Apr. 20, 1963 - Roy Sievers (pictured), whose big bat carried the Phillies to a 6-2 victory over the Cardinals today in Philadelphia, had to restrain his laughter in the clubhouse when teammates hung his special rib corset on a peg, labeled “Sievers — on to Cooperstown.” The rib, cracked by a pitch from the Reds’ Jim Maloney in spring training, still hurts. Among the 36-year-old Sievers’ other ailments is a pulled thigh muscle. But Roy, who once passed up a chance to sign with his hometown Cardinals, was almost the entire batting show as the Phils evened the series at a game apiece. After trying to start something with a leadoff single in the second, Sievers drove in two runs with a wind-blown triple off the right-field wall in the third inning. He then scored on Earl Averill’s single. Again in the fifth, Roy delivered, belting a double just inside the left-field line to drive in Don Demeter. Sievers went on to third when Ken Boyer’s relay hit Demeter on his way home, and Averill’s sacrifice scored Sievers. Sievers was retired in the seventh, but even then he came close to inflicting damage. He rapped a hot shot that caromed off reliever Bobby Shantz’s glove and hit the little pitcher on the jaw. Shantz did not ask for an eight-count. He merely shook off the blow and threw out Sievers. “I felt it all right, but I’m okay,” Shantz said later. He stayed in to pitch the rest of the game. In the Phillies’ dressing room, Sievers told how he almost signed with St. Louis in 1947. He remembered Walter Shannon, long a Cardinal front-office official, coming to his home almost every day for a year. “But the Cardinals had all kinds of first basemen then, and I didn’t figure to crack that outfield of Moore, Slaughter, and Musial right away,” Sievers said. “So, I felt my chance to move up fast was with the Browns.” Sievers later played for the Senators and the White Sox before moving to Philadelphia.
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