2022 Phillies Post-Season Campaign Discussion

[zambonir]

My path is usually to see "all new posts" so once someone made one, there it was!

[zambonir]

Got to leave my Phillies hat on (metaphorically speaking) while writing an Astros story

The Astros Beat the Team That Put Up a Statue of His Dad—and He Loves It

[EastFallowfield]

Via The Good Phight, Phils are the only team exactly at .500 in their postseason history.

And for the era of Phillies baseball that pretty much intersects with the seasons I've been old enough to remember some of...

Since 1973, their regular season record is still not stellar: a .503 W-L%, which is ok, good enough for 10th best over that time.

But they’ve had more than their share of postseason action over those last 50 years:

only 7 teams have more postseason appearances: NYY, LAD, ATL, STL, OAK, BOS, HOU
only 3 have more League championships (and therefore WS appearances): NYY, LAD, STL
only 7 have more WS championships: NYY, BOS, OAK, LAD, CIN, SFG, STL

[julio]

And for the era of Phillies baseball that pretty much intersects with the seasons I've been old enough to remember some of...

Given that, prior to 1976, the Phils hadn't appeared in a post-season game since 1950, I wonder if any of us here has any personal memory of Phils post-season appearances pre-1976. Very few of us were born before 1950. Anybody who does remember 1950 want to chime in?

[EastFallowfield]

My first in person memories are vague ones of Connie Mack, first vague TV memory is Rick Wise no hitter, but have always thought my first real memories of following baseball were formed around 1972-74, remembering the A's being the team in the WS for a few years when you'd come home from school and it was on TV, so the idea that the Phils are over .500 since 1973 balances out a bunch of that 'losingest franchise ever' stuff you get sent your way.

[julio]

have always thought my first real memories of following baseball were formed around 197,

Umm... Is that 197 CE ,or 197 BCE?

Seriously, that was the early 1970s...about the same time as mine (well, I have some rather fuzzy memory of Phils games on TV in the late 60s, but I was indifferent to it at the time). The opening of the Vet, kids like Bowa and Schmidt (and Don Money, Roger Freed, Joe Lis, Larry Hisle, etc.). I know we have some folks here who were actively engaged fans in the 60s (CD immediately comes to mind). I was ten years old in 1964, but not watching baseball on TV (which was only possible on weekend afternoons); I was outside, playing with a rubber "baseball," or at the community pool, or on my bike, or traipsing through the woods (rural PA, you know). I became a serious fan when the games became regularly available to a rural, central PA community... a little before 1970, if I remember correctly.

[allentown]

I have vague memory of listening to 1950 WS with my dad. Perhaps more accurate to say I have memories of my dad unhappily talking back at the radio and criticizing players. I was 3-1/2 so couldn't have reached any conclusions of my own. I do remember following the Phillies myself during the mid-50s onward and wondering why our rivals had Black stars and the Phillies didn't. I also remember thinking that the Phillies went from the W.S. to awful very fast.

[miker]

My first "game" memory was a game at Connie Mack in the late 60's. I remember a player named Ricardo Joseph hitting a game winning HR so it must have been 67 or 68 because my father said Joseph was a rookie. I think Koosman may have been the opposing pitcher, but I may be wrong about that. I became a Ricardo Joseph fan, but his career did not really take off.

[EastFallowfield]

Umm... Is that 197 CE ,or 197 BCE?

I fixed the typo, sorry!

[Austinfan]

I first followed the Phillies in 1964, as a nine year old.
As you can imagine, I was emotionally scarred for life.

[zambonir]

Yeah I think that's the obvious dividing line. As well as a different baseball world (in that, just four seasons later, they still would have made the NLCS).

I think a lot of us internalized that (as well as other history) growing up with the '70s teams, even though we actually had it good. I remember the pain of those two series losses to the Dodgers (the Reds less so) but those were still great teams, and they eventually got theirs. 1984-2004 was a whole new wilderness though, with that one little blip.

[RTaylor]

I started following in the aftermath of 64 when the team was bringing in veterans to fill in around the core of Allen, Callison, White, Bunning, and Short. My dad and I saw lot of games at Connie Mack, but I followed the team mostly via By, Bill, and Riche and their successors on the radio. I loved Cookie Rojas and Tony Taylor.

[tom81]

I first followed the Phillies in 1964, as a nine year old.
As you can imagine, I was emotionally scarred for life.

Same here AF, on all three counts.

