Epic Collapse: Sept. 21, 1964--Bunting Dick Allen ... Bunting Dick Allen?

When the Phillies took the field against the second-place Cincinnati Reds at home in Connie Mack Stadium on September 21, they held a comfortable 6-1/2 game lead in the standings with 12 remaining. They lost 1-0, victimized for the second time in three days by the winning run against them scoring on a steal of home plate. All accounts of this game mention that both managers--Gene Mauch and Dick Sisler of the Reds--were shocked (shocked!) that Chico Ruiz stole home with Frank Robinson (Frank Robinson!), one of baseball's most accomplished and feared batsmen, at the plate. What they don't mention is that the Phillies' best chance for a run came in the very first inning with a runner on first and nobody out--and Mauch chose to have Dick Allen, his most dangerous and productive hitter, lay down a sacrifice bunt (Dick Allen! Bunt!?!) instead of trying to drive in the run.

Sept. 21, 1964: Bunting Dick Allen ... Bunting Dick Allen?

After Art Mahaffey, back in the starting rotation, retired the Reds in the top of the first, Tony Gonzalez led off for the Phillies with a single, bringing up Dick (then known as "Richie") Allen. As discussed in a previous post (see link at the end of this article), Allen was back to hitting second in Mauch's batting order against right-handed starting pitchers instead of in a power slot. The Phillies had all 27 outs remaining, but rather than have Allen hit away with the possibility of setting up a big first inning, Mauch asked him to lay down a sacrifice bunt. If Allen had failed to advance the runner by swinging away, Mauch would still have had two outs left in the inning (or there might have been a double play), and still eight more innings to go.  Allen's sacrifice was good, but Gonzalez wound up stranded on third--the closest any Phillie would come to scoring all evening.

This was actually the second time in three days that Mauch called for Allen to sacrifice himself for the Phillies' cause rather than use his most potent weapon in the way the baseball gods intended. In that 16-inning loss to the Dodgers on September 19 (see the previous post in this series, "Sending a Rook to do a Vet's Job"), the Phillies had the opportunity to win the game in the 14th inning when Johnny Callison led off with a single and Dick Allen--batting clean-up that day because a lefty started--was next up to bat. After Allen was the pitcher's spot (the result of an earlier double-switch). And, this being a long game in which he had already used seven position players off the bench, Mauch had limited options for a pinch hitter.  Specifically,he had the light-hitting Bobby Wine, who was batting .209 with only 4 home runs and 33 RBI and hadn't played in five days except in the field as a defensive replacement at shortstop.

In his three most recent previous trips to the plate in the game, Allen had two singles and been intentionally walked. Notwithstanding that it was the 14th inning in a tie game and knowing that Wine was to bat next, Mauch opted to play for one run rather than let the most dangerous batter in his line-up hit away with the possibility of driving in the could-be winning run. Allen was successful in his sacrifice attempt but that left Mauch with only two outs to work with and two weak hitters--Wine, followed by .238-hitting catcher Clay Dalrymple--to try to drive in Callison from second base. Trying to get a good jump, Callison was picked off. Wine flied out. The Phillies failed to score. And Willie Davis ultimately stole home on Morrie Steevens.

With Dick Allen on his way to 201 hits--29 of them home runs--an OPS of .939 (fifth best in the league) and 352 total bases, more than anyone else in the league (Willie Mays had 351), Mauch's decision to have him lay down a sacrifice bunt is open to legitimate question. Few other managers used their most powerful hitters to lay one down for lesser lights to try to drive the runner home. The two best hitters in the Phillies' lineup--Allen and Callison--who hit a combined total of 60 home runs in 1964--both laid down, during the course of the season, six sacrifice bunts with nobody out  to move a base runner into scoring position. In calling for them to do so in the interest of playing for one run, Mauch gave up as outs his two most likely batters to drive in runs. Of the NL's other premier hitters who also hit for power, Mays had one sac bunt for the Giants in 1964, Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey none; Frank Robinson did not have a sacrifice all year for the Reds; neither did Ken Boyer for the Cardinals; nor did Hank Aaron or Eddie Mathews for the Braves.

It is worth considering that Dick Allen batted .464 with runners on base during the 17 days of their epic collapse (dating back to Bunning's first start on short rest in Houston).  .464!  Had Allen been allowed to swing away in either of those plate appearances against the Dodgers and Reds, the outcome of either game, or of both games, might have been different. One more win at that point in the season, with so few games remaining, might have been all it would have taken to permanently deflate the hopes of the Reds and Cardinals before they began their surge upward.

