by Tim Wendel
A moment later, a blast echoed through the Lorraine Hotel courtyard. Kyles and Abernathy found King lying on the balcony landing, the right side of his face ripped open and his head beginning to rest in a halo of blood. He had been stuck down by a .30–06 caliber bullet.
Kyles ran back inside Room 306 and tried to call an ambulance—an attempt that was stymied when the hotel switchboard went dead because the operator had raced into the courtyard to see what had happened. Amid the chaos, Abernathy attempted to speak with King but received no answer. Kyles remembered there was so much blood. He found a sheet to cover his friend’s body.
King died hours later and across the country cities began to burn in protest, with more than one hundred American cities soon erupting in flame. In Washington, D.C., smoke could be seen only a few blocks from the White House. Just days before, President Lyndon Johnson had announced that he wouldn’t run for reelection. The move seemingly gained him traction for ongoing efforts to end the war in Vietnam and settling things on the domestic front. Yet as the reports of rioting came in, the president realized that any political momentum he had gained in recent days was now lost forever.
In Indianapolis, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was about to speak from the back of a flatbed truck to a predominately black crowd at a campaign stop when he received the news that King had been assassinated. In what would later be looked back on as the second of two extraordinary speeches in as many days, and a stunning example of the healing power that words can offer, Kennedy told his audience about King’s death. For most of them it was the first they had heard of the tragic news.
After asking many in the crowd to lower their signs, Kennedy said, “I have some very sad news for all of you and I think some sad news for all our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world. And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.”
A gasp ran through the crowd, followed by shouts of “No!” and “Black Power!” Indianapolis, like so many cities across the nation, seemed ready to come apart at the seams. But here Kennedy, speaking only from a few scribbled notes, and beginning in a trembling, halting voice, slowly brought the people back around and somehow held them together.
“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings,” Kennedy said. “He died in the cause of that effort . . . ”
Listening to the speech decades later, you can hear the crowd soon become still, ready to hear the candidate out. Speaking from the heart, Kennedy told the crowd how he “had a member of my family killed”—a reference to his brother, of course, who had been assassinated less than five years before.
“But we have to make an effort in the United States,” the younger Kennedy continued, “we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.
“My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget/ falls drop by drop upon the heart,/ until, in our own despair,/ against our will,/ comes wisdom / through the awful grace of God.”
A few minutes later, Kennedy closed by telling the crowd, “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”
Indianapolis was one of the few cities that didn’t burn that evening in April 1968, or in the days ahead.
Memphis didn’t burn that night, either. Hours after King’s death, Kyles, Abernathy, Young and many of their group were back at the Lorraine Hotel, counseling their followers not to fall into violence. “As you can imagine, it was a very, very difficult evening,” Kyles said. “I have never felt so sad, so angry, so lonely in all of my life. But we found a way to carry on. We knew it was important to carry on Dr. King’s message to the world. We decided that night that you can kill the dreamer, but you cannot kill the dream.”
Back at Kyle’s home, the home-cooked food that had been laid out for that evening’s dinner still sat on the table. Kyles’s youngest son, Dwain, couldn’t bring himself to eat any of it. He made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead.
The next morning, in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Cardinals’ spring training camp was like most places in America: the King assassination the major topic of conversation. Gibson was devastated by the news and got into a heated exchange with his catcher, Tim McCarver. After telling McCarver that he couldn’t possibly comprehend what it was like to be a black person on this morning, and that it was impossible for whites, no matter how well intentioned, to totally overcome prejudice, Gibson turned his back on his batterymate.
To McCarver’s credit, he didn’t let the situation go. Undoubtedly, he realized that the last person Gibson wanted to hear from at that moment was a white man, who had grown up in Memphis of all places. Yet McCarver told Gibson that it was possible for people to change. If anything, he was Exhibit A. Back when McCarver was new to the team, Gibson and Curt Flood had ribbed him about his reluctance to share a sip of soda offered by a black man. McCarver had seen a lot of truth in their teasing. Perhaps that’s why he wouldn’t let things drop after King’s death. In talking with Gibson, McCarver found himself in “the unfamiliar position of arguing that the races were equal and that we were all the same.”
