September 28, 1976: Dodgers’ Walter Alston loses last game of Hall of Fame managing career

Walter Alston lost his first game as a major-league manager in a tight one-run decision. It happened on April 13, 1954, at New York’s Polo Grounds, as the New York Giants trimmed Alston’s Brooklyn Dodgers by a 4-3 score.

Fast-forward 23 seasons, 2,040 regular-season wins, 4 World Series titles, and 1 cross-country move later, and Alston’s long managerial career ended in much the same way it started. The Houston Astros defeated Alston’s Los Angeles Dodgers by a one-run margin, 1-0, on September 28, 1976.

No one knew it was Alston’s last game. The 64-year-old manager had announced on September 27 that he planned to retire at the end of the season and take an advisory position in the front office.1 But when the Dodgers introduced third-base coach Tommy Lasorda as his successor on September 29, Alston said he would step aside immediately and let Lasorda manage the final four games of the season, starting that night.2 Thus it was that a sparse crowd of 10,483 on a Tuesday night saw the unheralded last act of a future Hall of Fame manager.3

There was no pennant suspense to reel fans into the park. The Dodgers had fallen out of first place in the National League West Division on June 4 and stayed in second ever since as the defending World Series champion Cincinnati Reds built a strong lead. The Reds entered the day with a 9-game lead over the Dodgers, who were 90-67, and a 22½-game lead over the third-place Astros, who had a 77-81 record. Cincinnati had helped hold off its closest rival by winning 13 of its 18 games against the Dodgers that season, though the Dodgers had won two of three against the Reds from September 24 through 26.

The Dodgers were wrapping up 1976 with three-game home series against the Astros and San Diego Padres. The Dodgers won the first game of the Astros series, 2-0, as Don Sutton outdueled Dan Larson for his 21st win. Entering the September 28 game, the teams had played each other 16 times in the Bicentennial season, with Los Angeles winning 12 of those matchups.

Late in the season, Alston continued to play most of his regulars, with two exceptions. Rookie Glenn Burke started in center field, after Dusty Baker had suffered a season-ending knee injury that required surgery.4 Another rookie, Kevin Pasley, caught for Los Angeles. The youngest player in the Dodgers’ lineup at age 23, Pasley had been eight months old when Alston managed his first major-league game.5

The start on the mound went to 26-year-old righty Burt Hooton, who’d been traded from the Chicago Cubs to the Dodgers in May 1975.6  Between May 25 and June 30, Hooton had lost seven of eight decisions, and that stretch still weighed down his record; he entered the game with an 11-14 record and 3.39 ERA. The knuckle-curve specialist7 had pitched well in his previous start, a three-hit complete-game win over the San Francisco Giants on September 23.

Astros manager Bill Virdon also continued to play his regulars – one of whom, first baseman Bob Watson, was fourth in the NL with 99 RBIs.8 Virdon’s starting pitcher, fireballing 6-foot-8-inch righty J.R. Richard, was having a breakout season, which he credited to good physical conditioning and a religious conversion. Richard entered with an 18-15 record and his eyes firmly set on his first 20-win season. “I want it badly,” the 26-year-old said. “And I feel I deserve it. I’ve worked hard this year.”9

The Dodgers, as much as any other team, had seen Richard’s rise to excellence firsthand. On April 21, he’d pitched 10 innings of 4-hit shutout ball against them in a game Houston won, 1-0, in 16 innings. After losing a 2-1 decision to the Dodgers on May 21 and a 1-0 game on June 23, Richard had beaten the Dodgers 1-0 on August 4. Richard led the NL in walks with 150, but was second in strikeouts with 196, trailing only Tom Seaver of the New York Mets.10

Alston lost his major-league managing debut on a tiebreaking home run by future Hall of Famer Willie Mays, and he lost his last game because of a player whose youthful speed and power drew comparisons to Mays.11 After two hitters went down on groundouts in the top of the first, Houston’s All-Star center fielder César Cedeño drilled a grounder at Dodgers second baseman Davey Lopes, who misplayed it, letting the ball roll into short center field.12 While Lopes and Burke pursued the ball at a casual pace, Cedeño took advantage of their languor. Racing hard around first base, he made it safely to second.13

Watson picked up his 100th RBI, reaching that plateau for the first time, by banging a single into right field that scored Cedeño for a 1-0 Astros lead.14

Utilityman Cliff Johnson, known more for his bat than his defense, was behind the plate for Houston, and the Dodgers sought to take advantage. In the second inning, Steve Garvey led off with a single and stole second,15 but the next three batters could not advance him.

In the third inning, Lopes grounded to Richard with two away and reached first base on Richard’s error.16 Lopes then stole second, his 62nd theft of the season. Bill Buckner’s grounder to first baseman Watson, with Richard covering the bag, ended the inning.

Lopes turned out to be the last Dodger to get as far as second base. After a one-out single by Garvey in the fourth, Richard set down 12 straight Dodgers, starting with a double-play grounder off the bat of Ron Cey.

Hooton, meanwhile, scattered a few harmless singles and walks in the early going. The Astros next threatened in the sixth inning, again driven by Cedeño. With one out, Cedeño hit an infield single to third base and stole second, his 54th theft of the year. Walks to Watson and Johnson, sandwiched around a fly out by José Cruz, loaded the bases with two out. Greg Gross’s lineout to Burke in center ended the rally, as the Astros continued to nurse a 1-0 lead.

