In the 1960s and again in the 1970s, the Dodgers unveiled two remarkable infield combinations that people would talk about into the next century. One was a novelty act, while the other was the real deal.
The Dodgers’ all-switch-hitting infield is one of the classic Dodgers stories of the ’60s, and the way people talk about it, you’d think it was a regular feature at the ballpark. Certainly, it was a renowned foursome: Wes Parker won Gold Gloves year after year, Jim Gilliam was royalty from Brooklyn, Maury Wills a base-stealing legend, and Jim Lefebvre an NL rookie of the year. Yet the four never even played a full season together.
Wills and Gilliam had been Dodgers since the 1950s, while Parker made his debut in ’64. Lefebvre graduated to the majors the following year, but newly acquired John Kennedy (coming from Washington with Claude Osteen) made the Opening Day start, not Gilliam, who had retired after the 1964 season to become a coach. But May 28, less than a month after Tommy Davis broke his ankle, Gilliam rejoined the active roster, and in the second game of a doubleheader on May 31, 1965, the four switch-hitters finally made their first ensemble start.
It wasn’t a rousing beginning, not with the quartet combining to go 2-for-13 in a 6–1 loss to the Reds. Though the four did make key contributions toward the Dodgers’ World Series title, they only made 69 starts that season as a unit. And by ’66, the phenomenon was already petering out. Nate Oliver opened the season at third base, leaving the switch-hitting group to start only 25 more games together, scattered throughout the year. Their final bow came in Game 2 of the Dodgers’ 1966 World Series drowning, when they went 1-for-13 with two walks in a 6–0 loss to Baltimore.
Gilliam retired from playing for good following the ’66 season, Wills went in trade to Montreal, and the Dodgers went into what was at the time a postseason drought.
By 1973, the Dodger infield set aside the switch-hitters but was no more stable, as second and third bases became revolving doors and shortstop only temporarily solidified after Wills came back to the team. But before fans even could realize it, the most steadfast baseball infield of all time was being born. When the Dodgers took the field in the second game of a June 23 doubleheader with Steve Garvey at first, Davey Lopes at second, Bill Russell at short, and Ron Cey at third, it was a grouping that came together almost as if by alchemy.
Russell was the first to establish himself—but only after he was converted from the outfield—by becoming a regular in 1972 and an All-Star game participant in ’73. Cey hadn’t even had 50 major league plate appearances before 1973 when he nailed down the job, while Lopes was already 27 when he made his major league debut the year before, an age that most players have either hit their prime or their ceiling.
The key change was Garvey. Bill Buckner had been getting the bulk of starts at first base, but Buckner could play left, while it was becoming most apparent that Garvey couldn’t play third—he made 28 errors in 85 games in 1972.
“I had always had a strong arm,” Garvey told Steve Delsohn for the latter’s oral history of the Dodgers, True Blue. “And then my freshman year at Michigan State, I separated my shoulder playing football. It was enough of a separation that I never threw quite the same again after that.
“But it may have been partly psychological, too. Because if I had to make a quick throw, if it was a quick play, boy, it would be on the money. Give me time and who knows where it would be going.”
Barely a year after moving from the trading block to first base, Garvey became the 1974 NL MVP and a perennial All-Star, giving the Dodgers solid and at times exceptional starters at all four infield positions, and for the rest of the decade, management could focus its energies elsewhere. This was no disparate bunch linked only by a rare confluence of ambidextrous ability. This was an infield—an infield that helped the Dodgers to three NL pennants in their first five full seasons together (1974–78), a period in which Dodger fortunes looked better than they had at any time since Sandy Koufax’s climactic press conference.
After a trashbin of a first half sunk the team in 1979, the team rallied in 1980, only to fall short in the season’s 163rd game. And then, all of a sudden it seemed, the ninth inning was arriving. By the time the infield returned from the 1981 players’ strike, it had passed the eight-year mark together, starting more than 1,000 games side-by-side-by-side-by-side. The game was finally close to ending. Lopes was now 36, and there was new blood in line to replace him in the form of prized prospect Steve Sax. Short of major reversal of fortune, this would be the infield’s last shot together.
The good news was that, thanks to MLB’s decision to split the season after the strike and award first-half NL West championship to the Dodgers, the team was guaranteed a playoff spot earlier than ever. Starting in July, the focus was October. And though it took a then-record 16 postseason games, they did it—Garvey, Cey, Lopes, and Russell could finally taste World Series champagne.
On February 8, 1982, 14 years after they drafted him, the Dodgers traded Lopes to Oakland for minor leaguer Lance Hudson, who never rose above Class AA ball. Though Lopes would remain productive into his 40s, Sax performed so ably that it helped convince the Dodgers to let Garvey go as a free agent and allow Albuquerque slugger Greg Brock to replace him after the 1982 season. Cey went to the Chicago Cubs in a trade for minor leaguers Vance Lovelace (who years later became a special assistant to the general manager with the Dodgers) and Dan Cataline the following month.
At the end, the last man standing was the first man standing: Bill Russell, the all-time Los Angeles Dodgers leader in games played, a future coach, and a future manager. An era, however, was over.