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| Tug McGraw and Mike Schmidt celebrating after the Tugger struck out Willie Wilson to win the 1980 World Series (photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Phillies) |
10:59 PM CST, Tuesday, October 21, 1980. My wife, Teri, and I were in Dallas, sitting in the living room of our friend, my fellow seminarian (and Philadelphian) Putter Cox, in rapt attention as Kansas City Royals outfielder Willie Wilson waved and missed at a Tug McGraw (sort of) fastball to strike out with the bases loaded to preserve a 4-1 Phillies victory and a 4-2 series victory, the first World Series crown in the 97-year history of the franchise―the last of the "original sixteen" teams to win the title, once the Baltimore Orioles (née St. Louis Browns) won their first crown in 1966. Immediately I rushed screaming, "Phillies," at the top of my estimable lungs into the Dallas night, where the clueless neighbors in the apartment complex―Dallas, to say the least, was not a baseball town―had no idea what this apparently deranged Yankee was up to. To this day, I consider this moment―not the '74 Flyers Stanley Cup, the '67 or '83 Sixers NBA titles, the '08 Phils World Series championship, or even the February '18 Eagles Super Bowl victory, the greatest in Philadelphia sports history. Even today, 41 years after the event, tears come to my eyes as I write about it.
But 1980 was different. The Flyers, winners of the Stanley Cup in both 1974 and 1975, continued to be powerhouses. Indeed, from October 13, 1979 through January 6, 1980, they went 25-0-10, setting a record for consecutive games without a loss. They went on to win the Clarence Campbell Conference before bowing to the New York Islanders, 4 games to 2, in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Sixers, meanwhile, were in year 3 of Julius Erving's promise of "We Owe You One" after blowing the 1977 championship series to Portland that they had led, 2 games to none. With the arrival of Larry Bird in Boston, things had become more difficult, and so, despite winning 59 games, they finished in second place, 2 games behind the Celtics. Surprisingly, however, they dispatched of Boston in 5 games in the Eastern Conference Finals before succumbing to Magic Johnson and the Lakers in the NBA Finals. The Eagles, meanwhile, who had last won the NFL championship in 1960, had only one winning season between 1961 and 1978, when they snuck in to the playoffs by securing a Wild Card berth with a 9-7 record. But after an 11-5 record and a Playoff win over the Bears in 1979, in October of 1980 they were in first place and on their way to their first Super Bowl. Indeed, on October 19, they met their arch rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, at Veterans Stadium, in a battle of 5-1 teams, and prevailed, 17-10, in a preview of the NFC Championship Game to come in three months time. I was very happy that afternoon. But the best was yet to come.
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| Pete Rose in action, 1979 (AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy) |
By contrast, in the summer of 1980, things didn't look so good for the Phillies. The core of the team remained from the great teams that won 101 games and the East Division titles in 1976-77, only to lose to the Big Red Machine in '76 and (in excruciating fashion) to the Dodgers in '77 (on that loss and its consequences, see my post here), and also the somewhat lesser divisional champions of 1978: Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt, Bob Boone, Larry Bowa, Garry Maddox, Greg Luzinski, Tug McGraw, Ron Reed, Larry Christenson. Bake McBride, the catalyst of the great '77 team, remained as well. After the noticeable decline of 1978, GM Paul Owens made a couple of significant moves in an attempt to upgrade the club. He traded for slick-fielding second baseman Manny Trillo and reserve outfielder Del Unser, who had previously played for the team back in the darker days of 1973-74. Most importantly, in perhaps the most consequential move of his great career, he signed 38-year old Pete Rose to a record, 4-year, $3.2 million free agent contract. Rose, Owens believed, was just what the doctor ordered to get the "too cool for their own good" Phils off their butts and light a fire under them to get them over the top. But things didn't work out as planned. Rose came as advertised. In '79, he hit .331 with a league-leading OBP of .418. Schmidt rebounded from his subpar '78 season to hit 45 homers and drive in 114 runs. But the team still finished 7th in the NL in runs scored and 10th in ERA (even the 18-game winning Carlton's was 3.63, only good enough for a 106 ERA+). When, after losing to the Reds on August 29, their 5th straight and 8 in 9 games, to fall to 65-67 on the season, 12.5 behind the Pirates and mired in 5th place, Owens did the unthinkable: he fired the player-friendly Danny Ozark and replaced him with the team's Director of Player of Development, former pitcher Dallas Green. Green was the polar opposite of Ozark: a screamer, confrontational, given to profanity-laced tirades, and not afraid to go public with his criticisms of players. Needless to say, the players didn't like it, but they rebounded to go 19-11 the rest of the way to finish 84-78, in 4th place, 14 games behind Pittsburgh.
