The Pitcher The Politician and Me.

1968

Two events were dominating my schedule for June 4, 1968 and then the real world intervened to make it much more memorable.

At the top of the pile was my economics final exam scheduled for the next morning.  I was a junior at San Fernando Valley State College in Northridge California. My major was economics  and I needed all the help I could get. Smart as a whip didn't cut it when there were many sharp knives in the drawer and the subject was hard as nails. I needed to be focused like a rabbit in the carrot patch.

But I wasn’t. Somehow I had scored two tickets near the Dodgers dugout for the game that night. I don't remember how I got them. I can't conceive of a connection to someone who had such good seats. But I had them. And I had to go.

Don Drysdale, a great pitcher in his own right, but, behind the sublime left hander Sandy Koufax in the Dodgers rotation, was going for a record sixth straight shutout. There was a lot of buzz. The game would be a sellout.

All this was against the backdrop of it being primary election day in California. The campaign was the most dramatic in a long time. Because of opposition to the war in Vietnam Lyndon Johnson the current US president had chosen not to run again. The Democrats had three good candidates in the running; Hubert Humphrey the establishment candidate, Robert Kennedy, the handsome candidate and Eugene McCarthy the insurgent candidate. McCarthy was the Bernie Sanders of his day. He appealed to the young left unshaven crowd, like me, with the slogan Get Clean for Gene.

My date for the game was Vicki Bellew who I had met at my part time job and who I dated regularly. I was always happy to get clean for Vicki.

The ball game was as advertised. Drysdale shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates 3 zip on 3 hits. I never opened my economics textbook sitting on my lap. Between the game, the good seats and Vicki I was in multitasking overload.

Later that night, well 12:16 to be exact, I was on Vicki’s doorstep being kissed goodnight.  She lived in a row house just off of Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district of LA. Our pleasure was suddenly interrupted by a steady stream of sirens heading somewhere on Wilshire. We didn't know what was what.

On my drive home the radio told me what was what. Nothing about the ballgame of course. Bobby Kennedy had been shot at the Ambassador Hotel a couple of miles east on Wilshire from where Vicki lived.

I went on to pass my economics final and graduate a year later by the barest of margins. Don Drysdale’s shutout streak ended four innings into his next start. Bobby Kennedy died the next day after 24 hours in a coma.

August 2, 2017 

August 15, 2018