Early Wynn was a mean old cuss. He used to say, “I got a right to knock down anybody holding a bat.” He used that right with alacrity.*
*I am 100 percent sure that is the first time I have ever used the word alacrity.
There are two Wynn quotes I love — I’m not sure which one is right. One builds off the idea that Wynn would have knocked down his mother on Mother’s Day. “I would if she was crowding the plate,” he said.
The other is based on the notion that he would knock down his GRANDMOTHER. “Sure,” he said, “but you have to understand, my grandmother is a good hitter.”
When the Alabama team handed the ball to Early Wynn for Game 3 of the tense, close, nerve-wracking Alabama-Louisiana series, the one thing they knew was that he would not back down.
“I know that Louisiana lineup is a good one,” Wynn said. “I don’t underestimate them. They’ve beaten up on us a little bit. But this is the game that matters. And they better not get too comfortable in the box, that’s all I gotta say.”
The first two games were classics. Game 1 went into extra innings, as Louisiana’s Ron Guidry matched Satchel Paige inning for inning. But Alabama’s Double Duty Radcliffe led off the bottom of the 10th with a double — Louisiana never had any answers for Double Duty. He hit .583 for the series.
Guidry struck out the next two batters and got Billy Williams to hit a routine grounder to Louisiana second baseman Connie Ryan. But the ball skipped off Ryan’s glove and bounced a few feet away, and Williams was safe at first.
That brought up Willie Mays.
Errors that bring up Willie Mays tend to be the worst kinds of errors.
Mays promptly smashed a long, walk-off home run over the centerfield wall, and Alabama led the series 1-0.
“I’d struck out Mays twice and gotten him out four times,” Guidry would say after the game. “He was due. You’re not going to get Willie Mays out forever.”
The second game was the wildest of the Final Eight so far.