On July 2, 1963, Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn engaged in one of the greatest games ever pitched. It's certainly a game I'll never forget. Juan was twenty-five years old. Warren Spahn, at age forty-two, would win 23 games that year. They put nothing but goose eggs on the board for nine innings. Braves manager Bobby Bragan suggested Spahn should come out of the game. Who could ask for more? Spahn refused. Dark asked Juan if he had had enough. Juan replied, "A forty-two-year-old man is still pitching. I can't come out."

And so they kept on pitching scoreless ball, tossing shutout inning after shutout inning until the 16th, when Willie Mays hit a home run to win the game 1-0.

In 1964 we were involved in one of the most exciting pennant races ever. With two weeks to go, the Philadelphia Phillies led by rookie Richie Allen and John Callison and the pitching of Jim Bunning and Chris Short were ahead of the pack by 6 games. But suddenly the Phillies lost ten straight to hand the pennant to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Going into the final weekend we still had a chance. But so did the Cardinals and the Reds. A loss to the Cubs on the last Saturday of the season finished us off. The Reds were eliminated too.

The Cardinals marched into Shea Stadium needing to win only one of three games against the Mets, losers of 109 games that year. The Cardinals lost the first two games and trailed on the final Sunday before rallying to win the ballgame and the National League flag. It was the Cardinals' first National League pennant since 1946, and they went on to beat the New York Yankees in an exciting seven-game World Series.

We made history in 1964 when left-handed pitcher Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese-born player in the major leagues. He did a good job for us too. Over two years he had a 5-1 record with 100 strikeouts in 89 innings. I had played in Japan in 1960 and was very impressed by the quality of their ballplayers. They played hard and took the game seriously. But there would not be another Japanese player in the major leagues until Hideo Nomo was named Rookie of the Year for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995.

There were other milestones too. On May 31, 1964, we beat the Mets in a doubleheader that lasted a record ten hours. On the 10th day of July Jesus Alou went 6 for 6 in one game. Jim Ray Hart took over third base from Jim Davenport and set a Giants franchise rookie record in 1964 with 31 home runs. And Duke Snider completed his Hall of Fame career with the Giants in 1964, hitting just .210 in 167 at-bats.

Willie Mays topped the league with 47 home runs and drove in 111 runs. Juan Marichal was 21-8 with a league-leading 22 complete games. Gaylord Perry, in his first productive season, was 12-11 with a 2.75 ERA. I hit .304 to lead the team, with a .539 slugging average. For the third year in a row we led the National League with 165 home runs. My 31 homers (tied with Jim Hart and John Callison) was third-best in the National League behind Willie (47) and Billy Williams (33).

And Herman Franks replaced Alvin Dark as the Giants manager. Herman and I went back a long way. He had managed at Santurce when I was a fifteen-year-old kid working out with the club. He served as a coach for 1949-1955 in New York and came back to coach for Bill Rigney in 1958 when the team moved to San Francisco. Dark brought him back as a coach in 1964. Herman, who spoke Spanish, had a long history with the Giants. He also had a temper.

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