Last Chance for the 1964 Phillies in Their Epic Collapse: Force A Three-Way Tie

After having lost 10 in a row to see their 6-1/2 game lead with 12 remaining go to a 2-1/2 game deficit with only two left, the Phillies began their final series of the season--two games in Cincinnati, who trailed St. Louis by half-a-game--needing a perfect storm in their favor. They could still finish the 162-game schedule tied for first if they won both their games against the Reds and the Cardinals lost all three of their remaining games, which happened to be against the lowly Mets. This would create a three-way tie.

Last Chance for the Phillies: Force a Three-Way Tie

You read right, Philadelphia's only possibility of making the World Series--which 10 consecutive losses and 10 days ago seemed like such a sure thing--would be to win a never-before three-way playoff series with Cincinnati and St. Louis to determine the pennant winner. It could have even been a four-way tie for first, but only if the Giants, who were now three games back, won all three of their remaining games against the Cubs in San Francisco, and if the Cardinals were swept by the Mets, and if the Phillies won both of their games against the Reds.

Blessedly for the Philadelphia Phillies, on October 1 came their first day of rest since August 31. They had played 31 games in the first 30 days of September. And the fact that there was another off day on Saturday--between their Friday and Sunday games in Cincinnati--meant that Mauch could start his two best pitchers, Chris Short and Jim Bunning, on their normal three of days rest in the final two games of the season.

As it happened, the Phillies did their part by beating the Reds in both teams' final games of the season, and the Cardinals did their part by losing the first two of their three games with the Mets. After Bunning pitched a shutout in game # 162, the Phillies and Reds were tied, awaiting the outcome of the Cardinals finale with the Mets. The Mets had a   3-2 lead in the fifth, but that score was deceiving. Bob Gibson came on in relief to shut down the Mets. The Cardinals scored three times in the fifth, sixth and eighth innings to blow out the Mets and secure the National League pennant with no need for any playoff.

For good measure, St. Louis went on to win the World Series that Philadelphia had seemed sure was theirs to play.

Epic Collapse: The Final Days--Bunning and Short in Desperation Starts

Their once formidable lead reduced to a half-game on September 27 with six games left to go, now was truly desperation time for manager Gene Mauch and his Phillies. With Dennis Bennett suffering from a sore shoulder, and Ray Culp out of action, and Art Mahaffey having just pitched, and not wanting to trust just-turned-19 year old rookie Rick Wise in what was now a very heated pennant race, Mauch started Jim Bunning twice and Chris Short once more on only two days of rest--with predictable losing results.

The Final Days: Bunning and Short in Desperation Starts

Despite having pitched poorly and losing the first of the four-game series with Milwaukee, Jim Bunning volunteered to start the final game of that series on September 27. This was his second start on short rest, but remember, the first was on September 16 against Houston when Philadelphia was not in a pennant-race dogfight and there was no obvious reason to do so. Now there was very good reason, but the script followed an arc similar to his start in Houston. Bunning departed in the fourth inning and the Phillies, 14-8 losers, had now lost seven straight and were down one game in the standings to Cincinnati and just barely ahead--by half-a-game--of the third-place Cardinals of St. Louis--their next destination.

The unintended consequence of his having started both Short and Bunning out of turn on two days of rest against the Braves was that Mauch was now forced to use his two best pitchers once again on short rest against the Cardinals--who were now a team they (the Phillies) had to beat to keep from falling behind yet another suddenly emergent pennant contender, let alone keep pace with the Reds, against whom they would play their final two games of the season. Had they pitched in turn in the rotation, Short and Bunning would have been available to pitch on their normal three-days rest in the season series that now mattered the most--against the Cardinals with the pennant at stake.

Both did start on short rest--each making three starts in the space of seven days--and both lost. As had become commonplace during their horrendous slide, the Phillies squandered numerous scoring opportunities, having great difficulty with runners in scoring position. By the time they left St. Louis, having been swept in the three-game series, the Phillies had lost 10 straight and were now in third place, 2-1/2 games behind, on life support with only two games left for them to play, in Cincinnati, who they trailed by two games. Both the Reds and Cardinals had three games remaining.

Now it was they--the Philadelphia Phillies--who needed a perfect storm in their favor.

Epic Collapse: September 20--The '64 Phillies Face the Perfect Storm

When the Phillies boarded their plane to return to Philadelphia for their final homestand of the season after Bunning, back on three days of rest, beat the Dodgers 3-2 on September 20, they had a 6-1/2 game lead over both the Reds and the Cardinals and were seven games ahead of the Giants. With twelve games remaining, it would take a nearly perfect storm for the Phillies not to win the pennant. As fate would have it, the remaining schedule conspired to make that perfect storm plausible.