[Sabin]

have always thought my first real memories of following baseball were formed around 197,

Umm... Is that 197 CE ,or 197 BCE?

Lol, beat me to it. (I'm still a ways down the road, but catching up a bit).

[California_Dreamin]

Ahhhh, 1964...anyone who has read more than 5 posts of mine over the years knows my fixation with the 1964 team. I looked it up via retrosheet, and I honestly can remember and talk confidently and coherently about at least 120 of their games that year. I was 9 going on 10 and even remember the night I became a Phillies phan.

It was the last Saturday night game of 1963 and the Phils were completing their season in Los Angeles against the eventual World Champion Dodgers. Growing up in Northern California, I discovered that at night I could catch the Dodgers on 50,000 Watt KFI and decided to hear the game. Phils not only won 12-3 behind lefty Dennis Bennett, who homered. but celebrated the coming out party of a young, then LFer named Richie Allen, who went 3-4 and received effusive praise from Dodger announcers Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett.

Anyways, after the game they interviewed then Dodger GM, Buzzie Bavasi, about the upcoming World Series against the Yankees. I will never forget Bavasi's words, "the National League ought to just send the Phillies because right now they are the best team in the league." To my surprise, he was correct. After the following days 3-1 Phillie win behind Art Mahaffey and Chris Short, the Phils finished 87-75, good for 4th place in the tough NL [Dodgers, Giants and Cards were great that year] but recorded a 56-35 pace to end the season.

I adopted them that night, and was quite excited when in December of '63 they acquired righty Jim Bunning from Detroit. With Bunning joining Bennett, Mahaffey, Short, rookie of the year Ray Culp, veteran Cal McLish and youngster Dallas Green it appeared the '64 team would have 7 starting pitchers.

They started strong at 10-2 and ping ponged back and forth between 1st and 2nd place during the first half of the season with the Giants. Because the Giants were my home team [though I never liked them] I always got instant and first hand info on how the Phils were doing and to my everlasting joy, my dad took me to a Phils-Giants game at Candlestick Park on July 4. Aware of the baseball adage that whoever lead the league on the 4th would win the league, my enthusiasm reached fever pitch when Jim Bunning outpitched Gaylord Perry in a 5-2 win to end the day with a .5 game lead. It was also the day I saw Richie Allen perform in a way that to this day I consider him the be the best Phillie player I ever witnessed, even better than Mike Schmidt.

The Summer of '64, so many wonderful memories. Bunning's perfect game, Callison's game winning home run in the 64 All Star game, the comeback wins, the sheer joy a youngster felt at the possibility that a team newly loved would become a team newly crowned as NL champs for the first time since 1950. One game in particular that I recall was on a Saturday, July 25 when the Phils were playing the Cardinals and it was the NBC Game of the Week, featuring Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese as announcers. I had a Little League game that day but got home in time tow watch the bottom of the 9th inning, Phils trailing 10-2.

I will never forget that bottom of the 9th. Phils had scored 6 runs to make the score 10-8, had runners on first and third and still no outs. Rookie John Herrnstein hit a towering ball to the furthest part of Connie Mack Stadium, about 440 feet away. It looked for all the world like a game tying triple but Curt Flood made an amazing catch. Allen scored from 3rd base but rookie Alex Johnson, playing in his first major league game, got doubled up at 1st and the Phils lost 10-9. Considering the final standings, that catch proved quite important, thought at the time the Cards were 10 games out and not thought of as contenders.

Of course I remember nearly every detail of the final two weeks and to be honest, nothing in my young life ever prepared me for what those two weeks did to me. Nothing that ANY Phillie team has ever done since, not 1980, not '93, not '2008 or not even this season, can ever take away the devastation I felt when that season ended. the Phils a sadly beaten contender.

Writing has always been a proclivity of mine and I in fact wrote a book entitled The Days of Wine and Rojas about that team, written from a 9 year olds memory of that season. It was in honor of middle infielders Bobby Wine and Cookie Rojas and was well written and historically accurate. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it published because publishing companies said they had already published several books about that season and team. I had interviewed Gene Mauch [who was then manager of the Angels] and writer Stan Hochman, who covered that team for the Inquier.

Hoichman in particular shared some amazing stories about that season, many of which I wrote about in the book. One in particular that I found interesting...in Houston during the final West Coast trip of the season [Sept.14-16] several Phil players, including Chris Short and outfielder Wes Covington, purchased hunting rifles with their anticipated World Series shares upcoming. Johnny Callison was very unhappy about this and warned his teammates not to spend money not year earned. How prophetic he would prove to be!

