Apr. 9, 1963 - Don Drysdale, a 25-game winner last year, opened the season by hurling the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 5-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs before 18,589 fans who braved 33-degree temperatures at Wrigley Field. It was so frigid that the penguins and the polar bears remained indoors at nearby Lincoln Park Zoo. The Cubs reached Drysdale for 11 hits, but the winner of the Cy Young award last season was helped by 3 double plays. Maury Wills, the Dodgers’ shortstop who stole a record 104 bases last year, left the game after the sixth inning with a jammed left ankle. He had singled and scored Los Angeles’s first run in the opening inning on an infield out by Tommy Davis. The speedster apparently injured the ankle in the third inning when he was nailed at the plate on a rare double play. Wills was on second and Nate Oliver on first with one out when Willie Davis hit a grounder to Ken Hubbs. Hubbs threw out Davis, and when Wills tried to score from second, the first baseman, Ernie Banks, doubled him at home. Wills’s ankle was put under ice packs, and it is doubtful he will be ready to play tomorrow, when Sandy Koufax will face right-hander Bob Buhl.