Following their dispiriting 1-0 loss on September 21, Chris Short was roughed up the next day and the Reds completed a three-game sweep the day after that.  Of no small significance, Jim Bunning's regular turn in the rotation would have had him start the first game of this series, but because of Mauch's decision to start him on short rest in Houston when there was no compelling pennant-race reason for doing so (other than setting up Bunning to start Game 1 of the World Series, as I argued in a previous post), Bunning did not pitch against Cincinnati.

The failure to take even one game from the Reds (at home) cost the Phillies three games in the standings in three days. Had the Phillies won even just one, they would have had a 5-1/2 game lead over Cincinnati and been six ahead of both St. Louis and San Francisco. Instead, the Reds were now 3-1/2 games out, the Cardinals and Giants five back. With nine games remaining, it still seemed time was on Philadelphia's side. But the end of the season could not come soon enough.

See also, (August 7): Where Should Dick Allen Have Hit?: http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/08/august-7-64-phillies-continued-where.html

and (June 29): Mauch Loved to Sacrifice:  http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/06/50-years-ago-64-phillies-mauch-loved-to.html

August 7: The '64 Phillies Continued: Where Should Dick Allen Have Hit?

It seems manager Gene Mauch never decided definitively where the appropriate place in the batting order was for his rookie phenom, Dick (then known as"Richie") Allen in 1964. He changed his mind about that at least three times. The August 7 trade with the Mets for Frank Thomas to fill the Phillies' glaring weakness at first base resulted in Mauch reverting to the batting order platoon he used for most of the first two months of the season by moving his young slugger out of the cleanup spot to bat second or third, depending on the opposing starter.

The '64 Phillies Continued: Where Should Dick Allen Have Hit?

As noted in the second post of this series on the Philadelphia Phillies' season of 50 years ago, "Mauch the Platoonmeister" (see link below), Mauch started the season by platooning rookie right-handed batting third baseman Dick Allen with left-handed batting right fielder Johnny Callison between second and third in the Phillies' batting order. Both were everyday players, but Mauch had Allen batting second and Callison third when a right-hander started against Philadelphia, and Callison second and Allen third when a southpaw took the mound. So it was in the first 45 games of the season, through June 6, during which time Allen hit .290 with 10 home runs and 28 RBIs; Callison hit .280 with 4 home runs and 20 RBIs; and the Phillies were more often than not hanging close in second place, typically about a game behind, and sometimes in first. The Phillies had never trailed by more than two games (on May 5 and 12) and never led by more than two games (on May 1).

Allen got off to a red-hot start, batting .426 in April, but had hit only .252 in May. On June 7 and in both games of a doubleheader two days later, Mauch tried Allen in the cleanup spot for the first time; Allen went 5-for-11 with a home run and three RBIs, but was back hitting second against right-handed starters the next two games. By this point in the season--June 12--Allen was leading the Phillies in all three triple-crown categories with a .294 batting average, 12 home runs, and 32 runs batted in.

Seeing what his emerging young slugger could do, Mauch started batting Allen fourth in the line-up on a daily basis on June 13, where he stayed for 53 of the Phillies' next 55 games (twice batting second) regardless of who was pitching. Allen hit .327 over those 55 games with 9 home runs and 26 RBIs and by August 6 his batting average was .311 and he had a .913 OPS with 19 home runs and 56 RBIs. His power and prowess at the plate contributed to the Phillies' .600 winning percentage and 33-22 record during that time, which vaulted Philadelphia into first place on July 16, where they had since stayed.

The arrival of Frank Thomas to take over first base, where the lefty-righty platoon of John Hernsteinn and Roy Sievers had proved ineffective (as had several others who Mauch also tried at the position), caused Mauch to go back to alternating Allen and Callison second and third in the line-up, again depending on the whether the opposing starter was right-handed or left-handed. When he was healthy and in the starting line-up with the bottom-dwelling Mets, the right-handed power-hitting Thomas typically hit fourth or third. Thomas, in fact, had batted fourth or fifth in the line-up for most of his career. Even though he had homered only three times and driven in only 19 runs in his 60 games with the Mets--(they were the offensively-challenged Mets, after all)--Mauch began platooning Thomas (who played against all pitching) with left-handed batting outfielder Wes Covington (who did not start against southpaws) in the fourth and fifth spots in the Phillies' line-up, which lasted until September 8 when Thomas injured his thumb.

