September 8, 1965: Willie Mays swats two home runs to close in on number 500, as Giants take first place

Willie Mays hit a career-high 52 home runs in 1965. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

Before a crowd of 8,922 at Candlestick Park, Willie Mays hit his 44th and 45th home runs of the season to lead the San Francisco Giants over the Houston Astros, giving San Francisco the outright lead in the National League standings with a half-game advantage over both the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers.

After a slow start to the 1965 season (winning just seven of 16 games in April), San Francisco had won close to 60 percent of its games over the next three months (going 48-34). Series sweeps against both the Reds and St. Louis Cardinals in early August had brought the Giants to within one game of first place. By winning five of their first seven contests in September, the Giants suddenly found themselves tied for first place with the Dodgers, locked in a pennant race that would not be settled until the season’s final week.

The Astros won 10 of 16 to begin the season and were a half-game out of first place when April ended. They didn’t have another winning month, though, and by the time they played the Giants in September, they were 60-79, having lost three of their past four games.1

The 34-year-old Mays was batting .339 at the All-Star break, with 23 home runs and 59 RBIs. He homered to lead off the midseason classic, and then he went on a tear, batting .363 in August with 17 home runs and 29 RBIs, leading his team’s climb in the standings.

The Giants hosted the Astros in a two-game series beginning on September 8. Right-hander Bobby Bolin had the mound duties for San Francisco. This was his 37th appearance of the season but only his ninth start. Sporting a 2.60 ERA, he was in search of his ninth victory. Another righty, Don Nottebart, started for the Astros. He was struggling (4-13 with a 4.29 ERA). In two outings against the Giants that season, he absorbed the loss both times; in neither outing did he pitch more than five innings.

Lee Maye led off the game with a single to right, but Bolin retired the next three Astros batters on fly balls. The Giants wasted no time in jumping on Nottebart. After Dick Schofield struck out, three consecutive singles by Jesús Alou, Mays, and Willie McCovey produced the game’s first run. Nottebart then walked Jim Ray Hart to load the bases. Len Gabrielson singled into right-center field. Mays scored easily, but McCovey was thrown out at home trying to score. The Giants led, 2-0.

In the second inning, with two on and two out, Mays blasted a three-run homer over the left-field fence. With the score 5-0, the Giants “had their first laugher in a long, long time.”2 Ron Taylor was called in from the Houston bullpen to relieve Nottebart and remained on the mound for the rest of the game.

Through three innings, Bolin allowed just two singles. The top of the fourth presented an unusual play. With one down, Bolin hit Jim Gentile with a pitch. Bob Aspromonte singled and Gentile advanced to second. Rusty Staub belted a drive to deep center. Gentile, running on the play, had passed third base when Mays made a sensational catch, and Gentile had to backtrack to second base. According to the San Francisco Examiner, “the Giants appealed that Jim hadn’t retagged third base and for once the umps agreed.”3 The double play ended Houston’s threat.

No reason was given in the newspapers, but Astros skipper Lum Harris inserted Walt Bond for Gentile to play first base in the bottom half of the fourth. Hal Lanier tripled and scored on Bolin’s single to left. The Giants now owned a six-run lead.

Houston finally scored in the sixth. Maye tripled and Joe Morgan walked. Jim Wynn’s sacrifice fly to center plated Maye. Bond followed with a home run, well beyond the right-field fence, and Houston now trailed by just three runs.

Nothing happened for each team’s next two turns at bat. In the bottom of the eighth inning, the Giants doubled their run total. Taylor loaded the bases on singles by Gabrielson and Tom Haller and a walk to Lanier. Bolin grounded out to second baseman Morgan for his second RBI of the game. Schofield doubled to drive in Lanier and Haller. The deciding blows came when Mays and McCovey smacked back-to-back homers over the fence in right. This was the 498th career home run of Mays’ 15-year career.4 According to the San Francisco Examiner, McCovey’s tape-measure blast, his 33rd of the season, traveled “almost 500 feet.”5

Then came the frightening moment, as “everyone in the park but Jim Hart must have known what was going to happen on Astro hurler Ron Taylor’s next pitch.”6 Curley Grieve, sports editor for the Examiner, detailed how Hart “went down in a heap”7 to avoid Taylor’s pitch, which just missed his head. Hart grounded out to Morgan to end the inning.