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| Dallas Green (AP Photo) |
As the 1980 season began, management put the players on notice: win this year or else the team―the most talented and winningest team in franchise history―would be broken up. Yet they still were less than thrilled with Green's "rah rah," "we, not I" style. And the pundits didn't give the Phillies much of a chance, either. After all, the Pirates were the defending World Champions, and the youthful Expos were rising fast with up and coming stars approaching their primes such as future Hall of Famers Gary Carter and Andre Dawson, along with Ellis Valentine, Scott Sanderson and veteran starter Steve Rogers. And for much of the season, the pundits looked prescient. Sure, they hung around, bouncing around from 1st to 3rd place through the season's first four months. But they never got better than 9 games over .500, which they achieved three times, on June 18, July 12, and July 18. Each time they did so, they promptly hit the skids. Starting on June 19, they lost 7 of 9; beginning on July 13, they lost 3 straight; then, starting on July 19, they promptly lost 6 in a row to fall 4 behind the Bucs and 1.5 behind Montreal. Then, after a somnambulant 7-1 loss to Pittsburgh in the first game of a twin bill on August 10 to drop their record to 55-51, 5 games behind the Bucs and 5.5 behind the Expos, Green called a team meeting and lowered the boom with a profanity-laced tirade against their complacency and "cool" (a coded reference to Schmidt) that even Rose's incandescence couldn't overcome. If Green's meeting had any effect, it didn't show, as they put in yet another lackluster effort in the nightcap, losing 4-1 to fall 6 games off the pace. Even the great Daily News columnist, Ray Didinger, opined at the time that "The Phillies have about as much chance of winning the National League East as Ted Kennedy has of stealing the Democratic nomination away from Jimmy Carter." I rarely disagree with Ray Diddy, but for once, thankfully, he was mistaken.
As a result, the players called their own meeting the next day when they got to Chicago to play the Cubs. Forget Green, they decided. Let's play for ourselves, they vowed. And, for once, it worked. They went 36-19 the rest of the way (after losing 2 in a row badly to the Padres in San Diego on August 29-30, GM Owens himself called a meeting with the team to rip them in San Francisco before a 3-game series with the Giants on the 1st of September. They would go 23-11 the rest of the way). When, on October 2, they defeated the Cubs, 4-2, at the Vet, they moved into a tie with Montreal for the division lead. And it was off to Montreal for the final and decisive 3-game series of the year to decide who would win the NL East. On Friday, October 3, the Phillies drew first blood as Mike Schmidt drove in both runs with his 47th homer and a sac fly to support Dick Ruthven, with Tug McGraw providing a 6-out save, striking out 5 for good measure, in the Phils' 2-1 victory. Then, on Saturday, October 4, Bob Boone singled with 2 out in the 9th to drive in Rose with the tying run to send the game into extra frames. In the 11th inning, Rose led off with a single and, with one out, Schmidt hit the most important home run of his career to this point, a tape measure blast to left that gave the Phils the 6-4 win and the team's 4th divisional title in 5 years. McGraw got the win with 3 innings of 1-hit relief, striking out 4.