In the 33 games where Allen was back to hitting either second or third, his batting average was .333 and he had 8 home runs and 23 RBIs, while the Phillies went 21-13 (.618) and built up a six-game lead. The trade from New York to Philadelphia, meanwhile, rejuvenated Thomas, who hit .302 with 7 home runs and 26 RBIs in 33 games before he was injured. Covington batted .333 with 5 homers and 22 RBIs in 27 games, including those into which he was inserted after a lefty starter was replaced by a right-handed reliever.

For most of the remainder of the season after Thomas was sidelined with his injury, Mauch stayed with his Allen-Callison batting order platoon with Allen second, Callison third and Covington batting fourth when a right-hander took the mound, except against southpaw starting pitchers when he put Allen fourth and sat Covington with Callison still batting third. In the final 24 games of the season after the Thomas injury, Dick Allen batted second in 11 games (with HR / RBI / BA slash lines of 3 / 8 / .356 ), third in 3 games ( 0 / 2 / .167), and fourth in 10 games ( 1 / 6 / .350). Allen finished the season with a .318 batting average (fifth in the league), 201 hits (tied for third), 29 home runs (tied for seventh), and 79 runs batted in.

Would it have made a difference had Mauch kept Dick Allen in the cleanup spot of his batting order for the rest of the season after moving him there on June 13, even after Frank Thomas came over to Philadelphia?

Aside from power numbers suggesting that the third, fourth, or even fifth slots in the batting order were the more logical fit for him than batting second, Allen also had a propensity to strike out a lot--not a good thing for a number-two hitter, and seemingly certainly not when Mauch liked so much to manufacture runs (see my previous post on the '64 Phillies, link below). Allen led the league in strikeouts in 1964 with 138, and averaged one K for every five at bats when he hit second. Almost exactly half (33) of Allen's 67 walks, however, were in the 41 percent of games he batted fourth with few potent bats behind him, a factor which may have figured into Mauch's decision to move him further up in the order.

For the season, Dick Allen hit only .270 but had 12 home runs and 36 RBIs in the 64 games he batted second in the order--all against right-handers; batted .363 with 8 homers and 32 RBIs in the 32 games he started batting third--all but two against southpaws; and .345 with 9 home runs and 24 RBIs in the 66 games he batted cleanup, 35 times against left-handed starters and 31 against righties. Against right-handed pitchers Allen's slash lines were 18 / 60 / .287 with an OPS of .856 in 450 plate appearances; against southpaws, they were 11 / 31 / .372 with an OPS of 1.081 in 259 plate appearances. His strikeout ratio per plate appearance was 18 percent against lefties, 20 percent against righties.

Would it have made a difference had Mauch batted Allen fourth in the final weeks, particularly when the games became desperate as the Phillies' lead evaporated? During the Phillies' 10-game losing streak that began with them holding a 6-1/2 game lead with just 12 games remaining and which defined their epic collapse of historic proportions (rhetorical overkill intended), Allen continued to hit well even as the rest of his teammates did not. He batted .415; they batted .191. While the rest of the Phillies were terrible in the clutch with runners on base, Allen was ... well, clutch, hitting .421 with runners on base. And he had a sacrifice bunt--about which, more when that game comes up in September.

Previous Posts in This Series on the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies:

1.  "Introducing the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies" http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/03/fifty-years-ago-introducing-1964.html

2. "Mauch the Platoonmeister" http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/04/catching-up-with-64-phillies-mauch.html

3.  "Pitching Problems on the Horizon" http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/05/back-to-64-phillies-pitching-problems.html

4.  "The '64 Phillies' Perfect Father's Day" http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-64-phillies-perfect-fathers-day.html

5.  ""Mauch Loved to Sacrifice" http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/06/50-years-ago-64-phillies-mauch-loved-to.html

Catching Up With the '64 Phillies: Mauch the Platoonmeister

Fifty years ago, at the end of play on May 1st, the Philadelphia Phillies had gotten off to a 10-2 start and were two games up on the competition.  (San Francisco was second, St. Louis third, half a game behind the Giants, and Cincinnati--off to a 7-7 start and having just lost a two-game set to the Phillies--was four back.) Rookie Dick Allen (then known as "Richie") was batting .431 and already had 6 home runs and 13 runs batted in. This second in a continuing series on the tale of the 1964 Phillies--(we all know how that ended)--focuses on manager Gene Mauch's platooning not only at four positions, but Allen and Johnny Callison in their position in the batting order.