Years later, McCarver wrote that “Bob and I reached a meeting of the minds that morning. That was the kind of talk we often had on the Cardinals.”
Of course, baseball wasn’t the only sport in America reeling after King’s assassination. The civil rights leader’s death occurred just before the opening of the National Basketball Association’s Eastern Division Finals between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Boston Celtics. The year before, Philadelphia had eliminated the Celtics, who had won nine titles in the past ten seasons. In 1968, the 76ers continued their newfound dominance, winning a league-best sixty-two games and finishing eight games ahead of Boston in the Eastern Division. Philadelphia center Wilt Chamberlain was the league’s MVP, averaging an astounding 24.3 points and 23.8 rebounds per game.
“Everywhere we went, especially in Philadelphia, they had a chant, ‘Boston’s Dead. Boston’s Dead.’ The dynasty is over,” recalled John Havlicek, the Celtics’ Hall of Fame forward. “You’d hear it at the airport when you got off the plane in Philadelphia. The cab drivers would be on you, riding you a little. Everywhere you went, the fans were real vocal.”
After King’s death, Chamberlain and Bill Russell, the Celtics’ player-coach and the only African American coach in U.S. sports that year, met before Game One of that best-of-seven series. The decision was made to play on, with the second contest delayed from Sunday to the following Wednesday. Not that it seemed to matter, at least for Boston’s chances.
Even though the Celtics took the opener, the 76ers proceeded to run off with the series, winning three consecutive victories to take a 3–1 lead. Indeed, the chant appeared to be correct: it was the end of Boston’s epic run. Even Celtics’ general manager Red Auerbach sensed the series was perhaps over. Before the next game in Philadelphia, he nodded at Russell, saying, “There are some people who have already forgotten how great that man really was.”
Despite being down three games to one, Russell and the Celtics battled back to deadlock the series. The Celtics’ Larry Siegfried remembered Russell as a man of few words. But when the player-coach spoke, he was “direct and precise.” When the team fell behind to Wilt Chamberlain and the 76ers, Russell simply told his team, “We’ve come so far and I don’t want to go home now.”
The Celtics rallied to take Game Five in Philadelphia, 122–104, and Game Six back home in Boston, 114–106.
Before the 1967–1968 regular season began, Russell had gathered together a half-dozen of the team’s veterans during an exhibition tour in Puerto Rico. “He wanted our help—he wanted to tap that knowledge,” John Havlicek later told George Plimpton of Sports Illus
trated. “Of course he told us that his would be the final decision. It helped a lot. He told us to criticize him if we felt he warranted it.”
In 1968, the Eastern Conference’s seventh and deciding game returned to Philadelphia. Before the opening tip Russell strode to the jump circle with purpose. “Other players would be slapping each other and pumping themselves up,” he wrote in his autobiography Second Wind, “but I’d always take my time and walk out slowly, my arms folded in front of me. I’d look at everybody disdainfully, like a sleepy dragon who can’t be bothered to scare off another would-be hero. I wanted my look to say, ‘Hey, the King’s here tonight.’”
Sometimes Russell would take things even farther.
“‘All right guys,’ I’d say to the other team, ‘Ain’t no lay-ups out there tonight. I ain’t gonna bother you with them fifteen-footers’ cause I don’t feel like it tonight, but I ain’t gonna have no lay-ups!’ Or I’d lean over to one of the forwards and say, ‘If you come in to shoot a lay-up off me you’d better bring your salt and pepper because you’ll be eating basketball.’”
Russell didn’t say such things to Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, or Jerry West. Those were all-stars and able to reply in kind. Just about anyone else, though, was fair game.
