The Great Collapse: 1964 Philadelphia Phillies

Chris ShortPhoto byUnknown author

By Russ Walsh

This month marks the 60^th anniversary of events that scarred Phillies fans of a certain age for life. After years as a cellar dweller, the Phillies caught fire in 1964. They had a young, innovative manager in former Major League utility infielder Gene Mauch. They had the consensus Rookie of the Year, Dick Allen, pummeling the ball to all fields at third base. They had MVP candidate and matinee idol Johnny Callison, with the lightning quick bat and cannon of an arm, in right field. Veteran Jim Bunning, over from the Detroit Tigers, had steadied the mound core. Lefty Chris Short had emerged as an All-Star-caliber starter. Versatile Cookie Rojas, hustling Tony Taylor, reliable Tony Gonzalez, slick-fielding Ruben Amaro, and slugging Wes Covington filled out the lineup. Jack Baldschun and Ed Roebuck were dependable arms in the bullpen.

The 1964 summer was full of highlights. Bunning pitched the first perfect game in the National League in 84 years. The father of five did it on Father’s Day, no less, and thousands of Phillies fans gathered around the TV that night to see Bunning congratulated on The Ed Sullivan Show. Two weeks later, fan favorite Callison won the All-Star Game with a walk-off three-run home run off the Boston Red Sox’s fearsome reliever Dick Radatz and was congratulated at home plate by the greats of the game, including Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, and Henry Aaron.

In early August, when injuries and inexperience showed that the Phillies had a need at first base, general manager John Quinn acquired slugging Frank Thomas from the New York Mets. Thomas went on a tear, leading the Phillies in home runs and RBIs for a month. On August 20, the Phillies swept a doubleheader at home against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Phillies were 7.5 games ahead of the San Francisco Giants and Cincinnati Reds and 10 games ahead of the languishing St. Louis Cardinals.

All was right in Phillies land until suddenly all was wrong. In August, starting pitcher Ray Culp went down with a sore elbow and did not start a game after August 15. Lefty starter Dennis Bennett was suffering with shoulder miseries, and while he kept pitching, he won only one game from June through August. On September 8, Thomas fractured his thumb diving back into second base on a fielder’s choice. Veteran Vic Power was brought in from the Los Angeles Angels to replace him, but Power didn’t hit much.

Still the Phillies, behind the pitching of Bunning and Short and a briefly rejuvenated Bennett, looked like they would hang on to win the pennant. On September 20, Jim Bunning beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2 and the Phillies had a 6.5 game lead in the National League with just 12 games to play. World Series tickets went on sale in Philadelphia.

The Phillies did not win another game in September.

On September 21, the Phillies lost a heartbreaker to the Cincinnati Reds, 1-0. In a play that came to symbolize the beginning of the end for the Phillies, rookie utility infielder Chico Ruiz stole home off pitcher Art Mahaffey for the only run of the game. Ruiz took off with two outs and Frank Robinson, one of the best hitters in baseball, at the plate. The move was daring, and perhaps a bit foolish, but it worked. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Allen Lewis opened his recap of the game with this all-too-prescient sentence: “If the Phillies lose the National League pennant – and there is no real cause for alarm yet – it might be correct to say that the flag was stolen from them.” The Phillies’ lead was down to 5.5 games.

The Phillies lost the next two games to the Reds. Short had one of his few poor starts of the season on September 22, losing, 9-4. On September 23, the normally reliable Roebuck blew a save, coughing up a two-run home run to Vada Pinson. The Phillies’ lead was down to 3.5 games over the Reds, and five games over the Cardinals and Giants.

The Phillies next hosted the Milwaukee Braves for four games. They lost all four. On September 24, the Braves’ Wade Blasingame outdueled Bunning 5-3. The September 25 game went 12 innings, with the Phillies losing 7-5 when Eddie Mathews singled to bring home the lead run and catcher Gene Oliver scored on a steal of third and a throwing error. A bullpen implosion cost the Phillies the September 26 game, when Bobby Shantz, who had pitched well since coming over to the team from the Chicago Cubs in August, yielded a bases-loaded triple to Rico Carty. With first place on the line on September 27, the Braves bombed Bunning and four relievers, winning 14-8, despite three home runs from Callison. The Phillies fell one game behind the Reds.

The surging Cardinals, riding a five-game winning streak, came to town for a three-game series. On September 28, Bob Gibson beat Short, 5-1. On September 29, Ray Sadecki beat Bennett, 4-2. Adding insult to injury, former Phillies star Curt Simmons, experiencing a late career renaissance with the Cards, then beat Bunning, 8-5. The headline in one Philadelphia paper read: “It’s CURTains.” When the dust had cleared, the Phillies had lost 10 straight, the Cardinals had won eight straight, and the Cardinals leapfrogged both the Phillies and the Reds into first place.

The calendar turned to October, and the Phillies traveled to Cincinnati. While they were not yet eliminated from the pennant, they were, in the immortal words of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride, “Mostly dead.” They finally broke the 10-game losing streak, beating the Reds 4-3 on October 2 and followed that with another win on the final day of the season, 10-0. Bunning pitched a complete-game shutout for his 19th win. It was all for naught, however, as the Cardinals crushed the Mets, 11-5, to take the pennant. The Phillies finished tied for second with the Reds, one game behind the Cardinals.

Philadelphia fans were left bereft, staring at World Series tickets they never got to use. The blame game started immediately. Most of the fan vitriol fell on Mauch. The prevailing narrative coalesced around the idea that Mauch had panicked and overused his two reliable pitchers, Bunning and Short, to the exclusion of all other choices. To this day, fans with faulty memories and an unwillingness to check the actual box scores stick to this narrative. The truth is that Mauch used four starting pitchers during the last 12 games of the season. Bunning and Short started four times, Mahaffey twice, and Bennett twice. Bunning and Short did each pitch on just two days’ rest, instead of the usual (in those days) three. Short was generally effective over this stretch, but Bunning was not.

In truth, Mauch was left with little choice. He had a team in free fall with two healthy starting pitchers. It was then, as it is now, not unusual to use a star pitcher on short rest in desperate situations. Might he have tried to use the rookie teenager Rick Wise? Perhaps, but it would have been a very difficult assignment for an 18-year-old. Mauch also had no reliable relievers beyond Roebuck and Baldschun, who were also becoming weary.

Injuries played a major role as well. Both Mahaffey and Bennett, while still pitching, were suffering arm miseries. The fifth starter, Culp, had a sore arm. The most consequential injury, however, was to Thomas. Before fracturing his thumb, Thomas had provided the Phillies with some reliable middle-of-the-order thump. His absence was acutely felt at the end of the season.

In the end, this Phillies team was simply not good enough to be pennant winners. While they fielded a very solid starting nine, and had two great starters and two great relievers, they lacked depth, especially pitching depth. That lack of depth caught up with them.

Roebuck had been through the pennant wars several times in his years with the Dodgers. We’ll give him the final word:

“The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies were not a pennant-winning-caliber team. If the season lasted long enough, that would eventually have shown. Gene [Mauch] did a great job to have us where we were. During those last two weeks we were losing every crazy way we could.”

Russ Walsh is a retired teacher, baseball coach, and writer living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is a lifelong and long-suffering Philadelphia Phillies fan. He writes for the Society for American Baseball Research and for his blog The Faith of a Phillies Fan. You can contact him through X (formerly known as Twitter) at @faithofaphilli1.