Catching Up With the '64 Phillies:  Mauch the Platoonmeister

With perhaps not the strongest of teams, Mauch was very much an activist in configuring his daily line-up and batting order to best take on the opposing team's starting pitcher. After several decades of being not much practiced, platooning began making a comeback in post-World War II major league baseball and was headlined by the success of Casey Stengel's 1950s line-up machinations at the helm of the Yankees.  By the 1960s, probably about half the major league teams had a position player platoon at one position or another--particularly at catcher if, like the Dodgers with Johnny Roseboro, they had a quality backstop who happened to bat left-handed.

With the possible exception of Mr. Stengel, Mauch platooned his starting line-up to a historically unprecedented extent in 1964.  For most of the season he platooned at four positions: behind the plate with left-handed Clay Dalrymple and right-handed veteran Gus Triandos; at first base, the left-handed rookie John Herrnstein paired off with veteran right-handed Roy Sievers and, in September, with another veteran right-hander, Vic Power; in left field, left-handed journeyman Wes Covington shared time first with Danny Cater and then Alex Johnson, both right-handed batting rookies; and in center field, the lefty Tony Gonzalez with the righty Cookie Rojas.  Tony Taylor at second base, Allen at third, and Callison in right field were the only Phillies written into Mauch's line-up every day.  At shortstop, Bobby Wine began the season as the starter, but his .200 batting average by the end of July contributed to Mauch giving Ruben Amaro most of the playing time in August and September and using Wine extensively as a late-inning defensive replacement after pinch hitting for Amaro, who was not exactly causing angst in the hearts of opposing pitchers.

Mauch's first base platoon did not stand the test of time.  The 36-year old Sievers hit a three-run home run in his first at bat of the season, but the lifetime .267 hitter with 318 career home runs was a bust for the Phillies, with only 4 home runs and batting only .182 against southpaws.  He was dispatched to the Washington Senators in mid-July.  The 26-year old Herrnstein hit only .235 against right-handed pitchers, which helps to explain why two-thirds of his career at bats were in 1964.  The Phillies resolved their lack of first base offense when they acquired the veteran Frank Thomas from the Mets to be a regular in the line-up, but a broken thumb suffered in a takeout slide on September 8 sidelined him for the next two weeks, forcing Mauch to again platoon at first base, this time pairing Herrnstein with Vic Power.  Covington held up his part of Mauch's left field platoon with 13 round-trippers, 53 RBI and a .280 average against righties, and Cater did well with a .333 average against southpaws when he played, before a broken arm cost him all of the month of August and limited him to three starts and 23 plate appearances when he returned in September. Replacing Cater as the right-hander in Mauch's left field platoon, Alex Johnson hit .400 in August but only .220 in the crucial final month.  Behind the plate, 93 of Dalrymple's 110 starts were against righties, against whom he hit .242, while the 33-year old Triandos hit .248 against southpaws.

The unexpected position platoon was the one in center field, where Tony Gonzalez started out as an every day player.  A left-handed batter, Gonzalez had hit .306 as a full-time regular the previous year with an average better than .300 against both righties and lefties.  He had a horrible time of it against lefties from the beginning in 1964, however, going 4-for-31 in games started by southpaws before Mauch decided towards the end of May he had best platoon in center field, using Cookie Rojas as the right-handed batter. Gonzalez wound up hitting .278 on the season, and got on base 35 percent of the time, but batted only .157 against pitchers of the left-handed persuasion.  The versatile Rojas started 52 games against southpaws in center field, with a .267 average against them.