The '64 Phillies Face the Perfect Storm

We are now where most accounts of the '64 Phillies' historic collapse begin. When the Phillies took the field at home against the Reds on September 21, their lead was so strong that even if the Reds or Cardinals won all of their remaining games, the Phillies needed to win only seven of their last twelve to win the pennant outright. If the Cardinals or Reds won 10 of their last 13 games--which, in fact, St. Louis did--the Phillies could have finished the season 4-8 and still gone to the World Series.

Despite their long-shot chances, the remaining schedule favored both Cincinnati and St. Louis. The Reds had five of their 13 games remaining against the Phillies and the Cardinals had three left against them, giving both teams the opportunity to make up significant ground against the first-place team they had to overtake. Also playing in the Cards' and Reds' favor: Cincinnati had five games against the awful Mets and three against the sixth-place Pirates, who were 10-8 so far in September, and St. Louis had five games each against both those teams. The Giants, who really should not have been in the discussion at this point as any combination of six Phillies' wins or six losses of their own would eliminate them from contention, had the advantage of playing all 12 of their remaining games against the eighth-place Cubs and ninth-place Colts.

The Phillies, however, did not have any of the National League's worst teams on their remaining schedule. In eight of their final twelve games they had to contend against their two closest competitors--the Reds and Cardinals--meaning they would lose ground in any game they lost. And Philadelphia's four other games were against the Milwaukee Braves, who may have been in fifth place but whose potent line-up was well able to do serious damage to Mauch's worn out pitching staff. With Ray Culp out of action with his painful elbow and Dennis Bennett pitching against a painful shoulder ... and with Art Mahaffey having for the most part struggled in his starts since the beginning of August ... and with Rick Wise just turned 19 years old and failing to pitch beyond the first inning in either of his last two starts ... Jim Bunning and Chris Short were the only pitchers Mauch had faith in.

Philadelphia was scheduled to close the season with three games in St. Louis and two in Cincinnati. But at this point, the dawn of play on September 21, the pennant chances were dim for both those teams, and Mauch had reason to hope--even to expect--that neither would be a pennant threat by then.

To put their remaining schedules in a different perspective: even including the first-place Phillies as their opponents, the Reds and Cardinals were playing teams with a combined .483 winning percentage, while the Phillies were going against teams (the Reds, Braves and Cardinals) with a combined winning percentage of .544--a very significant difference. (The Cubs and Colts, whom the Giants were up against, had a combined .433 winning percentage.) Philadelphia had a far tougher schedule, but still ... a 6-1/2 game lead with only 12 remaining should have been safe, almost impossible to lose. And the Phillies seemed to have the advantage of the first seven of their final games being at home.

With a 46-28 record at Connie Mack Stadium, the Phillies at this point had the best home record in the National League. Their first three games were against the Reds, who really needed to sweep the series to have any realistic chance to catch the Phillies. While there was nothing at the moment the Phillies could do about the Cardinals and Giants, just one win in the three games would leave the Reds 5-1/2 back--a gap that would be virtually impossible for Cincinnati to close with only 10 games left after that. How important would just one win at home against Cincinnati have been? Even if the Cardinals swept their upcoming two-game series against the Mets in New York, one Phillies win against the Reds would have left St. Louis five behind with 11 remaining, and with not very much hope.

But for a perfect storm ...

50 Years Ago: The '64 Phillies--Mauch Loved to Sacrifice

The '64 Phillies passed the first real test as to their competitive mettle on the Fourth of July weekend by sweeping three straight from the Giants with first place at stake. Their one-run victory in the concluding game showcased Gene Mauch's managerial proclivity to emphasize small ball tactics (sacrifice bunts, hit-and-run plays, productive outs) to work for one run at a time, even with a lead. This is the fifth article in a series on the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Phillies' epic collapse.

The '64 Phillies: Mauch Loved to Sacrifice

On July 3, the Philadelphia Phillies came into San Francisco's Candlestick Park for a three-game July 4th holiday showdown series with the Giants, the two teams seemingly the only two taking the National League pennant race seriously. A game-and-a-half separated the Giants and Phillies, with San Francisco having surged into first place with 12 wins in their last 14 games. The Phillies themselves had been playing quite well with an 18-12 record in June, having spent 18 of that month's 30 days on top of the heap, including a lead that reached 2-1/2 games on June 19, the day after which the Giants got hot to bring them to this moment at Candlestick.

(Of the other teams that would figure in September's drama, the Cincinnati Reds were third, 6-1/2 games behind, and the St. Louis Cardinals, now with Lou Brock in their outfield, were still trying to get traction, 9-1/2 games out in fifth place with an exactly .500 record. The defending World Champion Dodgers were out of the picture, trailing everybody but Houston and the New York Mets.)

