Dateline: July 30, 2006.
The Philadelphia Phillies agree to
send Bobby Abreu (198 HR, .301 career
batting average) and Cory Lidle (41-25
career after the All-Star Break) to the
New York Yankees for four minor leaguers,
none of whom are top prospects,
nor have any have seen a day in the
major leagues.
By the ghost of William Penn, no
wonder these Phillie fans are always
pissed. Here they are, suffering a disappointing
season, yes, but they were only
5 games out of the wildcard race, ahead
of both the Atlanta Braves (their perennial
nemesis) and the Florida Marlins.
But the Braves have made aggressive
moves to bolster their bullpen, the
team’s biggest weakness, and the
Marlins have shrugged off popularly
held notions that their two best players –
Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis –
were for sale, and even managed to get
a mention in the endless Alfonso Soriano trade rumors floating around.
The Florida Marlins – buyers? And the
Phillies, despite having some of the
most awe-inspiring bats in the National
League with Abreu, Pat Burrell, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, are done.
If I’m a Philly fan, I’m saying “Where’s
Santa Claus? I’m going to boo his ass
something fierce! I’m gonna put a battery
in his brain! Not a watch battery, mind
you, not a D-cell, a freakin’ Die Hard! I’m
going out to my Durango and rip the
(blankety blank) battery out of that no good piece of (blank) and plant it in the
face of the next (blanking blank-hole) I
see. Hell, we can use my wife’s car for a
while, if we have to. It ought to get us
back and forth to my arraignment, anyways.
And, I’m canceling my season tickets!
AGAIN!”
The First “Phold” is the Hardest
Dateline: September 21, 1964.
The Phillies are six and a half games trip, flying in from Los Angeles the night
before. For you kiddies out there, this
was before the Wildcard. This was before
finishing in second place was socially
acceptable. This was before we had
three divisions, even, which explains how
the Cardinals, calling the Gateway to the
West their home, were in the Eastern
division of the NL on this date, looking up
at Philadelphia and their commanding
division lead with only 13 games left on
the schedule.
The Phillies lost that day, 1-0, to
Cincinnati, allowing the Reds to leapfrog
the Cards into second place. Chico Ruiz
scored the only run of the game on a
steal of home base, according to the
archived box score at Retrosheet.org. A
hard fought game, but a loss. The Phillies
lost the next day, too, and the day after
that, as the Reds swept the series. The
Cards couldn’t gain much ground,
though, and allowed the Giants to break
into a tie for third place.
Milwaukee comes to town to play the
Phils on September 24th. They win that
game, 5-3, and it wasn’t even as close as
it sounds - all Braves early, with 3
cosmetic runs for Philadelphia in the 8th.
For the Phillies, who had finished
dead last in the division from 1958-1961,
and who at this point had never won a
World Series, this was the Dream
Season. They were riding two young
up in the National League East, and
coming home after a long ten-day road talents in Dick Allen (29 HR, 91 RBI,
.318 BA) and Johnny Callison’s career
year (31 HR, 104 RBI), 22 and 25
years old, respectively, and the pitching
arm of Jim Bunning, who threw 284
innings of 2.63 ERA ball. These aren’t
household names on the order of
Mantle, Gibson, Rose and Musial, but
they were the best talents this team
had seen in a generation.
But the rest of the National League
refused to let Philly enjoy that dream.
The Braves pounded out three more
wins for a four-game sweep, and the
losing streak was now seven games for
the suddenly second-place Philadelphia
Phillies. There are only five games
left to salvage the season. The Reds
are now a game up, the Cards have
won five in a row and are a mere halfgame
behind. And the Phillies have to
travel to St. Louis, to play a team that
they have yet to take a series from in
this 1964 season. And they have to
match up against the dominating Bob
Gibson, Curt Simmons, and Ray
Sadecki, owners of a combined 53
wins so far, and somehow keep a
lineup featuring Curt Flood, Lou Brock,
Mike Shannon, Ken Boyer, Bill White
and Tim McCarver from running rings
around the basepaths.
Gibson dominates game 1, pitching
into the ninth as the Cards win 5-1. The
Phillies fall to third place in the division.
Santa Claus is shaving off his beard,
and dying his suit blue for this year’s
Christmas in the city of brotherly love.
Dennis Bennett, the Phillies’ starter
for game 2, gets roughed up for three
runs in the first two innings, and gets
the hook quickly. The game progresses
tensely, as the Phils get back two runs
on a two-out hit by Gus Triandos, the
backup catcher, in the fourth. The
Cards shut the door from there on out,
though, and nail down a 4-2 win to move into a tie for first place. Only
three games left now, and the Phils
stand a game and a half back of the
Cards, who have a game in hand. All
hope of winning the division outright
depends on winning this next game,
with their ace, Jim Bunning, on the
mound.
Bunning does not have his “A”
game. After a 1-2-3 first, Bunning
allows eight Redbirds hits from the
second inning to the fourth, including a
two-run home run to Tim McCarver, as
the Cards put an 8-0 lead in what turns
out to be an 8-4 win.
Santa Claus looks at his list of who
has still managed to be nice, and
wonders if he might just skip the Philadelphia
area altogether this year.
With only two games left, and the
Cardinals now two and a half games
ahead, all the Phillies can do is win out
and pray for a miracle. And it nearly
came – the Phils beat the Reds in their
game 161. The Cards lose games 160
(a stunning 1-0 defeat of Gibson) and
161 to the lowly New York Mets, worst
team in the majors that year, and now
are tied with the Reds atop the division.
If St. Louis loses, and Philadelphia
beats Cincy, they face a three-way tie
for first place with the Phillies and the
Reds!
Instead, Cincinnati falls to the Phils,
and Philly fans everywhere pray for the
Mets to win, an event that has possibly
never happened, before or since, on
this Earth. But it would not come. Curt
Simmons and Bob Gibson, both
pitching on extremely short rest and
predating Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson’s similar feat by nearly forty
years, throw four and four-plus innings
to ensure victory, 11-5 over the Metropolitans
and the rest of the National
League East.
Only Winning Heals What Time
Cannot
For the Philadelphia Phillies, who
are the longest-tenured team in professional
sports (i.e. they’ve had the same
name, and stayed in the same town all
this time), and who started their
franchise history with a Cubs-like 97-
year streak of not winning championships,
this was a painful, painful year.
But Dick Allen would eventually be
replaced by Mike Schmidt as the “best
Phillie of the modern era,” and a full
generation after this epic collapse,
Schmidt would eventually lead the
team to a World Series win – and deliverance
for this hard-bit bunch of fans.
This was in 1980, just weeks before the
Reagan era, and another uninterrupted
streak of Phutility, would begin.
Now, like the Democrats, the
Phillies are looking ahead to 2008 –
when Chase Utley, now 27, Ryan Howard,
now 25, and pitching phenom Cole Hamels, now 22, might all reach their
primes together. High-salaried players
like Abreu and Burrell are just ugly
reminders of the failed run at the
Braves of the past few years, and must
be sold at any price.
This unfortunate fire sale may not
compare to the devastation of the
“Phold” of 1964, as it was called in the
Philadelphia press, but it is still a gutpunch
for Philly fans, one of so many
that they’ve had to endure over the
past 116 years.
EDITOR's NOTE: St. Louis Game Time is the official print publication of The Birdhouse.
It can be purchased before all home games at the stadium and is also available
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