But the most interesting of Mauch's platoons was in his batting order between two of his core regulars who also happened to be the Phillies' most dangerous hitters--rookie sensation Dick ("Richie") Allen and star right fielder Johnny Callison.  From the very beginning of the season until early June, Mauch swapped the two between second and third in the order, depending on the starting pitcher.  He had right-handed Allen batting second and the left-handed Callison third when the Phillies faced off against a righty, and Callison second and Allen third when a southpaw took the mound. Having Callison bat second against southpaws was most effective if the lead-off batter, Tony Taylor, got on base because, with the first baseman having to hold him on, it opened up the right side of the infield for Callison to pull the ball, increasing the odds of his getting a hit and of runners on first and third if he singled into right field.  Through the first two months of the season with this platoon alignment in the batting order, Callison hit .299 with 4 home runs and 20 RBI and Allen, off to a great start, was leading the league with 10 home runs and had 24 RBI and a .301 average.  Unfortunately, Taylor was batting only .228, had an on-base percentage that was a mere .290, and had scored only 15 runs in 27 games by the time May turned to June.  (Taylor ended up the season with a .251 average, batting sixth or seventh in Mauch's batting order in 40 percent of the games he played, with Gonzalez or Rojas batting lead-off in virtually every game after mid-July.)

In June, presumably awestruck by Allen's power, Mauch moved his slugging third baseman into the clean-up spot and penciled Callison third in the batting order, where both remained on a daily basis (more or less) until mid-August, when Mauch went back to alternating the two for the rest of the season (more or less) between second and third in the order depending on the starting pitcher. Suffice it to say for now that Callison's HR / RBI / BA line for the season in the 42 games he batted second was 3 / 33 / .247, compared to 23 / 70 / .284 in the 114 games he hit third in the order.  Allen's numbers were 12 / 36 / .270 when he batted second (64 games); 8 / 23 / .363 when he batted third (32 games); and 9 / 32 / .345 in the 66 games he was in the clean-up spot.

There will be more to say about Allen's place in Gene Mauch's line-up in a post later this summer, and much to come to set the stage for the Phillies' epic collapse of  '64.

The following is the link to the first post of this series:  http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/03/fifty-years-ago-introducing-1964.html

Fifty Years Ago: Introducing the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies (First in a Series)

2014 is the 50th season since the Philadelphia Phillies' remarkable run for the pennant in 1964, which ended with perhaps the most colossal, calamitous collapse in baseball history. Even fans beyond a certain age, especially in the City of Brotherly Love, know the sordid story about the Phillies' blowing a 6-1/2 game lead with only 12 games left on the schedule.  This is the first of a series of Insights this season--which will be occasional until September, when the pace of my '64 Phillies posts will pick up dramatically--reconstructing what happened with, and ultimately to, the 1964 Phillies.

Fifty Years Ago:  Introducing the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies (First in a Series)

The Sports Illustrated issue previewing the 1964 season was explicit in saying (in its segment on the defending 1963 World Champion Dodgers) that "there are six teams with a good shot at the National League pennant this year."  One of those teams was the Philadelphia Phillies, who were showing promise for the first time in more than a decade of being competitive again.

With the exception of the St. Louis Browns (before they became the Baltimore Orioles), the Phillies entering that season had the sorriest team history in major league baseball.  They won their first pennant in 1915 and were summarily dispatched in the World Series in five games by the Red Sox.  They then did not win another pennant until 1950, when the "Whiz Kids" ambushed the powerful Brooklyn Dodgers to seize the National League pennant, their reward for which was being swept in the World Series by the Yankees.  In the 35 years in between, the Phillies finished last or next to last 24 times, including one stretch of 13 straight years as one of the two worst teams in the league. The 1950 Whiz Kids quickly proved to be one-year wonders; the Phillies were a middle-of-the-pack team for most of the rest of the decade and finished up the pre-expansion modern history of the National League with four consecutive eighth (that would be last)-place finishes.  In 1961, the last year before expansion, the Phillies lost 107 games.

But the future was already looking brighter.  The Phillies went from 47 wins in 1961 to 81 in 1962. Even accounting for NL expansion adding two teams--the Mets and Astros (then known as the Colt .45s)--against which Philadelphia won 31 games, accounting for 38 percent of their total wins; the truly awful Cubs also playing like an expansion team; and the schedule increasing from 154 to 162 games, 34 more victories in a single season is a fairly significant marker of improvement.  In 1963, the Phillies not only further improved to 87 wins to finish fourth, but from the beginning of July till the end of the season had the third-best record of the twenty teams in major league baseball; only the two pennant-winners--the Yankees and Dodgers--played better than the Phillies after July 1. Furthermore, Philadelphia made a statement by getting the best of the Dodgers in their season series, winning 11 of 18 games.  Still, with the Dodgers and Giants dominating the league, and the Cincinnati Reds a dangerous team, it did not seem likely the Phillies would make a serious run for the pennant in 1964.

