This year, 1964, it was a different Phillies team altogether. They had been in first place most of the season, and now in September it looked like they were going to be the National League champions for sure. We all talked about it in school.
The Phillies were a young team, led by veteran outfielder Johnny Callison, revered by Phillies fans as much as Mickey Mantle was by Yankees fans in New York. My neighbors Butch and Billy Clay talked about how great Johnny Callison was all of the time. From what I had read in the Bulletin, they were right. Johnny Callison was hitting a ton of homers and he played an almost flawless right field. Yeah, the Phillies had a star in Johnny Callison alright.
The main thing that was different about the 1964 Phillies wasn’t just the players’ ages. They actually had a team that was made up of guys who were black, white and most of all, they had quite a few Latin-American ballplayers.
(left to right)Cookie Rojas, Johnny Callison, Richie Allen, Gene Mauch
There was a player who looked like he would be a superstar as well, and for the first time in the Phillies’ history, he was black.
Richie Allen was having a great year, and the Philadelphia papers and newscasts were all touting him as candidate for Rookie of the Year for the National League. He wasn’t the greatest third baseman, that’s for sure, but he was clobbering the ball. Allen was hitting for average, driving in runs, and blasting out just as many home runs as Johnny Callison. It was pretty amazing listening to white kids praising a black baseball player, especially a Phillie, but it was happening, right here, right now.
The Spanish-speaking players were fan favorites as well. Tony Gonzalez was one of the best center fielders in baseball, and little Cookie Rojas was proving that utility players were just as valuable as the regular guys. He was hitting the ball well too, batting close to .300 for most of the season.
Phillies fans weren’t used to success. It was expected that they’d lose every year. My father and all our neighbors never thought in a million years that the Phillies would stay in first place almost all summer long, but here they were on September 20th with a six and a half game lead and just twelve games left to go. All they have to do is win six games, that’s all. Just six games and the championship would be theirs.
But something happened. Some Phillies fans probably said it was bound to happen. Things began to unravel, and we saw it on TV and listened to it on the radio.
On September 21st the Phils lost a 1-0 game to the Reds because a utility infielder named Chico Ruiz decided to do the unexpected. He stole home plate all on his own. He just did it, surprising his manager and his teammates as much as he surprised the Phillies. From that night on and for nine more games, the Phillies just couldn’t win no matter how hard they tried.
They began making a lot of errors and balls that seemed routine would suddenly take a bad hop or hit a rock, and before they knew it, the other team was way ahead. It seemed like everyone stopped hitting except for Allen and Callison, and they couldn’t be expected to do it all.
For some reason or another, the Phillies manager, Gene Mauch, suddenly changed the way he used his pitchers. It seemed like all he wanted to do was play Jim Bunning and Chris Short, like Art Mahaffey and Ray Culp or even Rick Wise didn’t even exist. The sports announcers were all saying that Gene Mauch was wearing his best pitchers out, and the losses were piling up. The fans were losing their patience and their confidence, and they began to boo, and I mean boo.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on television. The Phillies were falling apart. I saw them blow big leads and fail to take advantage of every opportunity they had to win a game. It was like I was watching an entirely different team than what I had seen all summer. They had become what every Phillies fan had expected, a major-league disappointment.
Six games-that’s all they needed to win. They lost ten in a row, and now the St. Louis Cardinals were in first place with just two games left to play.
The Phillies still had a chance. If they could beat the Reds and the Cardinals lost to the Mets, then the Phils, Reds and Cardinals would end up in a three-way tie for first, leading to a playoff to see who would go to the World Series.
This was exciting to me, I don’t think this had ever happened before, a three way tie for first place. You could just feel the tension in my neighbors. The Clays were pretty rabid Phillies fans, and you could hear Mrs. Avis screaming at the television all during the losing streak.
Well, the Phils got lucky. On Friday, October 2, they squeezed out a 4-3 win over the Reds and the lowly Mets destroyed the Cards 15-5. All the Phillies had to do was win on Saturday and hope that the Mets could pull off another victory over the Cardinals.
Maybe it was just fate or bad luck or maybe just because it’s Philadelphia.
The Phils clobbered the Reds, 10-0.
But the Cardinals beat the Mets, 11-5.
Butch and Billy Clay were stunned.
Mrs. Avis was hoarse from all the yelling.
Phillies fans everywhere just couldn’t believe it.
The sportswriters were pointing their fingers.
I didn’t feel too bad, after all my team, the Yankees, were going to the World Series, and I figured they’d beat the pants off of the Cardinals, so that would even the score.
It was a shame what happened.
A season full of so much hope and so much promise.
For a change Phillies fans had an exciting season, but it ended the way all seasons had.
In bitter disappointment.
“There was no joy in Mudville......”
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