s park. He did it while playing half his games at Candlestick Park, which was notoriously difficult for hitters because of: cold winds, swirling air currents and deep power alleys.
What makes the 1960s special is that Mays wasn’t alone. At the same time you had: Hank Aaron quietly piling up historic numbers, Roberto Clemente redefining right-field defense, Sandy Koufax producing one of the most dominant pitching peaks ever, Denny McClain winning a remarkable 30 games in 1968 while in that same season Bob Gibson boasted an incredible 1.12 ERA.
The 1960s were one of the rare periods in baseball history where multiple all-time legends were performing at their peak simultaneously. That overlap of greatness is a big part of why I maintain that the 1960s is the greatest decade in baseball history.