Credit for the Phils' title has rightly gone largely to Hall of Famers Schmidt and Steve Carlton. Schmidt had his finest season to date, smashing 48 homers, driving in 121 runs, and hitting a then-career-high .286 to go along with his Gold Glove defense. Most significantly, whether or not there was a causal correlation or not, he went on a tear after Green's tirade, hitting .338 and slugging .715, with 21 home runs and 48 RBI in his 56 games after August 11. Carlton, meanwhile, rebounded from his somewhat subpar '79 season to have his best year since 1972, going 24-9 with a 2.34 ERA and a league-leading 286 strikeouts. In the process, he become the last pitcher in MLB history to pitch 300 innings in a season, with 304 (not counting his work in the postseason). Schmidt's MVP and Carlton's Cy Young Awards were well-deserved and hardly surprising when given after the season.
Schmidt's and Carlton's great seasons were needed, in part, because many of the team's players, whether due to age or injury, had off seasons. Catcher Bob Boone hit only .229; Secretary of Defense Garry Maddox dropped 22 points to .259; Greg Luzinski, though only 29, continued his precipitous drop from his 1975-78 peak by hitting a measly .228 with 19 homers; even Rose seemed to show his age, with his average dropping 49 points to .282, its lowest point since 1964. Of the remaining starters, only Bake McBride (.309) and defensive wizard Larry Bowa (.267) batted to expectations.
But where some long-time starters faded, others on the roster picked up the slack, none more so than Tug McGraw, the gregarious Irishman who had his best season at age 35. McGraw appeared in 23 of the 55 games after August 11. In these appearances, he pitched 39.1 innings, allowed 23 hits, 5 walks, and allowed 1 earned run, striking out 33 batters, for an ERA of 0.22, winning 5 games and saving 9. In the decisive September-October run, the Tugger did not allow a run in his last 15 appearances, covering 25 innings. For the season, his ERA was a minuscule 1.47, earning him 5th place in the Cy Young voting. During the stretch run, Green also relied heavily on three rookies, outfielder Lonnie Smith, who hit .339 in 298 at bats; catcher Keith Moreland, who hit .314 in 159 at bats; and September call-up Marty Bystrom, who won all five of his starts down the stretch, finishing with a 1.50 ERA in 36 innings.
Thrilling as their pursuit of the Expos was, the Phils had no time to celebrate. On their plate in the NLCS was a formidable opponent, the Houston Astros, winners of the NL West with a 93-70 record after defeating the Dodgers in a one-game playoff. The Astros, playing in the spacious Astrodome, were masters of small ball, and had baseball's best pitching staff, even after their ace, J. R. Richard, suffered a stroke while on the mound in July. Their staff included starters Joe Niekro, Nolan Ryan, Ken Forsch, and Vern Ruhle, and shutdown relievers Joe Sambito, Dave Smith, and Frank LaCorte. What promised to be a fine series turned into the greatest series in postseason baseball history. [As an aside, game 3 was played on a Friday afternoon; at the time, I was a second year seminarian with a brutal academic schedule and a part-time afternoon job working at a downtown Dallas law firm, which I got to via bus; fortuitously, that week a transit strike was called, so I used that as an excuse not to go to work; instead, I watched the game on TV in a lounge at the school, where I was―sigh―the only one rooting for the Phillies.] After the Phillies won game 1, 3-1, behind Steve Carlton, games 2-5 all went into extra innings, the Phillies winning games 4 and 5 in Houston. Game 5 on Sunday, October 12, was particularly memorable, as the Phils entered the 8th down 5-2 against Nolan Ryan, before they rallied for 5 runs to take the lead, only for the Astros to tie it back up before Maddox doubled in the winning run in the 10th. The feisty Bowa, the longest-tenured Phillie (his tenure as the team's starting shortstop dated to 1970, the team's last at Connie Mack Stadium), who had started the rally against Ryan with a single, said that after the pressure of that series, he wasn't worried about the World Series. He knew they would win.
