Status Updates From Black and Blue: The Golden ...

It was a season of transition, in the nation as in the national pastime, a time of comings and goings. That year no American arrived more loudly than Frank Robinson, and none would depart more quietly than Sandy Koufax.

Scouts, gamblers, opponents: all season they had looked at the Orioles pitching staff with blinders, searching for totals that would have accrued to a single hurler had the burden not been so expertly shared. They had looked at the parts, not the sum. Searching for exclamation points, they had overlooked the words.