(Editor’s note: In the late summer and early fall of 1980, the Phillies worked their way out of a desultory stretch of baseball and went on to win the National League East Division, the National League Championship Series and their first World Series. Four dates in September and October were particularly important. Over the next month, Billy Penn will look back on a historic stretch for the Phillies — while hoping that maybe we’ll see another memorable run.)
Dickie Noles was sitting in the Phillies dugout thinking, “I might have blown the pennant for us.”
In the top of the 15th inning on Sept. 29, 1980, against the Chicago Cubs, Noles opened the frame by walking pinch hitter Lynn McGlothen, a pitcher who was scheduled to start the following day. Lenny Randle pinch-ran for him. Noles then got an out, and the next batter hit the ball back to him for what should have been an easy double play to end the inning. But Noles threw the ball into center field, putting runners at first and third bases. Manager Dallas Green relieved Noles with Kevin Saucier, who gave up a sacrifice fly and a double to put the Cubs up, 5-3.
In the final days of the 1980 season, the Phillies and Montreal Expos were battling for the National League East Division. As play began that night, the Phils were a half-game behind the Expos. A loss to the Cubs would have put them 1½ games behind with six to play. The final weekend of the year the Phillies would face the Expos in Montreal. Ideally, they would have been ahead by a game or two when the series in Canada began.
Going into the final series one game behind would have been difficult to overcome. As the Phils-Cubs game went into extra innings, the Phillies saw Montreal had defeated St. Louis by scoring three unearned runs in the ninth inning on a pinch-hit, walk-off home run by John Tamargo.
But this Phillies squad had won games coming from behind that September.
‘Let’s win this ballgame somehow’
As the bottom of the 15th inning began, Noles said, “I was on the hook for the loss, right? The loss was gonna be a devastating loss. I remember coming in off the field thinking, ‘If we lose this game, I’m gonna be the biggest goat in Philadelphia.’ The only thing was, you know, let’s win this ballgame somehow, some way.”
Lonnie Smith and Pete Rose walked to start the frame, then advanced to third and second, respectively, on a wild pitch. Bake McBride grounded out to first, allowing Smith to score and Rose to move to third. Mike Schmidt popped up to shortstop for the second out, but Garry Maddox, who did not start the game, came to bat and singled to tie the score. Catcher Keith Moreland singled to center, putting Maddox on second. Larry Bowa walked, and Manny Trillo singled to score Maddox, and the Phils had another come-from-behind win.
Maddox had come into the game in the 12th inning. The starting center fielder that game, Del Unser, had doubled with two outs in the 11th, and had Bob Denier pinch-run for him. The Phils did not score, so Maddox took over in center field.
“I was starting several games that week in center field, as Dallas and Garry Maddox had a bit of a falling out,” Unser said. “Garry entered the game late and drove in the (tying run). I was happy he got back into the lineup. I wanted him – ‘the secretary of defense’ – in center field instead of me. This was my first and only shot at the World Series, and Garry had no peers at that time.”
Maddox recently had lost a ball in the sun, which led to a loss, which was why Green had Unser start in place of him.
“Starting those games in that last week of the season really helped my stroke for the playoffs and World Series,” said Unser, who delivered several key pinch-hits in the postseason.
Maddox was not the only “regular” who did not start that game. Veterans Bob Boone and Greg Luzinski were having subpar years offensively and saw their playing time reduced. Green, who had been director of the team’s minor league system, had Smith and Moreland playing often. Using the “kids” annoyed older players on the team, partly because they didn’t know if Smith and Moreland were up to the task. (They were. Smith hit .339 with 33 steals and Moreland it .314.)
By that point in the season, the Phillies were winning games in the later innings.
“We always expected to come back in that year,” Bowa said recently. “From mid-’70s on, we were a good baseball team. We never thought we were out of any games.”
“It was like a rollercoaster season,” Bowa added. “When we get hot, then we were cold, then we get hot. It was a grind, there’s no question about that.”
A suspicious manager
This game was considered pivotal for some fans – if the team could score three runs in the bottom of the 15th inning to win, then maybe, just maybe, they were destined for something special. But not everyone in the Phillies dugout felt that way.
After most of the Phillies had left the clubhouse following the game, the media went to Green’s office to get his reaction to the win. It was unusual:
“Dallas Green should have been very happy,” columnist Ray Didinger wrote in the Philadelphia Daily News. “This was the kind of ‘grind-it-out’ win he usually kisses and pins to his lapel. Last night, however, the Phillies manager was in no mood to celebrate. The victory … seemed to turn his stomach.”