But the Kansas City Royals, winners of 97 games, who had slain their own demons by defeating their own nemesis, the 103-win New York Yankees, the very team that had defeated them in the ALCS in each of the three seasons of 1976-78, remained in the way of the Phillies'―and the city of Philadelphia's― dreams. And the series would begin in just two days, on Tuesday, the 14th, at Veteran's Stadium in South Philly. That blustery, cool evening there was "The Voice of God," NFL Films' (and Philadelphia's own) John Facenda opening the festivities; there was Philadelphia native Andrea McArdle, of "Annie" fame on Broadway, singing the National Anthem, there were 65,791 fans packing the Vet; and there was me, as well as millions of others of the vast Philadelphia diaspora throughout America, powering an unprecedented television viewership that night: 26 million households, and an astronomical 33.5 share of the national TV audience.
But the game began badly. Because Carlton had started on the 11th in game 4 of the Houston series, he was unavailable, so Green inserted Bob Walk, who had not pitched in the NLCS, and who, though he had a respectable 11-7 record during the regular season, sported a pedestrian, at best, ERA of 4.57. And the Royals struck early. Amos Otis smacked a 2-run homer in the 2nd and Willie Mays Aikens a 2-run blast in the 3rd, giving Kansas City and their 20-game winner Dennis Leonard a 4-0 lead going into the bottom of the 3rd. Then, with one out, Larry Bowa singled and, going against all received wisdom, stole second base to jumpstart the team. And jumpstart them he did. Bob Boone followed with a double to drive home Bowa. Lonnie Smith then singled to left, but was thrown out trying to stretch the hit to a double. Yet on the throw Booney scored, making it 4-2. After Rose was hit by a pitch and Schmitty walked, Bake McBride came up and slammed a 3-run blast over the fence in right to give the Phils a 5-4 lead they would not relinquish. McGraw once again pitched the final 2 innings to save the game for Walk. Game 1 to the Phils, 7-6.
In game 2, the Phils overcame an uncharacteristically shaky outing by Carlton (10 hits, 6 walks, 3 earned runs in 8 innings) by scoring 4 runs in the bottom of the 8th to go up, 2 games to none. The big blow was Mike Schmidt's game-winning double to right off Dan Quisenberry. For Schmitty, who had a brutal NLCS against Houston, including an 0-5 with 3 K's in the deciding game 5, it was decidedly a new series indeed.
But when the series moved to Kansas City for 3 games starting on Friday the 17th, things changed. Green's overuse of McGraw had started to take its toll on the affable lefty. Not only had the Tugger pitched 15 times (25 innings) in the season's stretch run, he had pitched in all 5 games of the NLCS and in game 1 of the World Series. In the 10th inning of game 3, Willie Aikens, who had hit 2 homers in game 1, singled in Willie Wilson, who had walked, with the winning run off McGraw. Then, in game 4, the Royals jumped all over Larry Christenson, scoring 4 runs in the 1st inning, as Aikens hit 2 more homers and the Royals evened the series with a 5-3 victory. This led to the pivotal game 5. Schmidt put the Phils up with a 2-run homer off Larry Gura in the 4th, but the Royals stormed back with 3 off Bystrom in the 5th and 6th to take a 3-2 lead. Which is where the score stayed until the top of the 9th inning, where the Phils once again rallied off the Royals' ace closer Quisenberry, who had won 12 games and led the majors with 33 saves during the regular season. A Schmidt single and Del Unser RBI double had tied the game, and then Manny Trillo lined a single off Quisenberry's leg for an infield single to give the Phils the lead, 4-3. Tug McGraw, in his second inning of work, would load the bases with walks, but finish the Royals off by striking out pinch hitter Jose Cardenal to send the series back to Philadelphia with the Phils on top, 3 games to 2.
In contrast to his game 2 start, Carlton had his best stuff in game 6. He had the Royals off balance all night. Through 7 innings, he had allowed no runs, only 3 hits and 2 walks, striking out 7. For their part, the Phils struck first in the bottom of the 3rd, when Mike Schmidt, with the bases loaded on a walk, an error, and a bunt single, ripped a line drive 2-RBI single to right center. The Phils would tack on insurance runs in the 5th on a Bake McBride groundout and in the 6th on a Bob Boone single. In the 8th, however, Carlton apparently tired under the weight of the 331.1 innings he had thus far pitched that season at the age of 35. He led off the inning by walking John Wathan and allowing a single to Jose Cardenal. So Green decided to make a difficult and perhaps questionable decision, replacing Lefty with the even more spent McGraw, who by this time was clearly running on fumes (which by this point were even becoming difficult to detect). Nonetheless, McGraw got out of the inning, allowing only one of the two inherited runners to score. After the Phils went down one, two, three, in the top of the 9th, McGraw went out to the hill to face the Royals for the bottom of the 9th … and his immortal place in Philadelphia sports history.
