June 24, 1964 - The Baltimore Orioles took advantage of two eighth-inning New York errors to score three unearned runs and deal the Yankees a second consecutive defeat today, 7-4, before 34,528 wildly delirious fans at Memorial Stadium.
Stan Williams (right with Elston Howard), former Dodger righthander, threw wildly to third base and then to first base on successive bunt efforts, enabling the Orioles to snap a 4-4 tie and use the victory to lengthen their first-place American League margin to 1½ games over the 1963 A.L. champs.
The O’s had jumped off to a four-run lead at the expense of Whitey Ford in the first two innings, but the Yankees had come back with four tallies of their own to knot the score at Robin Roberts’ expense in the fourth.
Finally came the last of the eighth, when John Orsino aroused the fans with a lead-off single to left. Bob Saverine trotted to first as a pinch runner.
Jerry Adair twice bunted foul before slicing a single to right, Roger Maris racing in to play the ball on the first bounce and hold the cautious Saverine at second.
Here, Willie Kirkland dropped a bunt to the left side, and Williams had a force at third — if he threw the ball accurately. Instead, he fired wildly past Phil Linz, the Yankee third baseman, and before the ball was retrieved and returned to the infield, Saverine and Adair were across and Kirkland reached third.
In this spot, Hall squared to bunt, the whole Yankee infield charged, and the ball was a beauty — past Williams to unoccupied ground toward second. Kirkland scored as Williams grabbed the ball and flipped wildly past first baseman Joe Pepitone. Hall raced all the way to third on the play, which was scored a single and an error. No more runs were scored, but the Birds had their three-run lead.
After the game, Baltimore manager Hank Bauer disclaimed the suggestion of one reporter that the Orioles might have been getting tip-offs on Whitey Ford’s pitches after the Birds bombed the visitors’ ace for seven hits and four runs in two innings.
“Honest,” said the manager of the first-place Flock, crossing his heart. “You just don’t read Whitey Ford’s pitches.”
“I wondered about that possibility too,” reflected the 35-year-old Ford, owner of a 28-13 lifetime record versus the Orioles, “but only until I got back in our locker room and thought about what I did wrong. I was throwing everything too high. Brandt hit his home run on a pitch that was up, Powell singled on another one, and a couple other hits were on bad pitches.”
What was Bauer’s reaction when he saw Stan Williams’ wild peg into left field transform Kirkland’s eighth-inning bunt into the pay-off rally?
“As Casey Stengel used to say, ‘Run, sheep, run!’” replied Bauer.
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