(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. Billy Penn looks back on a historic stretch for the Phillies — while hoping that maybe we’ll see another memorable run.)
“Long drive to left field. He buried it, he buried it, way back, outta here, home run. Mike Schmidt puts the Phillies up, 6-4. Oh, what a drive by Schmidt. Unbelievable.”
– Phillies broadcaster Andy Musser calling Schmidt’s game-winning home run to give the Phils the National League East Division title in 1980.
Years later, Musser said, “I never used that phrase — ‘buried it’ — before, or since.”
It is an unusual description of a long home run. But if Musser got caught up in the excitement of the moment, he can be forgiven. The victory that Sunday, Oct. 4, 1980, against the Montreal Expos gave the Phillies a ticket to the postseason.
It was the team’s second victory in that season-ending series in Montreal, and gave the Phillies 91 wins, two more than the Expos, with only one game to play.
In Saturday’s game, the Phils were down to their last out in the ninth inning, trailing, 4-3. Pete Rose was on second base with catcher Bob Boone at the plate. Boone was injured most of the season, one reason he was batting only .229. Manager Dallas Green had already used backup catcher Keith Moreland, so if he pinch hit for Boone and the team tied the game, the only catching option would have been Don McCormack, who had been called up on Sept. 1 and had zero at-bats in the majors.
Boone had been in a 2-for-26 slump, but Green said he never thought of pinch hitting for him.
Against former Phillie Woody Fryman, Boone singled up the middle, tying the game.
There’s a “myth” about this game: when Schmidt came to bat in the 11th, Pete Rose was on first base with one out. Many people believe that Rose was on second and first base was open, so the Expos should have intentionally walked Schmidt to face McCormack.
Even with Rose on first, some folks feel the Expos should still have walked Schmidt to face McCormack.
Why did Expos manager Dick Williams pitch to Schmidt? He knew pitcher Stan Bahnsen had been tough on Schmidt (which Schmidt mentioned after the game) and he also knew that if he walked Schmidt, he would have put the go-ahead run on second base.
He didn’t and, on a 1-1 count, Bahnsen threw a fastball that Schmidt said was a bit up, and he belted it deep into the leftfield stands. Expos leftfielder Jerry White looked up at the ball and knew it was gone. He didn’t even turn around to see where it landed.
While Musser used the phrase “he buried it” on the radio, on TV Harry Kalas said, “Watch that baby, home run, Mike Schmidt, way, way outta here.” As Schmidt crossed home plate, he high-fived and slapped the backs of his teammates, and Kalas remarked, “I’ve never seen Mike as excited as this.”
On the television screen, the words “The Force Is With Us” appeared.
(For the record, had Schmidt been walked, McCormack, in his first major league at-bat, hit a ground ball up the middle that Expos second baseman Rodney Scott fielded but could not hang on to and McCormack was safe at first. Knowing Pete Rose, it’s possible he would have rounded third and headed for home on the play, so the Phils might have taken a 5-4 lead had the Expos walked Schmidt.)
Phillies closer Tug McGraw entered the game in the ninth inning. After Schmidt’s blast, McGraw got a rare at-bat – no way was Green going to pitch-hit for him the way he was pitching. Plus, the manager had used up his veteran relief corps at that point.
McGraw grounded into a fielder’s choice, then pitched a 1-2-3 inning to close out the game, and the Phillies had their division title. One newspaper reported, “McGraw has not yielded an earned run in 26 innings, covering a stretch of 15 games.”
“Tug took the ball no matter what,” Bowa said recently. “ He could pitch five days in a row, and Dallas would say, ‘You OK?’ and he’d say, ‘I’m good.’ So that’s what kind of person he was. He wanted the ball and he went out and did it.”
And waiting to play such a crucial game couldn’t have been easy.
Back then, Phillies outfielder Greg Gross said recently, you’d play cards. “The hard part (of waiting out a rain delay) it just dragged on so long. Now, they just turn on the TV, watch another game or or watch tape and listen to music, something like that. We just didn’t do those kinds of things. You basically sat around and you talked, and, try to figure out, ‘OK, are we gonna play or are we not gonna play?’ ”
He recalled, however, that even as the rain delay in Montreal persisted, “everyone wanted to play.”
The game had been delayed more than three hours by rain, and the teams avoided a logistical nightmare. If it had been cancelled, they might have had to play a doubleheader. Had the Phillies won the first game, they would have been NL East champions. If the Expos won the first game, both teams would have to play a second game; the winner of that contest would be champion.
Gross was one of the few Phillies that did not play in the Saturday game that clinched the division. In a critical comeback win on Sept. 29 against the Cubs, and in the first game in Montreal, he was used as a pinch-hitter. He walked both times. Each time, Green put in Jay Loviglio, who had been called up to the club on Sept. 1, to pinch run for him. Both times Loviglio was thrown out trying to steal second.
When the game finally started, the cold was not the only problem teams faced.
“It was hard playing on that turf when it was wet,” recalled Bowa. “I think, if I’m not mistaken, we might have made two or three errors that game. The ball’s coming off the wet surface. People think it’s easy to play on that stuff. When it gets wet, I sort of equate it to marbles in a bathtub. You don’t know what the ball’s gonna do. The conditions were terrible, but they were terrible for both teams.”
When the Saturday game ended nearly four hours later, the Phils won, but it one of their worst games of the season. They committed five errors, including two by second baseman Manny Trillo, who had made only nine all year. They made several base-running mistakes that cost them runs. After nine innings, the club had 15 hits but managed only four runs. Relievers Ron Reed and Sparky Lyle surrendered the tying and go-ahead runs.
The Phillies beat writer for the Wilmington News-Journal, Hal Bodley, wrote, “Such a bizarre clinching victory should have been expected from a team that has had more domestic problems than the cast on Dallas.” (Again, it was 1980.)
“There were shouting emotional tirades by manager Dallas Green. There were plenty of indictments that some of the players really didn’t care if the Phillies won or lost. As recently as August 10, these Phils were six games out of first place,” Bodley wrote.
Bodley spoke to Green after the game, as champagne dripped from his graying hair, who said, “As I watched the game unfold, I wasn’t sure that was really the Phillies out there. But when Schmitty hit that ball – boy, did he smoke it – I began to relax. This team has come through all year and I can’t begin to tell you my feelings right now.”
At this point, all was forgiven in the clubhouse, as the Phillies drenched themselves and their manager with the bubbly.
It was the team’s fourth NL East title in five years. Bowa, who had been with the team longer than anyone, said, “This is as happy as I’ve ever been winning this thing. This is the happiest because people said were too old. People said we didn’t have the bench. People said we didn’t care. Didn’t care, huh? Look. We care. Believe me, we care.”
After clinching the division, the Phillies were obligated to play one more game, number 162 of the season, the following day. Rose was the only regular who started the game, and eventually he was replaced by Tim McCarver at first base. The Expos won, 8-7, when White hit a three-run home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth off Warren Brusstar. Too bad, as it would have been Brusstar’s first save of the season.
The Phils had to wait a day to find out who’d they face in the National League Championship Series, as the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers tied for the West Division lead. Maybe some Philly fans were hoping the Dodgers would win, so the Phils could redeem themselves after losing the NLCS in 1977 and 1978 to Los Angeles.
But Houston won the playoff game, and the two teams played a five-game division series for the ages. Years later, Dallas Green said when he watched tapes of those contests, “I know who wins, but I still get nervous.” Four of the five games went into extra innings.
And following that, the Phils defeated the Kansas City Royals in six games to claim the franchise’s first World Series championship.
The post Phillies team that everyone doubted found its way to first World Series win appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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