To me, it's a remarkable coincidence that the best teams are always the ones from twenty years ago. Win the World Series tomorrow, you're a footnote to history; win the World Series in 1965, and you're knocking on the door to immortality. Does this bother anybody else?

Back in 1985 or '86, the Orioles were playing the White Sox at old Comiskey Park in Chicago, and I got to talking baseball with Don Drysdale, the late, great Dodger pitcher. At the time, Don was broadcasting for the White Sox, a club that had been hit hard by injuries to key people. As a result, the night we were in town, the Sox were fielding a decidedly nondescript lineup.

Drysdale was put off by the whole thing: not just the weak starting eight, but by how this anemic lineup reflected the woeful state of the game in general. It was a recurring theme I'd been hearing since I was eight years old.

As usual, I couldn't stay out of the discussion. And, as usual, I stuck up for the current guys.

I reminded Drysdale of his own world-champion Dodgers of 1965. Was it not true, I asked, that the leading home-run hitters for the Dodgers that year -- "Sweet" Lou Johnson and Jim Lefebvre -- each had crashed a total of twelve big flies?

Wasn't it true that Willie Davis, the Dodgers' third-place hitter -- the spot usually reserved for the team's best, most potent bat -- had a batting average of .238?

And -- I was on a roll now -- wasn't it true that the Dodger with the highest slugging average during the vaunted '65 season was...Don Drysdale? At .508, his slugging average was the only one on the team above .400. With seven home runs to his credit, Drysdale should have been hitting cleanup on that team. (Actually, I didn't bring up this point with Don -- I just looked it up. And I'm sad I can't bring it up to him now; he was a good man and I miss him.)

Finally, I asked Drysdale whether after the Dodgers won the World Series that year, many of the old-timers of the 1930s and '40s had cried out about how this proved that the current state of the game (in the sixties) was in the toilet? You know the quote: "Back in the old days, if you didn't hit three-hundred, you got sent out to the minor leagues. Look at these Dodgers today. Nobody knows how to hit the ball. It's a disgrace." Yet, just twenty years later, there was Don saying almost the same thing about a club in Chicago. Ah yes, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

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