Aug. 2, 1963 - Robin Roberts, given his unconditional release by the Yankees early last season, sat sweaty before his Oriole locker tonight at Yankee Stadium and sucked happily on a bottle of beer. He had just beaten the Yanks again, 5-3, and that makes him 3-0 over them during his relatively short career in the A.L. He has won 254 games in the majors, and only 3 of them over the Yankees, but wasn’t there someting special about those three? It was a leading question — an old trick designed to get the ballplayer to say how sweet it is to beat a club which let him go. But Robby is a little too smart and a little too classy to fall for it. “You mean,” he said, “I’m showing them? No, I’m not showing them. I didn’t show them when I had a chance to. Sure, I would like to have stayed with the Yanks; who wouldn’t? But I just didn’t perform for them.” He said he had hung a curve for Bobby Richardson’s two-run homer in the third, and that it was a chnageup Joe Pepitone drove into the upper right stands, just fair. Those were the Yankee runs, and aside from that, they got only five hits altogether. Over on the Yankee side, Whitey Ford, tonight’s loser, had showered and gone, and so manager Ralph Houk did the explaining. “The story of tonight’s game was the great plays made on each side,” Houk said, naming half a dozen players on each team who turned in defensive gems. “Whitey had real good stuff, and that’s proved by his striking out eight in seven innings. He doesn’t strike them out like that unless he’s got his good stuff. That ball Boog Powell hit out was a hanging curve.” Powell’s homer to open tonight’s scoring in the first inning was his 15th of the season, and the resulting RBI was his 54th. “Roberts pitched a good game,” Houk continued. “He moved the ball around real well although we hit a lot of good shots. He certainly shows the advantage of a pitcher who doesn’t walk anybody. What makes him tough is he’s a spot pitcher. He doesn’t make any mistakes. You can see he’s been around a long time. Control is his greatest asset. He’s beat us with three real good games.” The Yankees maintain a seven-game lead over the White Sox and eight over the Birds, but Houk isn’t counting his chickens. “Look at the Dodgers. It was hardly a week ago that they had a nine-game lead, and what was it this morning — 4½ games. With 58 games to go, those standings don’t mean much to me. We haven’t found anyone easy to beat.”
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