Bolin approached the mound in the ninth with a nine-run lead. His manager, Herman Franks, brought in a few defensive substitutions. Bob Burda replaced McCovey and Matty Alou entered for Mays.8 Bolin had pitched only two three-up, three-down innings, and in the ninth he faced four batters, yielding a one-out single to Eddie Kasko. Joe Gaines pinch-hit for Taylor and, with his team trailing by nine runs, sacrificed Kasko to second with a bunt. Bolin struck out Maye to end the game, notching his ninth win of the season. In the clubhouse, the pitcher said, “That was the big game of the year for me. I wasn’t especially fast, but I had good control.”9

Every San Francisco starter except Hart participated in the 15-hit attack. Mays was 3-for-5, with three runs scored and five runs batted in. Jesus Alou had three singles, and Schofield, McCovey, and Gabrielson each added two hits. San Francisco had won its fifth game in a row.10

The Dodgers played even better than the Giants down the stretch and secured the pennant with a 97-65 record. (The Giants finished 95-67, two games behind.)

With his five runs batted in, Mays had 98 for the season. This was second-best in the National League, behind Cincinnati’s Deron Johnson, who had 116.11 Further, with 25 scheduled games left in the season,12 reporters started speculating whether Mays could break his personal record of 51 home runs in a single season, set in 1955 when he led the National League. He was just two homers shy of 47, the number of round-trippers he hit in 1964 to lead the league.13 After the game, Mays told reporters, “These last 25 games are going to be real tough. I think I can do the club better when I get a day off.”14 Mays played in 24 of those 25 games. His average dropped four points to .317, his on-base percentage stayed the same (.398), but his slugging percentage fell from .662 to .645.

The Say Hey Kid hit seven more home runs to finish 1965 with 52, setting a new season high. That gave him 505 for his career. The NL record for career homers was 511, set by New York Giants slugger Mel Ott.15 From 1960 through 1965, in just six seasons, Mays clobbered 255 home runs, more than half his career total. In 1965 he led all players in the majors with an 11.2 WAR and 1.043 OPS, and he was rewarded with his second Most Valuable Player Award, beating three Dodgers stars.16

SOURCES

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, MLB.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN196509080.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B09080SFN1965.htm

NOTES

1  Houston won just five of its final 22 games of the season, finishing the National League in ninth place.

2  Harry Jupiter, “Fifth Straight Keeps SF on Top,” San Francisco Examiner, September 9, 1965: 59. The Giants had not scored more than nine runs in a game since August 15.

3  Jupiter.

4  Mays hit number 499 four days later (September 12), in the second game of a doubleheader against the Chicago Cubs. On the next day (September 13), he launched his 500th career home run, against the Astros, also off Houston’s Nottebart. Mays became the fifth major-league slugger to belt 500 career home runs, after Babe Ruth (August 11, 1929), Jimmie Foxx (September 24, 1940), Mel Ott (August 1, 1945), and Ted Williams (June 17, 1960).

5  Jupiter.

6  Curley Grieve, “Giants Played Like Flag Winner,” San Francisco Examiner, September 9, 1965: 61.

7  Grieve.

8  Matty Alou took over in right field, and Ken Henderson moved from right to play center for Mays.

9  “Mays Moves Within 2 of 500-Homer Club,” Corpus Christi Times September 9, 1965: 25.

10 The Giants’ win streak grew to 14 straight before a September 17 loss to Milwaukee.

11 As of the end of play on September 8, 1965. Johnson finished the season with 130 RBIs, best in the National League. Cincinnati’s Frank Robinson was second with 113, while Mays was third with 112.

12 The Giants played 163 games in 1965. On August 25 they tied the Pittsburgh Pirates.

13 Mays led the NL in home runs in 1964 with 47, and he led all major leagues in both 1955 (51 home runs) and 1962 (49).

14 Corpus Christi Times.

15 With the 52 home runs in 1965, Mays’ career total stood at 505. On April 24, 1966, he launched his 511th career round-tripper, off Houston’s Jim Owens (see https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/event_hr.fcgi?t=b&id=mayswi01 for Mays’ career home-run log). On May 4 Mays hit an opposite-field homer off Los Angeles Dodgers hurler Claude Osteen, in front of the home crowd at Candlestick Park, giving him the record for most home runs hit in the National League.

16 Mays finished with 224 Vote Points, while Los Angeles’ Sandy Koufax had 177, Maury Wills had 164, and Don Drysdale had 77. Cincinnati’s Johnson finished fourth in the voting with 108 points.