In the final seconds of Game Seven, Russell backed up his tough talk. Down 98–96, the 76ers controlled a jump ball, with Chet Walker driving for a shot that Russell blocked. Philadelphia’s Hal Greer retrieved the loose ball, shot, and missed. Russell soared over Chamberlain for the pivotal rebound. Boston won 100–96, coming all the way back from a 3–1 deficit to take the series and advance to the finals against their bitter rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers.
While the Celtics’ comeback against the favored 76ers certainly earned national headlines, baseball remained king of the mountain. And the national pastime was about to gain even more attention for what was about to begin in Los Angeles.
Don Drysdale’s record-setting scoreless streak started convincingly enough with a 1–0 shutout over Ferguson Jenkins and the Chicago Cubs on May 14, 1968. On team after team, pitchers bemoaned the lack of timely hitting and runs, and Drysdale’s Dodgers were no different. Even during its championship years, Los Angeles was known for its quality starting pitching—Drysdale, Bill Singer, Claude Osteen, Stan Williams, and Sandy Koufax—rather than any real firepower at the plate. The ballclub was still years away from fielding such hitters as Ron Cey, Rick Monday, or Steve Garvey. In fact, a few seasons earlier, when Drysdale was briefly away from the team, Koufax pitched a no-hitter against the Phillies and Drysdale’s first reaction was, “Did he win?”
As ’68 began, the Dodgers were considered more pretender than contender. Koufax had retired after the 1966 season. In ’67, Drysdale had labored to a 13–16 record, with a respectable 2.74 ERA (earned run average). In spring training, he hurt his right arm while covering third base in an exhibition game at the Houston Astrodome. Even the big right-hander himself admitted he “was on the downside of the baseball mountain.”
Still, four days later, on May 18, 1968, Drysdale defeated Dave Giusti and the Houston Astros. Again, the final score was 1–0. Several trends were apparent to everyone, especially Drysdale. Not only were the Dodgers scoring few runs, but more likely than not, Drysdale was matching up with the opposing team’s ace. “You’d better think about pitching a shutout,” Drysdale later explained, “or giving up at most one or two runs, if you had any ideas of winning.”
That was certainly true for the third game of the shutout streak. The Dodgers were on the road facing the Cardinals, and Drysdale’s opponent was none other than Bob Gibson. It had rained much of the day in St. Louis and some wondered if the contest would be called. Yet Drysdale knew that Gibson “always meant box office.” In fact, the Cardinals had a big advance sale for the showdown, so the game was played despite the subpar conditions. St. Louis out-hit the Dodgers, five to three, but Drysdale won the game, 2–0, over Gibson. To this point, Drysdale had pitched twenty-seven scoreless innings—three consecutive shutouts.
On May 26, the Dodgers were back in Houston and Drysdale had to pinch himself to make sure the five runs his teammates put up for him were real. Still, the Dodgers’ ace was unable to rest easy. Astros manager Grady Hatton was convinced that Drysdale was using petroleum jelly or some other foreign substance to make the ball dive or soar. Reluctantly, home plate Al Barlick came to the mound to check the pitcher.
“I’ve got to look around here,” he told Drysdale. “Don’t worry about anything.”
Shrugging off the incident, the Dodgers’ ace shut out the Astros’ and Houston starter Larry Dierker, 5–0. “I was a kid back then, not quite twenty-two,” Dierker said. “But anybody could see that this was perhaps a once-in-a-generation thing. That guys like Drysdale and Gibson were setting a new standard. When you’re in the same profession, trying to do the same job, you’re just trying to keep up with it all.”
Ironically, the home-plate umpire would play the biggest role in Drysdale’s next start—May 31 at home against the rival San Francisco Giants. By this time the media was on the case, determining that Drysdale’s scoreless streak was the longest since Guy Harris “Doc” White pitched five consecutive shutouts for the Chicago White Sox in 1904. (During his playing career, White would combine with sportswriter Ring Lardner to write several popular songs, with “Little Puff of Smoke, Good Night” the most popular.) The all-time scoreless innings streak was held by Hall of Famer Walter “Big Train” Johnson, who pitched fifty-five and two-thirds scoreless innings in 1913.
