The Minnie Minoso Dossier

Minnie Minoso, who turned 89 on November 29, is being considered for the second time in recent years by the Veteran's Committee for inclusion into baseball's Hall of Fame. Although often remembered for the sideshow of playing three games as a designated hitter for the White Sox in 1976 at the age of 50 and pinch hitting in two games four years later (so it could be said he played in five decades), Minoso should be remembered--and indeed honored--as one of the game's best players in the 1950s, when he faced the twin challenges of being one of the first black players in major league baseball and of being a native Cuban having to adapt to American culture.

The Minnie Minoso Dossier

Minnie Minoso was one of only five black players making their major league debut before Jackie Robinson retired in 1956 to become a core regular on an American League team for as many as five years as of 1960, which was indicative of that league's go-slow approach when it came to integration. Originally signed by Cleveland  in 1948 out of the Negro Leagues, Minoso played a handful of games for the Indians in 1949, excelled in the Pacific Coast League in 1950, had an exceptional rookie season in 1951, and was one of the AL's premier players for the rest of the decade. According to similarity scores developed by Bill James to compare players, the player to whom Minnie Minoso was most similar from when he was 28 through the age of 36 was Hall of Fame outfielder Enos Slaughter.

After being acquired from Cleveland in a multi-player three-team round-robin of trading on the last day of April in 1951, Minoso immediately made his impact felt in helping to turn around the fortunes of the Chicago White Sox. Still haunted by the 1919 Black Sox scandal that sent the American League team in Chicago to purgatory for decades in mostly the nether regions of the league, the White Sox had finished a dismal sixth the previous year, 34 games below .500. After changing uniforms, Minoso's batting average of .359 in his first two months with Chicago was instrumental in the White Sox reaching and staying in first place for virtually all of June and remaining competitive until August. The White Sox finished the season in fourth place, out of the running, but with a winning record for the first time in eight years.

The rookie outfielder's .326 batting average was second in the league to Philadelphia's Ferris Fain (.344). Batting third in the line-up, he was second in runs scored with 112, one behind Boston's Dom DiMaggio. Fifth in both on-base and slugging percentages, Minoso had the third highest overall combined on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the American League. Showing off his speed, he led the league in triples with 14 and in stolen bases with 31. Third in total extra-base hits, his 34 doubles were two short of the league-leaders (three players had 36). His player value of 5.5 wins above replacement (WAR) was sixth in the league, and fourth-best among position players. Minnie Minoso was better in all of these categories than any other rookie in baseball, including Willie Mays, but it was the pennant-winning Yankees' versatile infielder Gil McDougald who spent the winter polishing the AL's Rookie of the Year award.

The White Sox were still a work in progress, but with Minoso and second baseman Nellie Fox as two of the American League's best position players, and southpaw Billy Pierce one of the best pitchers, they were increasingly competitive as the decade advanced. In 1954 Minoso, with a .320 batting average and the most total bases, was the best player in the league based on his 8.2 WAR as the White Sox won 94 games. Perhaps because his team finished third in the standings, however, Minoso finished fourth in the Most Valuable Player voting; 'twas Yogi Berra on the second-place Yankees got to spend the winter admiring the AL's MVP award.

Minoso was at his best between 1954 and 1959 with a six-year average annual player value of 5.7 wins above replacement. Among American League players, only Mickey Mantle and Al Kaline had more wins above replacement during those years. When the White Sox finally did escape from under the weight of the Yankees and Indians--who were first and second in the standings every year between 1951 and 1956 (with Cleveland first and New York second only the one time in 1954)--Minnie Minoso was no longer in Chicago to enjoy the American League championship they finally won in 1959.

Despite having another strong year in 1957 with the fifth of his eight .300 batting averages and the fifth time his on-based percentage exceeded .400, Minoso was traded back to Cleveland for outfielder Al Smith and future Hall of Famer pitcher Early Wynn. After a pair of .302 seasons in Cleveland, Minoso returned to Chicago in yet another trade and, at 34 years old in 1960, led the AL in hits with 189 while batting .311. The 1960 White Sox fought valiantly in defense of their American League crown before slipping out of the pennant race in mid-September, thus ending Minoso's last chance to play in a World Series. The following year was the last that Minoso was a regular. He missed most of the 1962 season, now playing for St. Louis, with a broken wrist and never recovered to play close to the level he had. Age will do that to you, if you're a baseball player and on the other side of 35.