“I get the feeling,” Green said, staring into the clubhouse, “we’re not all together in this thing. I would not be surprised there aren’t a few guys out there who aren’t rooting against us … not to win this thing.”
“There was an awkward, uneasy silence in the room,” Didinger wrote. “For a moment, everybody was stunned by the enormity of Green’s statement. Here are the Phillies in the final week of a skin-tight pennant race and their manager is openly suggesting there are players who don’t want the team to win?”
According to Didinger, Green was still looking into the clubhouse, and “looked troubled, like a doctor holding an X-ray up to the light and not liking what he sees. Obviously this was not something that just crept into his mind. This had been building for a while.”
“The last two weeks I’ve been checking up on some things,” Green said. “I’ve watched these guys very closely. I’ve watched how they attend to their business and it’s almost back to the same old thing, the we’re-gonna-do-it-our-way type of thing. And we’ve just missed some serious breakdowns.”
The 1980 Phillies were many things: exciting, exasperating, frustrating, resilient. They were also not happy with their manager.
Beginning in 1973, the Phillies were led by manager Danny Ozark, an easygoing, soft-voiced person who led the team to three straight NL Eastern Division championships but lost three straight National League Championship series. In August 1979, with the club floundering, Phillies general manager Paul Owens fired Ozark and replaced him with Green. The appointment was to be for the remainder of the season, as Green would try to determine why they weren’t performing at a higher level. Owens surprised fans and the media by appointing Green as the full-time manager for 1980.
At the start of spring training, there were (literally) signs that things were going to be different.
Green placed a sign in the spring training clubhouse: “There is no I in we.”
Shortstop Bowa said, “When do the (bleeping) cheerleaders show up.”
Some players chafed under Green’s style, which was to yell at players, tell the media when his team didn’t play well and how he would use youngsters – Smith, Moreland, Noles, Saucier and pitcher Marty Bystrom – instead of veterans.
From Aug. 8 to 10, the Phillies were in Pittsburgh to play a four-game series against the Pirates. The Phillies lost the first two games, with a doubleheader on the final day. The Phils lost game three. Between games, Green closed the locker room to the press and addressed the team.
Didinger, who had just started writing for the Daily News, recalled how he and other media were five feet from the closed locker rooms doors, but they could still hear Green chewing out the players. The club then dropped the fourth game to the Pirates.
Fairer weather
But a few days later, the Phils had one of their better series of the regular season.
On Aug. 13, the Phils were in third place in the NL East, 2½ games ahead of the New York Mets. Green admonished the team, saying they had no business being just a handful of games in front of New York. The Mets put newspaper clippings of Green’s comments in their locker room to use as motivation. It didn’t work.
Starting Aug. 14, the Phils swept the Mets in a five-game series, which could have been a turning point. Another turning point happened on Sept. 1. Owens, who was the first general manager to travel with his club, went into the locker room before a game in San Francisco and ripped the club. The players were used to Green yelling at them, but if Owens came to the locker room, that was different. He chewed them out and challenged them to play better for the team’s owners who had made them one of the best-paid teams in the league.
The Phils began to play better ball that month (eventually winning 18 out of 27 games). There were a few setbacks, but by the last week of the season the race for the NL East was down to them and Montreal. Team President Ruly Carpenter said he didn’t think the Expos would sweep the Cardinals in their three-game series, but he didn’t think the Phils would have to win all four games against the Cubs to keep pace.
Games two and three against the Cubs were easier than the 15-inning affair. Facing McGlothen, the Phils pounded out 15 hits and won, 14-2. Bystrom won his fifth game, and Noles pitched the final two innings. The following day, Steve Carlton pitched a complete game shutout as the Phils won, 5-0, beating starter Dennis Lamp, who had surrendered the winning run in the bottom of the 15th of the first game. The fourth game was a 1-1 affair until the Phils scored three runs in the seventh and eighth innings to pull out a 4-2 win. Another rookie, Bob Walk, won his 11th game.
That set up the final series in Montreal. Whichever team won at least two of the three games would be the NL East champ. Pete Rose told the Daily News, “I think we’re still in the driver’s seat, I really do. I think we’ll play like hell up there.” The Daily News retorted, “If the Phillies are in the driver’s seat, who’s driving, The Dukes of Hazzard?” (It was the ’80s.)
One person who thought the Phils had a good chance to win those two games was Noles. The comeback win against the Cubs had him convinced. “That was a game that made it seem like, OK, maybe we are going to win this thing,” he said.
They did go on to win this thing, first the National East Division, then the National League Championship against the Houston Astros, and finally winning the club’s first World Series championship against the Kansas City Royals.
The post The miracle comeback that launched the Phillies toward their first World Series title appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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