Thoughts on "Openers": The Boys of Summer

I can assure you that Sergio Romo is not the first relief pitcher to "open" a game.  I honestly don't know who might deserve that designation, but it was either Bill Henry on June 16, 1968 or someone who came before.  I was 11 years old and school was out.  Living in the mountains of Napa County, I didn't have a lot to do except listen to games on an old electric radio my grandfather gave me and throw balls at a pitchback in our yard.  If a game wasn't on, I might take a bat and ball down to the open field near our house and hit balls fungo style.  I would pretend I was the hitters in the Giants lineup and play a simulated game in my head batting right-handed for, say, Willie Mays and left-handed for Willie McCovey and so on down the lineup.  After each hit, I would chase the ball down, bring it back and pretend I was the next batter.

This was a game day and a doubleheader against the Mets.  I liked doubleheaders because it gave me something to do for almost a whole day.  The Giants won Game 1, 4-1, behind the pitching of Ray Sadecki who pitched a complete game and struck out 11 Mets batters and a pair of solo home runs by Willie Mays and Jack Hiatt.  I am sure I listened to at least parts of that game, although I have no recollection of ever listening to a Ray Sadecki game, ever.  What I never forgot about that day was the way Game 2 started.  There was an air of secrecy around who the Giants starting pitcher would be.  When it was announced between games, the big surprise was the name Bill Henry, a very little used lefty reliever.  My mind ran wild.  Was it possible the Giants had been sitting on the next Sandy Koufax all this time and this was his breakout game?  My memory of major league baseball was just a bit over 2 years old at the time, so little did I know that Henry had been pitching in the majors since 1952 and was 41 years old!

Giants radio announcers Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons hinted that some type of gamesmanship was going on between Giants Manager Herman Franks and Mets Manager Gil Hodges.  My memory of how the game went down is supplemented by the boxscore I found in Baseball Reference.  Henry started the game allowing a leadoff walk to the switch-hitting Don Bosch and a flyball out to the lefty hitting Ken Boswell.  Herman Franks then summoned the fireballing righty Bobby Bolin from the bullpen to face the RH hitting Cleon Jones.  Jones greeted him with an RBI double.  Bolin then threw 2 wild pitches allowing Jones to score.  Russ and Lon seemed to have a lot of fun explaining that Giants Manager Herman Franks was trying to deke Mets Manager Gil Hodges into putting up a more right-handed lineup before bringing in the real starter, Bolin angling for a matchup advantage.  For his part, Bolin settled down and only allowed one more run over the next 6 innings with 8 K's, but the damage was done.  It seemed to me the strategy had backfired.  Bolin was a swingman who should have been able to enter a game with runners on base, but his control was always tenuous at best and all the skullduggery, as Lon called it, seemed to get into his head.  The Giants went on to lose the game 3-1.

I still don't know if Herman Franks wanted to deke Gil Hodges or if he just wanted Henry to face the first two batters who hit switch and lefty.  In any case, the whole thing was a spectacular failure in my mind.  I don't recall ever seeing or hearing of it happening again until last year when Sergio Romo "opened" for the Rays.

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This is the first post in a series.  Not sure how many installments yet.  I'll just keep writing about "Openers" until I stop.