The inning started well, as the Tugger reached back and struck out Amos Otis with a curve ball. But he then walked Aikens … And Wathan singled … And Cardenal smashed a line drive single to center to load the bases. Bases loaded. One out. Frank White the batter. On the first pitch McGraw induced the overeager White to pop it up foul in front of the Phillies dugout. Boone settled under it … and promptly dropped it, only to have it bounce straight into the glove of Rose, who was backing up the play. As the Brooklyn Dodgers' old GM Branch Rickey used to like to say, "Luck is the residue of design."
That brought up the great Willie Wilson, who led the AL in hits (230), runs (133), triples (15), stole 79 bases and batted .326 during the regular season, but who had gone only 4-25 thus far in the series. K-9 cops circled the stands around the infield in anticipation of hordes of rabid Philly fans storming the field after the hoped-for victory. After two screwballs put Wilson down, 0-2, McGraw threw a "fastball" that just missed. Then, with the count 1-2, he threw another one down Broadway that Willie inexplicably swung through, and the Phillies had finally, after 97 years, won their first championship.
To this day, 41 years down the line, the memory of the reserved Schmidt, the Series MVP with a .381 average, 2 homers, and 7 RBI, leaping on McGraw after the final out, and then Green and GM Paul "The Pope" Owens crying during their interview with Bryant Gumbel in the locker room, remain etched in my mind. The game remains, not only my most precious sports memory, but also, amazingly, the most watched World Series game in history: more than 31 million households in America watched the game, an unprecedented and unsurpassed 40.0 rating.
As I mentioned earlier, this victory was the first in the 97-year history of the franchise. Yet there was never any national hoopla over this fact, in contrast to the overwrought attention and pity given to the "poor" fans of the Cubs because of the so-called "Billy Goat Curse" and to fans of the Red Sox because of the "Curse of the Bambino." Of course, by the time 1980 had rolled around, the Cubs and their fans had garnered even more sympathy because of their collapse in 1969, but even so, they had won 10 NL titles in the 20th century (most recently in 1945), and 2 World Series in 1907-08. The Sox, to be sure, had not won a World Series since inexplicably trading away Babe Ruth after the 1919 season. And they had, just two years earlier in 1978, blown the 9 game lead over the Yankees they had on August 13. But they had won 9 AL pennants in the 20th century, most recently in 1967 and 1976, and had 5 World Series titles under their belts (1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918). The Phils, by contrast, had two pennants and zero World Series championships. Even worse, for long time Philadelphians, the city's most beloved team, Connie Mack's A's, had been forced to leave town for Kansas City in 1955 (note that the other two cities that were forced to give up one of their teams, Boston and St. Louis, lost the weaker of their franchises, the Braves and Browns, respectively). It was the A's, after all, who had won 8 AL pennants and 5 World Series titles, and whose 1929-31 clubs, featuring Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, and Al Simmons had dominated the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees, averaged over 104 wins per season (in a 154-game schedule), won 3 AL pennants and 2 World Series championships, and thus have a claim to being one of the greatest teams in baseball history. The Phillies, meanwhile, … just stunk. No cute curse. Just decades of losing and uninspired play, with hostile, cynical fans to boot, for whose plight no one, least of all the city's natural and haughty geographical rivals 90 miles to the northeast in New York, gave a toss.