Two significant management changes had helped the Phillies dramatically change direction from their decline to mediocrity and doormat of the National League after their Whiz Kids year.  In the dugout, the guiding mind belonged to Gene Mauch.  A seldom-used utility infielder for six different teams during a nine-year major league playing career, Mauch spent his time on the bench observing and mastering the art of the game. As a manager, Mauch was carefully cultivating the image of a brilliant baseball strategist and tactician always out-thinking whoever was in the dugout for the other team.  His intensity level, however, could sometimes be counterproductive.      

It was the arrival of John Quinn to be General Manager in 1959, however, that arguably did the most to change the toxic competitive environment that enveloped Connie Mack Stadium.  Quinn had been the architect of the Milwaukee Braves teams that were a National League power in the second half of the 1950s, in part because of their willingness to sign and promote promising black players--most notably one Mr. Hank Aaron.  Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the Phillies--who had viciously persecuted Jackie Robinson in his rookie season--were the very last major league team to sign a black player for their minor league system (in 1955), and were the last National League team to integrate at the big league level in 1957.  Being the last bastion of segregation in the National League was certainly not helpful to their competitiveness.

Just as his investment in black players paid off for Milwaukee with back-to-back pennants in 1957 and 1958, the same would be true in 1964 when the Phillies unexpectedly competed for the pennant with five black players in key roles.  This by itself would have been a terrific story, given Philadelphia's noxious history on the integration front, had it not been for the team's epic collapse in the last two weeks of the season.  In 1960 and 1961, Quinn traded for second baseman Tony Taylor and outfielders Tony Gonzalez and Wes Covington; in 1961 he promoted Ruben Amaro to play shortstop; and in 1964, Dick Allen (then known as "Richie")--originally signed by the Quinn regime in 1960--was named the Phillies' starting third baseman from day one.  SI was sufficiently impressed in its 1964 preview issue to posit that Allen could "be the top-hitting rookie in the major leagues this season."

In addition to his trades for Taylor, Gonzalez and Covington, Quinn pulled one over on the White Sox in December of 1959 by surrendering third baseman Gene Freese to Chicago, a team that had been struggling to fill that position since the end of the Second World War, in a trade for Johnny Callison, a promising 20-year old outfield prospect with limited big league experience. Callison broke into the Phillies' starting line-up for good in August 1960 and by now was one of the best young outfielders in baseball.  In 1963, Callison had the third-highest player value for a position player in the major leagues (after Mays and Aaron) as measured by wins above replacement.  The SI preview projected Callison to be the "hitting star" of the team, and they were right about that, even though it would be Dick Allen who was the Phillies' dominant hitter that year. Johnny Callison played in every game for the 1964 Phillies and, with 31 home runs, 104 RBI, and a .274 batting average, would likely have been voted the league MVP were it not for Philadelphia's almost incomprehensible implosion.

But the biggest impact trade made by John Quinn was in December 1963 with the Detroit Tigers for Jim Bunning.  Perhaps after his 12-13 record with a relatively high ERA of 3.88 in 1963, the Tigers may have thought the 31-year old right-hander had begun sliding down the slope of the far side of his career.  Bunning, however, had been one of the American League's best pitchers since winning 20 games in his first full season in the big leagues in 1957.  He had won 118 games while losing 87 for the Tigers, who were mostly not competitive in his years with the team.  Noting his exceptional performances in All-Star games against the National League's best hitters, SI predicted that "Bunning will be tough the first time around the league and should help the Phils get off to a good start."  They were right about that, too: Jim Bunning was 8-2 with six complete games, three shutouts (including a perfect game against the Mets on Father's Day), and a 2.17 ERA in his first 16 starts for the Phillies through the end of June.  Philadelphia began July only half-a-game back of San Francisco in what looked at the time to be shaping up as a two-team race.

With a strong starting rotation that included more than Jim Bunning--SI projected southpaw Dennis Bennett and right-hander Art Mahaffey to win 35 games between then; Dick Allen and Johnny Callison in the batting order; better than average hitting and speed; and speculating that the outfield might be shored up "by a late trade," Sports Illustrated concluded, whether objectively or optimistically:  "This could bring the start of a winning tradition to Philadelphia."

Stay tuned to this blog for continuing posts through the current baseball season on what happened, and why, to the Philadelphia Phillies of fifty years ago.