Against the Giants, Drysdale was sailing along, holding a 3–0 lead into the top of the ninth. That’s when Willie McCovey walked, Jim Ray Hart singled, and then Drysdale walked Dave Marshall to load the bases with none out. (Marshall would break up Drysdale’s bid for a no-hitter later in the summer at Candlestick Park.)
Seizing the opportunity to end Drysdale’s scoreless string and perhaps even pull out a victory, Giants manager Herman Franks inserted Nate Oliver to be McCovey ’s pinch runner at first. San Francisco catcher Dick Dietz, who was next up, worked the count to 2–2. Drysdale went with a slider, but the pitch didn’t have much bite and it grazed Dietz on the left elbow. The Giants’ batter began to jog toward first base, which would have brought in Oliver from third. Pretty much everyone in the ballpark, including Dodgers catcher Jeff Torborg and Drysdale, thought the streak was over. The hit-by-pitch had forced in a run. Yet home-plate umpire Harry Wendelstedt surprised everyone by ruling that Dietz hadn’t tried to get out of the way of the pitch. Instead of allowing him to head to first base, the ump told him to get back in the batter’s box. Wendelstedt ruled the pitch a ball, making the count 3–2.
The Giants’ protest was long and loud. Third-base coach Peanuts Lowrey argued the call, as did Franks, halting the game for nearly a half-hour. Dodgers announcer Vin Scully filled the time by reading the rulebook on the air to listeners. The infielders stayed warm by throwing the ball around as Drysdale stood on the mound, watching Dietz, Lowrey, and Franks plead their case to Wendelstedt.
When play finally resumed, Dietz fouled off the next pitch. Then Drysdale got him to hit a shallow fly to left field. It wasn’t deep enough to score Oliver, so it was one out and the bases still loaded.
Next up was pinch hitter Ty Cline. He hit a line drive toward first base, where the Dodgers’ Wes Parker dug it out of the dirt and fired home in time for the out. Two down and the bases were still loaded.
Drysdale then induced pinch hitter Jack Hiatt to pop out to Parker at first. Somehow the Dodgers’ ace had gotten out of the jam and his scoreless string was intact. Drysdale had now pitched five consecutive shutouts.
“It took a lot of balls on Harry’s part to make that call,” Drysdale said, “ but he was absolutely right. Dietz made no effort to avoid that pitch.”
Juan Marichal, the Giants’ Hall of Fame right-hander, later told Drysdale that Dietz had said he was eager to be hit by the pitch. If that’s what it took to break u
p the scoreless streak, he’d pay the price.
Afterward, Franks called Wendelstedt “gutless,” while Dodgers manager Walter Alston said he “never saw the play called before. But then, it’s the first time I ever saw anyone get deliberately hit by a pitched ball.”
In 1968, football was positioned to supersede baseball as the most popular game in the land. What seems incredible looking back on things is that few saw this sea change coming.
Unlike baseball, football could be played in almost any weather. The 1967 “Ice Bowl,” the National Football League Championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and the host Green Bay Packers the previous December, solidified the game’s status among sports fans. With the gametime temperature of thirteen degrees below zero, on a field that had literally frozen overnight into the famed tundra, the Packers drove for the game’s deciding score. Despite the weather, a sellout crowd packed the stands at famed Lambeau Field. Public address announcer Gary Knafelc said it was like “seeing big buffaloes in an enormous herd on a winter plains. It was prehistoric.” And great television.
But one game doesn’t make a sport king of the hill. Other planets must fall into alignment and that’s exactly what was afoot in 1968. An integral series of events was set into motion when, after leading the Packers to another Super Bowl championship, Vince Lombardi stepped down as Green Bay’s coach.