Apr. 30, 1963 - Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris played their first league game of the season side by side today as the Yankees opened a three-game series with the Angels before a Los Angeles crowd of 32,381. But the reunion of the M and M boys failed to bring about success. Bill Rigney’s Angels won this one, 6-3, with Ken McBride gaining his fourth straight triumph over the Bombers. To add to the crowd’s delight, ex-Dodger Stan Williams, who became Yankee property in a swap for Moose Skowron, failed to survive five innings in pinstripes. In fact, by the sixth the Angels held a 6-0 lead. The Yanks remained hitless for 6-and-a-third innings and didnt’ score until the eighth. But in the ninth they tossed a scare into the home folks when they rattled off four straight singles and sent McBride to the showers. Mantle and Maris, hitless to this point, connected for the first two hits. But after singles by Joe Pepitone and Elston Howard drove in a run each, Art Fowler choked off the rally and the game was done. Williams, the Yankees’ starter and loser, is still remembered in Los Angeles as the Dodger pitcher who walked in the winning run for the Giants the final playoff game last Oct. 3. Stan has since described that fourth ball as one that would be a perfect strike today with the enlarged strike zone. Unfortunately, it was tossed four months too soon. After the game, McBride was asked if it was his best game. “When you beat the Yanks, I guess you always say it’s your best,” said the winning pitcher, “but I had seven hitless innings against Chicago earlier this year, so I don’t know. I will say I had a good sinker — for the first time this season. In the last couple innings, though, I got tired, and the ball wasn’t sinking any more.” McBride exploded the myth that pitchers don’t know a no-hitter is in the making. “You always know it,” he remarked.
