A few minutes before Robert F. Kennedy was shot by an assassin 40 years ago, he was talking baseball, expressing his “high regard to Don Drysdale, who pitched his sixth straight shutout tonight.” He added, “And I hope that we have as good fortune in our campaign.”

Kennedy spoke after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. Drysdale pitched for the Dodgers. The recent anniversary of Kennedy’s death was another in a flow of memories from a tumultuous year, not all of it happy nostalgia.

It is appropriate that it was an extraordinary year for baseball, the Year of the Pitcher with nothing like it before or since, as Drysdale sparkled alongside stars like Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, Luis Tiant and Mickey Lolich.

“You didn’t realize what was happening that year until it was over,” said Frank Robinson, a Hall of Fame hitter who played that season for Baltimore. “All of a sudden, after the season, you’d look up and say, ‘Wow!’ ”