domination with some help from 'big daddy'

back in 1961, the dodgers owned the national league, as far as pitching went.  actually, that's not quite true.  they ranked 6th out of 8 nl teams in team era at 4.04.  but they were tops in the league (and the majors) in strikeouts with 1105. no other team topped 1000 that year.  so, as you might expect, the 1962 topps strikeout leaders card is chock full of dodgers:

who let jim o'toole crash the party?  as far as the dodgers go, koufax and drysdale you would probably expect.  but stan williams in second with 204 strikeouts?  he had finished 6th in the league in 1960 with 175 k's, and the 204 he posted in 1961 were a career high for him.

williams came up with the dodgers in 1958 and was a member of their 1959 world championship team, pitching 2 scoreless innings against the white sox in game 5. in november of 1962, williams was traded to the yankees for bill skowron, the original 'out of place guy', straight up.  topps didn't try to hard to conceal from whence williams had come on his 1963 card:

(stan was nice enough to personalize and sign one of my cards, by the way).  williams wound up pitching against his former team in the world series in 1963, and gave up just 1 hit with 5 strikeouts in 3 innings of work.  i find this card interesting because the troll recently posted another williams card with him caught in transition, this time between the yankees and the indians.

williams went on to pitch for the twins, cardinals and red sox (with an uncredited stop in la with the angels) before his career ended in 1972.  there are some folks around here that still talk about his 1970 season with the twinkies when he went 10-1 with 15 saves and a 1.99 era and got no consideration for the cy young award.  he also pitched 6 scoreless innings in the postseason that year, keeping his career postseason era at 0.00 with a whip of 0.55.

williams once pitched a 10-inning shutout in which he drove in the only run of the game.  he also once pitched, in only his 3rd game back from an arm injury, a 13 inning complete game and then came back 5 days later and threw a 5-hit shutout.

here's to you big daddy!