Sorry for the length, but I could talk, and write, about the '64 Phillies forever.

[Austinfan]

I remember going to games at Connie Mack and seeing Dick Allen hit moonshots that went over the advertising sign on top of the roof on top of the upper deck in left center - I don't know how far those HRs went but they had to be close to some record distance - they would still be rising as they left the ball park.

Too bad they had a racist front office, what idiot sent Allen to Little Rock in 1963?

"In July of 1965, Frank Thomas, a white player known for racist remarks, hit Allen in the shoulder with a bat during a clubhouse altercation. Allen and other teammates were forbidden by league rule from giving their story in public. Meanwhile, Thomas was released — which allowed him to give a one-sided account to news outlets. Thomas’ retellings led many to believe the whole thing was Allen’s fault, and that Allen’s instigations had led to the team’s release of a popular white player."

Carpenter should have come out and supported Allen publicly, but the Carpenters were racist themselves.

Perhaps Carpenter’s greatest failure was his reluctance to sign black players. The Phillies were the last team to integrate in the National League when they debuted a rookie named John Kennedy in 1957 – a full decade after Jackie Robinson broke the color line. It wasn’t until the Phillies signed left fielder Wes Covington in 1961 that they had a starting player who was black.

Around this time, Phillies owner Robert Carpenter trotted out the same rationale for his all-White team that the Yankees and Senators had used. “I’m not opposed to Negro players. But I’m not going to hire a player of any color or nationality just to have him on the team,” he said, according to the “The Phillies Encyclopedia” by Rich Westcott and Frank Bilovsky.

The Phillies became the last National League team to integrate in 1957, when 30-year-old John Kennedy came into the game as a pinch runner. His career consisted of two at-bats across five games.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/13/jackie-robinson-mlb-integration-75h-years/

[Sabin]

I will never forget that bottom of the 9th. Phils had scored 6 runs to make the score 10-8, had runners on first and third and still no outs.

I wasn't aware Familia was with the Cards in '64.

[rpmcmurphy]

I also saw one of Dick Allen’s moon shots over the left field roof, but my favorite Connie Mack Stadium memory is sitting next to an old gentleman who told me that Wes Covington would hit a home run as he was coming up to the plate. Sure enough, Wes proceeded to hit one over the wall in right field, just to the right of that wonderful old Ballantine scoreboard. Wes was one of my favorites. I used to copy his unique batting stance when I’d play waffle ball with my friends in the back yard.

[BostonRoss]

I wonder whether phans whose first memories are of stretches of mediocrity or worse have different feelings over time than those who first started following successful teams. My experience started in the mid-1960s, with no memory of 1964, when the Phillies slipped from mediocrity to awfulness over about eight years. The first competitive teams I remember are from the mid-1970s, when I was a teenager, and I went off to college in Boston in 1976, right before the Phillies' first playoff experience of my life. My feeling is that I appreciated the Phillies successes more having lived through the bad times than if they had been good when I first started following them. My experience would be similar to folks who started following in the mid-1950s, or late 1990s, or even 8-10 years ago.

My kids who are Red Sox fans have endured a couple of last places finishes, but no stretches of mediocre or bad teams.

[California_Dreamin]

rpmcmurphy...speaking of Covington, file this one under the "what could have been" department. Everyone who knows of the 10 game losing streak that cost the '64 team the NL pennant is aware it started with the 1-0 loss to the Reds when Chico Ruiz stole home. And perhaps, because baseball lore is so important to the game of baseball it seems appropriate that the collapse occurred on such a rare and random play. Certainly has made Ruiz, an otherwise mediocre player, famous.

But what isn't well known is that the very same Wes Covington led off the bottom of the 9th with a towering fly ball that hit the TOP of that Ballantine scoreboard and bounced back...for a double. A few feet higher, tie game and given the proclivity of that team up to the game, they likely win at home and everything changes. In another piece of irony, Mauch ALWAYS bunted in that situation to move the runner to 3rd base but in this case he didn't. He instead allowed John Herrnstein to swing away and he popped up. Dalrymple then grounded out on a tough play made by then second baseman Pete Rose [which would have scored the run had he been at 3rd base] and Amaro struck out. Phils lost to John Tsitouris 1-0 and the collapse was on.

One more bit of irony. On the last day of the season the Phils beat that very same Tsitouris in Cincinnati 10-0.