When the wind blows...

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Today: Stu Miller, a slender relief pitcher for the Giants, gets "blown off" the mound in the ninth inning of the 1961 All-Star Game at Candlestick Park.

For seven innings, the weather at Candlestick Park on July 11, 1961, was astoundingly good - hot and still, belying all the hype that preceded the All-Star Game that day about the already-notorious weather conditions at the second-year ballpark.

And then, ominously, the breeze started kicking up, rapidly becoming a swirling, churning vortex that would turn a slender relief pitcher named Stu Miller into a living testament to the inhospitable nature of Candlestick Park.

Legend has it that Miller, a Giants' reliever, was blown off the mound in the ninth inning. That it didn't quite happen that way is almost irrelevant, because the image fits so nicely into the stereotype that it has taken on a life of its own. Miller has tried over the years to set the record straight, but he's fighting a losing battle.

"There were only 40,000 people there that day, yet I've gotten about 100,000 people claim they saw it," Miller once said. "They talk like I was blown from the mound to the left-field fence."

What's lost in the myth-making is that Miller, a confounding junk-ball specialist, wound up being the winning pitcher in the National League's 5-4, 10-inning triumph that day in the first of two All-Star Games played that year. In the second one, at Boston's Fenway Park two weeks later, Miller struck out, in order, Mickey Mantle, Elston Howard and Roy Sievers.

The other factor that gets lost in the Miller lore is that they played a terrific game at Candlestick Park, despite the record seven errors that were committed, five by the NL.

The winning rally in the 10th, in which the NL overcame a 4-3 American League lead, was the work of some heavy-duty legends. Hank Aaron started it with a single off 37-year-old reliever Hoyt Wilhelm, whose knuckleball wasn't responding in the Candlestick gale. Willie Mays doubled home Aaron, and Roberto Clemente drove in Mays with an opposite-field single. Many baseball historians would take a Mays-Aaron-Clemente outfield and take on all comers.

Miller had entered the game in the ninth, replacing an up-and-coming pitcher named Sandy Koufax, in the midst of his breakthrough season with the Dodgers. But NL Manager Danny Murtaugh allowed Koufax to face just one batter, Al Kaline, who delivered an RBI single. With the NL leading 3-2 and runners on first and second, Miller came in to face Rocky Colavito.

Miller, who would compile a 14-5 record in relief that year, was just beginning his stretch when he got hit by a blast of wind, knocking him off balance and forcing him to stop his delivery. Umpire Stan Landes called Miller for the notorious balk, which helped the AL score the tying run on third baseman Ken Boyer's error.

"What can you do?" Miller said at the time. "It blew me off the rubber when I brought my hands down to my chest."

Another Boyer error allowed the AL to briefly take the lead off Miller in the 10th, but with Kaline on third base, Miller struck out Roger Maris, in the midst of his 61-homer season.

After the game, most of the talk naturally was about the wind, which made up for lost time. "I'd pitched in San Francisco five years, in Candlestick two years," Miller said in a 1984 interview. "That inning the wind was the worst I'd ever seen."

It would blow him straight into All-Star lore.

Larry Stone can be reached at 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com.