Game 122, 2021

Mets at Dodgers, 7:10 PM PDT, TV: MLBN (Out-of-market only), SNY, SPNLA

The Mets start RHP Taijuan Walker (7-7, 3.75 ERA) while the Dodgers make this a bullpen game (again!).

On this date in Dodgers’ history:

  • 1955 For the sixth consecutive season, Robin Roberts is a 20-game winner. The Phillies right-hander, who will finish the season with a 23-14 record, beats Don Newcombe and the first place Dodgers at Connie Mack Stadium, 3-2.
  • 1957 Citing poor attendance as the reason, Giants’ president Horace Stoneham, ignoring baseball’s edict of banning announcements about relocation of franchises until after the World Series, informs the press the club has signed a lease to play its home games in San Francisco next season. The club’s Board of Directors voted 8-1 approving the shift to the West Coast, with the only dissenting vote cast by M. Donald Grant, who will become the chairman of the Mets, an expansion team located in New York to fill the National League void created by the departure of the Giants and Dodgers to California.
  • 2004 Pitching a perfect bottom of the ninth inning, John Smoltz establishes the franchise record with his 142nd save in a Braves uniform. The right-handed reliever surpasses Gene Garber as Atlanta beat the Dodgers in Los Angeles, 6-5.
  • 2008 The Dodgers reacquired Greg Maddux (6-9, 3.99) from the Padres for cash and two minor leaguers to be named or an additional monetary sum. The 42 year-old future Hall of Fame right-hander, obtained to help the club down the stretch run, played in LA for part of the 2006 season, winning six of nine decisions.

Lineup when available.

66 thoughts on “Game 122, 2021

  1. Today, while grocery shopping at Berkeley Bowl, I congratulated a guy with a Mets cap on yesterday’s game. He was from Brooklyn and, when I told him I was a Dodger fan, he said he gotten over his furor at Walter O’Malley and placed it on Robert Moses instead. Unprompted by me, had nothing but loathing for the Yanquis.

    • I’ve read about O’Malley’s decision to move the Dodgers west and have come to the conclusion that Moses, not O’Malley, bears most of the blame. In Robert Caro’s 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, ”The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.” which runs more than 1,000 pages, the only mention of O’Malley forms less than a sentence. It reads that Moses “ . . . killed, over the efforts of Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, plans for a City Sports Authority that might have kept the Dodgers and Giants in New York, and began happily to plan the housing projects that he had wanted on the sites of the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field all along. . . ” Moses, who was never elected to any public office, nonetheless ran NYC for decades, for better or worse, and held up to 12 official titles simultaneously.

  2. NL West records since the All-Star Game (not including today’s games):

    Giants 21-11
    Dodgers 19-11
    Rockies 15-15
    Diamondbacks 14-15
    Padres 14-16

    • Puds fading fast. Only 1 game up on the Reds for 2nd WC. Couldn’t happen to a more loathsome bunch. Unless it was the cheating Astros.

  3. The bullpen was looking fresh and sharp tonight. Thanks goes to Mitch White again!

  4. Wonder what the Dodgers record is in bullpen games? So many have been low scoring if I recall correctly.

    • If you define a laugher by winning by 6 runs or more, then the Dodgers have had 5 such games in their last 15.
      I know it’s not that simple of a definition, but it is still a pretty good ratio.