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| Larry Bowa and Mike Schmidt celebrating in the Phils' 1980 World Series Championship parade on South Broad Street (image@lancasteronline.com) |
This legacy, such as it was, came crashing down on the night of October 21, 1980. At long last the Phillies, and by proxy, the city of Philadelphia, played second fiddle to no one. Never was this made more clear than the very next day when the city hosted a victory parade in Center City and the three miles down South Broad Street to the old JFK Stadium, where an estimated 1.5 million screaming fans lined the confetti-strewn streets and over 100,000 packed the stadium to honor the team. Pete Rose, the winner of two World Series with his hometown Big Red Machine, wrote in the book, The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Philadelphia Phillies: “The most awesome sight I’ve ever seen in sports -- and this is Pete Rose talking -- was the post-World Series parade. To see a million people in the street on Broad Street and to have 130,000 people for us at JFK Stadium, it was unbelievable. It’s a sight I’ll never forget. Yeah, that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Looking back on this celebration, it is helpful to view it in terms of what it meant, not only for the team, but for the city of Philadelphia itself. The '74-75 Flyers parades (the latter of which I attended) and '83 Sixers parade all were massive events attracting more than a million people, but these were primarily celebratory in nature. By contrast, and not to detract from the celebratory character of the events, the only real analog I can think of to the 1980 Phillies parade was the February 2018 Eagles Super Bowl parade (which I was also privileged to attend). The Phillies and Eagles parades were more than celebratory. They were cathartic events. For Philadelphia is as great a sports town as exists in America, and for vast numbers of its citizens, their self-image is reflected, not in their city's peerless historical significance or cultural treasures like the Philadelphia Orchestra, but in their sports franchises, in particular in their two longest tenured ones, the Phillies and Eagles.
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For years, living in both Dallas and in Lancaster, PA, I was frustrated by ignorant football fans who ridiculed the Eagles and their fans for never having won a Super Bowl. Never mind that the Eagles had won NFL Championships in 1948-49 and in 1960 (this was especially galling when coming from fans of the NY Yankees who would never stand for anybody dismissing as irrelevant the titles earned by Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, and Mantle, all of which were earned before Super Bowl I was played; did the NFL begin with the Super Bowl era?). Unlike the national media and fans who sympathized with fans from Boston and Chicago for their long World Series droughts, Philadelphia's football team and its surly fans―oh my, they booed Santa Claus; the horror!―were held up for ridicule and condescension, which served as the background for Eagles' center Jason Kelce's famous "No one likes us; we don't care" rant in front of the Art Museum at the parade. [Actually, truth be told, we do care, and we resent it greatly.] Winning the Super Bowl ended such malarkey once and for all, and the self-image of the citizenry was palpably different for some time to come (It has since returned to normal, but that is a story for a different time.)
The same was even more true of Philadelphia in 1980. This was a city that once had been the largest and most important in the American colonies, the second-largest (after London) in the English-speaking world. It lost that distinction to New York as it lost its role as the banking and economic engine of the nation in the 19th century. It had been the nation's capitol, only to lose that distinction to the planned city of Washington. It had remained the 3rd-largest city in the nation as late as 1950. But in the decade of the 1970's, as de-industrialization sapped the American economy, the city lost 140,00 industrial jobs and, consequently, 260,000 people (abetted, of course, by the "white flight" that occurred at the confluence of government-encouraged suburbanization and the racism endemic to our nation). Edmund Bacon's well-publicized revitalization of Society Hill and Center City was to many, especially those living on the deteriorating fringe, nothing but lipstick on a pig. And the fortunes of the city's one remaining baseball team, the floundering Phillies, seemed to mirror those of the city they represented: 107 losses in 1961, the infamous 1964 collapse, the 7 straight losing seasons between '68 and '74, the NLCS failures in '76-'78.
This is the context in which the Phillies' 1980 World Series victory has to be understood in its cultural impact on the city and its people: in this one series, this one game, this one Tug McGraw pitch to Willie Wilson, all this failure, all this futility (or "phutility") seemed to be wiped away―expiated, to use a theological term dear to my heart. This is what this meant to me and to my city. And, at bottom, it is why this game remains, to me, my greatest sports memory.
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