Turn back the clock 1962: when the Giants lost a heartbreaker to Yankees: after a down-to-the-wire pennant race with the rival Dodgers, San Francisco bowed to New York in an exciting World Series

Baseball Digest, Oct, 2002 by David Bush

They came back for the playoffs. Pierce shut out the Dodgers in Game 1 at Candlestick, but the Dodgers won the next day in L.A. to set up the pennant game in Dodger Stadium.

The Giants trailed, 4-2, entering the ninth but scored four runs, driven in by an infield hit, a sacrifice fly, a bases-loaded walk and an error. Not exactly stylish, but the Giants took it and met the Yankees in the World Series.

New York won the first game, but Sanford's three-hit shutout tied it before the Series moved east. The Yankees won two of three tense games in New York, but, after waiting out three days of rain, Pierce's Candlestick mastery forced Game 7.

Sanford and the Yankees' Ralph Terry waged a classic, the only run scoring on a double-play grounder. The Giants had just two hits entering the ninth, which Matty Alou led off with a bunt single.

Two outs later he was still at first when Mays doubled into the right-field corner. Alou was held at third.

"The field was wet and it slowed the ball down," Mays said. "Roger Maris was able to get to it. On a dry field, the run scores."

But it didn't and McCovey ended the game but not the memories.

"When the playoffs ended in Dodger Stadium I had never seen a big crowd get so quiet so fast," Simmons said. "Then two weeks later at Candlestick it was the same thing. Everybody was sitting there, stunned, saying to themselves, `It can't end, it's not over.'"

PUTTING SAND IN MAURY WILLS' TANK

IN 1962, THE DODGERS' OFFENSE WAS BUILT AROUND PITCHING AND THE SPEED OF SHORTSTOP MAURY Wills, who stole a record 104 bases that year.

One way the Giants tried to slow him down, at least according to the Dodgers, was to give him a muddy track. When the teams met at Candlestick Park in July, Wills noticed that the area around first base was wetter than normal and complained. The umpires took note, but not much was done.

When the Dodgers returned in August, they found first base to be almost under water. The Giants' grounds crew had turned the hose on it a little too enthusiastically to suit the Dodgers, who accused Giants manager Alvin Dark.

"The thing about that was not so much that they wet it down, but then the Dodgers complained and when they did the umpires would put sand around there and that's what Dark wanted," recalled announcer Lon Simmons. "The wet wasn't going to stop Wills, but the sand would, or at least it would slow him down."

Pitcher Billy O'Dell remembers the pile of sand. "The groundskeeper brought out the dirt and said, 'Where do you want it?' And he dumped it in a pile. And then Wills was about knee deep in it and then he really did holler."

Which got him ejected from the series opener, a move that helped the Giants.

To this day, Dark, nicknamed Swampfox for his alleged shenanigans, has a "Who, me?" attitude. "I just remember that one day they had trouble with a hose that broke," Dark said.

At least one of his own players didn't appreciate the field alteration.

"I hated it as much as they did," said first baseman Willie McCovey. "I was slipping and sliding every time I went after a ball."