The Giants could have put themselves in the driver’s seat of the pennant race sports car with a sweep because the season was approaching its mid-point and contenders were being separated from pretenders. That was still an open question for the Phillies: 31 of their 44 victories (70 percent) had been against teams that had losing records as of July 3. Their record against teams .500 or above was 13-15 and the Phillies had been swept when the Giants came to Philadelphia for three games in early June. But it was the Phillies who won the first game to move within half-a-game of the top; won the middle game on July 4 to flip-flop the top two in the standings; and took the series finale, 2-1, beating Giants' ace Juan Marichal—who entered the game with an 11-3 record—to leave San Francisco with a game-and-a-half lead.

Both runs in the third game were set up by intended sacrifice bunts. In a scoreless game, Johnny Callison led off the fourth inning with a single, bringing up the ever-dangerous power-hitting Dick (then known as "Richie") Allen, who had been batting clean-up in Gene Mauch's line-up since mid June. Notwithstanding Allen's .306 batting average and 16 home runs and 47 RBIs at the time, the rookie slugger was asked to lay down a sacrifice bunt to move Callison to second base. It was such a good bunt, Allen beat it out for an infield single. A strikeout and a groundout later, with both runners moving up a base, Callison scored on an infield hit. With two outs and starting from second base, Allen kept coming on the play but was thrown out at the plate for his base running aggressiveness.

The Phillies were still nursing that 1-0 lead when Marichal walked catcher Clay Dalrymple to start the seventh inning. Mauch ordered Tony Taylor, batting seventh with a .243 average, to lay down a sac bunt despite knowing that the next two hitters were the weakest bats in his line-up, but his decision paid immediate dividends when Ruben Amaro, hitting a mere .222 in only his 13th start at shortstop for the season, singled up the middle to score Dalrymple. That run proved critical because Jim Ray Hart, like Allen another power-hitting rookie third baseman to make his presence felt in 1964, hit his 10th of 31 home runs that season off Philadelphia starter Dennis Bennett in the bottom half of the seventh to make it a one-run game again—which was how the game ultimately end.

Gene Mauch was an aggressive manager who liked to force the action, in particular early in games to put the Phillies on the scoreboard first and in close games, whatever the inning. The Philadelphia Phillies in 1964 attempted more sacrifice bunts (156) than any other team in baseball except for the Los Angeles Dodgers (185) and were successful 62 percent of the time, compared to 65 percent for the Dodgers, to finish second to L.A. in sacrifices (97 to 120). The Phillies were also second to the Dodgers in percentage of productive outs to advance base runners, 36 percent for Philadelphia compared to 37 percent for L.A. And the Phillies had the highest percentage in the National League of scoring runners from third base with less than two out (56 percent) and from second base with nobody out (57 percent).

For Los Angeles, managed by Walt Alston, reliance on these strategies—along with the stolen base—was understandable and perhaps even necessary because the Dodgers struggled to score runs and generally lacked extra-base firepower, in part because of the vast expanses of Dodger Stadium. Even in their 1960s pennant-winning years, the Dodgers were below the league average in extra base hits and slugging percentage—substantially so in 1965 and 1966.

While small-ball strategies made sense for Alston, Mauch had much more capacity with his line-up to score runs, but often chose to sacrifice in a play for one run—even with his best hitters at the plate—instead of trusting in his firepower. The two best hitters in his line-up—Allen and Callison—combined for a total of 60 home runs in 1964, but both laid down six sacrifice bunts to move a base runner up with nobody out.

If John McGraw, the grand-daddy of master strategist managers, disdained the sacrifice bunt precisely because it “sacrificed” a precious out, Gene Mauch was more than willing to sacrifice in the interest of playing for one run, including giving up as outs the two batters most likely to drive in runs. Over the course of the full season, Mauch's willingness to sacrifice Allen and Callison as outs to advance a runner into scoring position for somebody else to drive in may seem insignificant. But as we shall later see in September, in the final weeks of the '64 season, sacrificing Dick Allen may have cost his team the pennant.

At the end of July, the two teams met again for a three-game series with first place on the line, this time in Philadelphia. The Giants came into Connie Mack Stadium trailing by a half-game; the Reds were three back in third and the Cardinals tied for fifth, seven games out. The top of the standings remained the same after they split the first two games, but in the series finale—on July 30—after having surrendered a run to the Giants in the top of the tenth inning, the Phillies won the game with the following sequence: a leadoff double and hit batter put runners on first and second; Allen, once again asked to bunt, reached on an infield single toward third to load the bases; a two-run double by Johnny Briggs won the game. Philadelphia now led by 1-1/2 games. It would be nearly two full months before their lead would be that narrow again. 

The following is the link to the previous Baseball Historical Insight on the 1964 Phillies: http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-64-phillies-perfect-fathers-day.html