The Dodgers’ final threat bestirred itself with two out in the eighth. Lefty-swinging Ed Goodson, batting for Pasley, collected the Dodgers’ third and final hit, singling to left field. Another lefty, Leron Lee, hit for Hooton and ended the inning by lining out to shortstop Roger Metzger. It was the second-to-last major-league appearance for the 28-year-old Lee, who subsequently went to Japan and starred for more than a decade in Nippon Professional Baseball.17

The last pitcher to take the mound for Alston, knuckleballer Charlie Hough, allowed a single in the ninth but held the Astros off the scoreboard.18 The top of the Dodgers’ lineup – Lopes, Buckner, and Reggie Smith – was due up in the bottom half. Richard was equal to the challenge. He got Lopes to fly to right field, Buckner to hit a foul pop to replacement third baseman Art Howe,19 and Smith to fly to right, ending the game in a tidy 2 hours and 5 minutes.20

The mood in the Los Angeles clubhouse after the game was somber. Alston locked the doors and spoke to the team about his retirement announcement, wishing them well in 1977. The usually stoic manager left the meeting in tears. “I just tried to impress on them that even though they finished second this year, with a little help, with everyone contributing, they’d have a good shot next year. I wished them well and told them that from my new position outside the clubhouse I’d do everything I could to help.”21

In the visitors’ clubhouse, Richard praised Cedeño’s hustle and talked about his own nerves before the game. “I’m so close to 20 wins and I was hypertense all day because I really wanted this one,” he said. “I’m a better pitcher when I’m nervous. When I’m really up, I concentrate more and I get that extra confidence, a feeling that nobody can beat me.”22 Manager Virdon confirmed that Richard would start the Astros’ last game of the season, against the San Francisco Giants on October 2. Richard took advantage of the opportunity, cruising to a 10-1 victory to reach 20 wins for the only time in his career.23

Under Lasorda, the Dodgers won two and lost two to wind up the 1976 season. Lasorda stayed at the Dodgers’ helm through June 1996, winning 1,598 regular-season games, two World Series titles and four NL pennants. Hooton, still a Dodger in 1981, was the starting and winning pitcher in Game Six of that season’s World Series, when the Dodgers clinched their first World Series championship under Lasorda. Lopes, Garvey, Cey, and Baker were leading contributors to that team as well.

Alston was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1983; Lasorda followed in 1997.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Victoria Monte and copy-edited by John Fredland. The author thanks SABR member Gary Belleville for research assistance.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1976/B09280LAN1976.htm

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN197609280.shtml

Image of 1976 SSPC card #90 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Ross Newhan, “Alston Retires After Managing 23 Years,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1976: III,1.

2 Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Get Their Man; It’s Lasorda,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1976: III,1.

3 For context, the Dodgers were third in the major leagues in total attendance in 1976 with 2,386,301 fans, or an average of 29,461 per game. Only the World Series-winning Cincinnati Reds (2,629,708 fans) and resurgent Philadelphia Phillies (2,480,150) drew more.

4 Thomas J. Brown Jr., “Dusty Baker,” SABR Biography Project, accessed August 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/dusty-baker/. Burke and Baker shared a later trivia connection on October 2, 1977, when they took part in the first recorded high-five in major-league history. That game was also a loss to the Astros, this time by a 6-3 score.

5 Pasley’s birthdate: July 22, 1953.

6 Full terms of the trade: Geoff Zahn and Eddie Solomon to the Cubs; Hooton to the Dodgers.

7 Bob Trostler, “Burt Hooton,” SABR Biography Project, accessed August 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/burt-hooton/.

8 Ahead of Watson were George Foster of the Reds, with 120; Joe Morgan of the Reds with 111; and Mike Schmidt of the Philadelphia Phillies with 103. Foster, Morgan, Schmidt, and Watson remained first through fourth in NL RBIs at the end of the season.

9 Harry Shattuck, “Richard Gains 19th Victory,” Houston Chronicle, September 29, 1976: 82.

10 Seaver had 233 strikeouts entering play on September 28. He ended the season with 235, most in the NL; Richard was second with 214.

11 Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher, who managed both Willie Mays and César Cedeño early in their careers, said in 1973: “At 22 Cedeño is as good or better than Willie was at the same age. I don’t know whether he can keep this up for 20 years, and I’m not saying he will be better than Mays. No way anybody can be better than Mays. But I will say this kid has a chance to be as good. And that’s saying a lot.” John DiFonzo, “César Cedeño,” SABR Biography Project, accessed August 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/cesar-cedeno/.

12 Lopes was charged with an error.

13 Shattuck, “Richard Gains 19th Victory.”

14 Watson finished 1976 with 102 RBIs. He also passed the 100-RBI milestone the next season, when he had 110.

15 While Garvey was not usually celebrated for his speed, he stole a career-high 19 bases in 1976. It was one of only three years in his 19-season career that he stole 10 or more bases.

16 News accounts from Houston and Los Angeles-area papers do not specify whether Richard’s error was throwing or fielding. Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference’s game play-by-play also did not include this information at the time this article was written in January 2026.

17 Lee appeared in 614 major-league games across eight seasons.

18 For comparison’s sake, the first person to throw a pitch for an Alston-managed big-league team was Carl Erskine, the starter on Opening Day 1954. Erskine left the majors after the 1959 season.

19 Howe entered the game in the bottom of the ninth. Starting third baseman Enos Cabell was moved to first base and Watson was removed from the game.

20 The first player to bat for an Alston-managed major-league team was Jim Gilliam, leadoff batter on Opening Day 1954. Gilliam was a member of the Dodgers’ coaching staff in 1976 and a rumored candidate to replace Alston before Lasorda was chosen.

21 Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Will Name New Pilot Within 48 Hours,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1976: III:2.

22 Shattuck, “Richard Gains 19th Victory.”

23 Richard won 18 games in each of the following three seasons. He was off to a 10-4 start in 1980 when a stroke ended his playing career.