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This is Retro Sports Radio. Visit RetroSeasons.com for more sports history.

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Today my guest will be Don Drysdale, the star of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitching staff.

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A young fellow who, in my opinion, may one day be regarded as the finest hurler in the long history of the National League.

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I'll open my conversation with Don right after this important message.

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Don, I'd like to ask you this. Before the 1959 season started, most of the so-called experts were picking the Los Angeles Dodgers to finish no higher than fifth.

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Most of them were picking you for sixth. Surprising the people the way that you did.

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I wondered whether or not there was something that happened during the course of the year that gave you, the fellows, the idea that you did have a championship ball club.

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Well, Jack, I think that there were a few things that got us a little hot, you might say, when we went up to San Francisco.

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Everybody knew the beating that they'd given us in 58.

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And a sports writer happened to put in there about the Patsies from the South are back up in town again, say.

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So we had a little meeting about that.

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And I think, you know, little things like that have a tendency to kind of get a club, give it a boost a little bit.

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And I think that, well, that actually the club that we had in 59, Walt was just able to get as much out of everybody that he could and at the right time.

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I mean, you know that on any championship ball club that when a few of your players let off, there's got to be someone to come and pick them up.

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And that's just the way we had in last year when we brought Craig and Sherry up at the last part of the year,

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where they picked off where some of us had slacked off a little bit.

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And then Maury Wills got a chance to play there regular.

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And he had a real hot streak in that San Francisco series up in San Francisco, the one that we swept all three from at the end of the year.

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And it was just something that everybody contributed their part at the right time.

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That's you can just say that timing was right and it came at the most opportune time.

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And I know that when we got into the playoffs with Milwaukee, everybody knew that we could win because we've always had good luck against Milwaukee.

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And it was just, well, I don't know, it seemed that a lot of our attitudes was just to get those games over with and go on to the World Series.

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If we'd have lost it to it, it wouldn't have been like that.

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But that was the attitude of a lot of guys. We just knew that we were going to be in it. That's it.

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Don, I'm going out on the limb once again because I know the kind of a pitcher that you can be.

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But I think that Don Drysdale is going to be the best pitcher in baseball.

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Or Jackie. Thank you very much.

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Well, that just about does it for now, fans. See you soon.