June 23, 1964: Orioles’ late comeback against Yankees commemorated in song

Remember that Yankee game in June
When the Yanks were playing a merry tune
And it looked as if the Birds would swoon?
Oh, my, goodbye! – Robert Goodman, “That Yankee Game”1

When the New York Yankees came to Baltimore on June 23, 1964, to open a three-game series against the Orioles, the Yankees, winners of four straight American League pennants, were atop the league’s standings by a half-game over second-place Baltimore.

It had been four years since the Orioles were in a contested pennant race. The 1960 team spent 51 days in first place and held a two-game lead over New York as late as September 4 but couldn’t keep up with the Yankees’ season-ending 15-game winning streak that secured the pennant. In comparison, the 1964 Orioles would end the season having been in first place for 111 days, and in first or second place from May 19 through September 27, never more than four games back.2

The Tuesday night series opener, with nearly 32,000 fans in attendance at Memorial Stadium, proved to be one of the more memorable games since the franchise moved from St. Louis in 1954. With 19-year-old rookie ace Wally Bunker on the mound facing Rollie Sheldon, Orioles fans had reason for optimism. Bunker opened 1964 with six straight wins and entered the game with a 7-2 record, coming off a six-hit complete-game win against the Chicago White Sox.

The Yankees got to work right away, with Phil Linz doubling to lead off the game. He scored on Mickey Mantle’s groundout, and the Yanks were up 1-0. After the Orioles went quietly in their half of the inning, light-hitting Clete Boyer, batting .176 coming into the game,  singled home Tom Tresh in the second, and the score was 2-0 in favor of the Yankees.

In the visitors’ half of the fourth inning, Elston Howard belted a long home run to left field, scoring Joe Pepitone, and suddenly the Yankees’ lead was 4-0. After the home run, Bunker walked Boyer and his night was done. Baltimore brought in veteran Harvey Haddix to limit the damage.3 Haddix pitched 1 2/3 innings before giving way to righty Chuck Estrada.

The Orioles got one back in the bottom of the fourth, with Boog Powell hitting a solo shot to center field, a feat Powell reprised in the sixth – giving the 22-year-old left fielder 15 homers for the season – to cut the deficit to 4-2. But the Yankees answered in the seventh. With Linz and Bobby Richardson on base via singles, Mantle pulled an Estrada pitch over the right-field fence to provide the Yankees with a five-run lead. It was Mantle’s 14th home run of the season and the 433rd of his career.

The Orioles mustered only John Orsino’s one-out single in the seventh before the Yankees loaded the bases in the top of the eighth with singles by Howard and Boyer, followed by a two-out intentional walk to pinch-hitter Johnny Blanchard. Estrada escaped further damage by inducing Linz to foul out to end the threat.

When you’re down by five to a Yankee nine
You’ve gotta be out of your mind
To think that in the eighth you still got time
To pull the ballgame out.4

With Blanchard having hit for pitcher Sheldon, Yankees skipper Yogi Berra went to his bullpen and brought in rookie right-hander Pete Mikkelsen to get the final six outs. But pinch-hitter Charley Lau, acquired from the Athletics just eight days before,5 and Jackie Brandt both reached on singles to start the bottom of the eighth.

But the next two batters didn’t get on
Two were out, hope was gone.
I said to myself, well I’ll get a move on
I’d see them again tomorrow anyway.6

After Norm Siebern drew his 48th of what would be a league-leading 106 walks for the season to load the bases, eventual 1964 MVP Brooks Robinson7 followed with a bases-loaded single to score Lau and Brandt, cutting the lead to 7-4. Orsino then doubled to left, scoring Siebern and sending Robinson to third. Bob Saverine was summoned to pinch-run for Orsino.

Willie Kirkland singled, scoring Robinson and Saverine to tie the game, 7-7. With the go-ahead run on first, Berra summoned veteran Ralph Terry, “amid a bedlam of expectancy from the mob in the stadium bowl,” reported the Baltimore Sun.8

Kirkland stole second and scored the go-ahead run on Adair’s single to right-center. Lau then doubled for his second hit of the inning, scoring Adair, and the inning ended with the Orioles up 9-7. Ten men batted and the Orioles scored seven runs on seven hits (five singles, two doubles) and a walk.

Bullpen ace Stu Miller finished off the game for his 12th save after yielding a solo home run to Roger Maris, his 12th of the season, and the Orioles’ improbable comeback was complete for a final score of 9-8.9 The win raised their record in one-run games to an incredible 19-2. In addition, it was their ninth victory in their final offensive frame.10 After the game Miller joked that he gave up Maris’s home run to ensure that the game counted as another one-run victory.11

The Orioles went on to sweep the Yankees in three games. On June 24 the Orioles clinched the series with a 7-4 win, a game in which Whitey Ford, vying for his 11th straight victory, lasted only two innings in a no-decision. The series finale was a pitchers’ duel, with Steve Barber’s three-hit complete game besting future Seattle Pilots teammate Jim Bouton, 3-1.

The midweek series caught the attention of the baseball world. In Baltimore, with a 2½-game lead over the Yankees, fans suddenly had pennant fever. Local marketing executive Robert Goodman, upon reading the front page of the Baltimore Sun on June 24, 1964, after the comeback win, made note of the headline “Birds Refuse to Lose.”

He had an idea to capitalize on the excitement created by the Orioles – a full-length musical production about the 1964 team. It was not the concept of a baseball game inspiring a catchy song that was unique, rather it was a Broadway-style musical production consisting of multiple songs about a real team, its real players, and actual events. He wrote the words, thought up the tunes, sang them into a tape recorder, and trotted off to New York to get professionals to do the job.12

The result of his labor of love was a 12-song long-playing record album, titled Pennant Fever – What Happened in Baltimore, MD in the Summer of 1964. Released in August 1964, the songs were not sophisticated, with lyrics ranging from corny (“Hey Doc, I got pennant fever, and I’m knocking on wood, hey Doc I got pennant fever, and the feeling is good. …”),13 to clever (“Tony Oliva, oh leave us alone. …”)14 in a song about other AL foes who could spoil the party. One track on the album, titled “That Yankee Game,” chanted a play-by-play account of the Orioles’ eighth inning from June 23, including the frenzied reaction of the fans at Memorial Stadium in the song’s chorus.

He was drinking his peanuts and eating his beer
There was pizza in his pocket, and mustard on his ear.
He was screaming and stomping, and blowing a jet.
In that comeback eighth inning, it wasn’t over yet.15

Other songs included “The Magic Man,” a tribute to Hank Bauer, described as the manager with “a face like a fist that’s clenched, and a voice like a rusty wrench,” and “Bunker Hill,” which resembles an Ivy League alma mater and likens Bunker to the colonists of Boston circa 1775.16

Although the Orioles’ 97 wins resulted in the franchise’s best winning percentage since 1922, they finished in third place, 2½ games behind the pennant-winning Yankees, and a half-game behind the second place Chicago White Sox. Their fall from the top was due in part to an untimely mid-September slump, with losses in five of seven games against the Twins, Angels, and Tigers. Alas the musical story of the 1964 Orioles season would not have a happy ending, an outcome for which they had to wait two more years. The Yankees lost the ’64 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. After winning 14 AL pennants in 16 years from 1949 through 1964, the team did not win another pennant until 1976.

Goodman went on to achieve tremendous success supporting Republican candidates’ marketing campaigns. In 1966 he aided Spiro Agnew’s run for governor of Maryland. Goodman’s long list of candidates who were elected with his marketing savvy included George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, California Governor and US Senator Pete Wilson, and many others.

“[Bob Goodman] created political advertising with the look of a Hollywood movie and the sound of a Broadway musical,” his son wrote upon his death in 2018.17

Orioles fans could relate.

Author’s Note

The author first heard a friend’s copy of the “Pennant Fever” album in 1968, four years after its release and two years after the Orioles’ first World Series victory. A year later, he purchased his own copy with his allowance, as he found it in the bargain bin at a significant discount.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Harrison Golden and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credits: Willie Kirkland, Trading Card Database. “Pennant Fever” ad, Baltimore Sun, August 12, 1964 via Newspapers.com.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL196406230.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B06230BAL1964.htm

Sources from the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore Evening Sun, and the New York Daily News:

Brown, Douglas. “Nats Buy Willie; Russ Ready for Duty vs. Bosox,” Baltimore Evening Sun, August 12, 1964: 57, http://www.newspapers.com/image-view/373344881.

Hecht Company Advertisement, Baltimore Sun, August 12, 1964: 13, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-baltimore-sun-hechts-ad-pennant-f/175561897/.

Trimble, Joe. “O’s, 7 in 8th, 9-8 Yanks,” New York Daily News, June 24, 1964: 88, https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-news/176852866/.

Notes

1 Robert Goodman (Composer), Roy Ross (Producer), “That Yankee Game,” from the record album “Pennant Fever,” RGA Records, 1964: Side 2, track 1.

2 The 1964 roster was very different from the 1960 pennant-contending team. Only third baseman Brooks Robinson, outfielder Jackie Brandt, and starting pitchers Milt Pappas and Steve Barber played significant roles on both teams. Three others (Jerry Adair, Chuck Estrada, and Wes Stock) were on both rosters at some point during the 1960 and 1964 seasons.

3 The Orioles acquired Haddix from the Pirates for minor leaguer Richard Yencha after the 1963 season. Haddix was known most famously for his 12-inning perfect-game bid against the Milwaukee Braves in 1959, losing the perfect game, no-hitter, and game in the bottom of the 13th. One year later, he won two games in the Pirates’ dramatic seven-game World Series win over the Yankees, including Game Seven featuring Bill Mazeroski’s Series walk-off home run.

4 Goodman.

5 Lau was acquired from the Kansas City Athletics for pitcher Wes Stock on June 15, 1964.

6 Goodman.

7 Brooks Robinson’s .318 batting average, with 28 home runs and a league leading 118 RBIs, resulted in his only MVP award, as he beat out Mickey Mantle with 18 of 20 first-place votes.

8 Lou Hatter, “Orioles Roar from Behind to Edge Yankees, 9-8,” Baltimore Sun, June 24, 1964: 21.

9 Saves did not become an official major-league statistic until 1969. Miller was retroactively credited with his 12th save of the season.

10 Douglas Brown, “Pulsating Bird Win Puts Fiction to Shame,” Baltimore Evening Sun, June 24, 1964: D13.

11 Brown.

12 Bob Maisel, “The Morning After, Record Causes Queries,” Baltimore Sun, August 11, 1964: 20.

13 Robert Goodman (Composer), Roy Ross (Producer), “Pennant Fever,” from the record album Pennant Fever, RGA Records, 1964: Side 1, track 2.

14 Robert Goodman (Composer), Roy Ross (Producer), “Please Leave Us Alone,” from the record album Pennant Fever, RGA Records, 1964: Side 2, track 5.

15 Robert Goodman (Composer), Roy Ross (Producer), “That Yankee Game,” from the record album Pennant Fever, RGA Records, 1964: Side 2, track 1.

16 Jack Chevalier, “Orioles Put on Records,” Baltimore Sun, August 6, 1964: 28.

17 Frederick N. Rasmussen, “I. Robert Goodman, Advertising Exec Who Crafted Ads for Governors, Senators and Congressional Campaigns, Dies,” Baltimore Sun, August 1, 2018: A14.