With a .298 lifetime batting average, Minnie Minoso never got more than 21 percent of the vote when he was on the Cooperstown ballot of the Baseball Writers Association of America. That was in his fourth year of eligibility. Among the 16 voters on this year's Veteran's Committee are Al Kaline and Jim Bunning, both of whom played in the American League in the last half of the 1950s. Bunning might remember that Minoso touched him up for a .333 average, six home runs and 18 runs batted in. The only other pitcher who Minoso tagged for that many home runs (also six) was Early Wynn, except Minoso had 85 more plate appearances against him than Bunning. And Kaline might remember that Minoso hit more home runs in his career against the Detroit Tigers--37--than any other team, along with 159 RBI and a .308 average, and 24 of those home runs Minoso knocked out at Tiger Stadium.

The Veteran's Committee Hall of Fame selections, if any this year, will be announced on December 8. Should Minnie Minoso be elected, it would be hard to argue with that.

The '64 Phillies Finale: The Perils of Mauch's Genius

The 1964 World Series began on October 7 ... without the Philadelphia Phillies. But it should be noted that the 1964 Phillies probably would not even have been in position to win the pennant without Gene Mauch as their manager. After taking over in Philadelphia in 1960, Mauch quickly earned a reputation for being a thinking, hands-on manager who was masterful in his direction of the game, getting the most out of his roster and outmaneuvering the manager in the opposite dugout.  But managerial brilliance can be a tricky thing. Managers are both strategists and tacticians in the dugout. They must navigate a delicate line between managing too much and managing too little. The question remains whether Mauch's constant maneuvers to try to wrest competitive advantages--both big and small--may have caught up with him in the final weeks of the season and cost his team what proved to be their one best chance to get to the World Series. 

The '64 Phillies Finale: The Perils of Mauch's Genius

When it was over, Gene Mauch blamed himself for the debacle. This was telling not so much because he attempted to remove the stigma of the collapse from his players but because, in the final weeks, he may have put on himself too much of the burden to win games instead of allowing the games to play out with less urgency. Baseball can be unforgiving, quick to smack down those who think they can master the flow of the game. Mauch's intensity and overwhelming desire to maintain tight control over each game--(perhaps for fear of the second-guessing that comes with losing?)--became counterproductive as the Phillies' losses began mounting. His trying hard to force the action began to convey panic with the result that his players became increasingly tight in pressure situations. This was a criticism that Dick Allen in particular made, and in various accounts of what happened.

While Mauch arguably made any number of questionable tactical in-game decisions discussed in this series, his primary miscalculation was strategic, with ultimately unforgiving cascading effects. His big mistake was quite likely beginning to prepare for the World Series prematurely when on September 16, with a six-game lead, he started his ace Jim Bunning on short rest, probably so he would be aligned to start Game 1 of the Series. This mistake was compounded the very next day by his rush to clinch the pennant, manifested by his using two pitchers--Rick Wise and Bobby Shantz--as effectively one starter in LA even though his starting rotation was in disarray because of injuries to Ray Culp and Dennis Bennett. This made Shantz unavailable two days later when Mauch desperately needed a seasoned southpaw--as opposed to an untested rookie lefty--to try to prevent the Dodgers from winning a game already in the 16th inning.

Then he overreacted to a string of defeats, especially to the Reds, that still left the Phillies in control of the pennant race with fewer than 10 games remaining, even if no longer in commanding control. Then, as the defeats piled on, Mauch panicked as he tried desperately to pick up wins by starting his two best pitchers--Bunning and Chris Short--twice consecutively on short rest, when they, and especially Bunning, would have been more effective with normal rest. In particular, starting both pitchers on short rest against Milwaukee, when Philadelphia still had the lead, was arguably a mistake that ultimately forced him to resort to doing so a second time in St. Louis as the Phillies' lead was now gone.

The Phillies lost the pennant by one game. Even if they had lost all of the games where Mauch had no obvious starting pitcher, Culp being unable to pitch because of his elbow and Bennett badly hampered by a bum shoulder, Bunning and Short would have been more likely to pitch effectively and gain a victory on normal rest--as Bunning proved in both of his stretch drive victories, against the Dodgers on September 20 (the usual four days after his short-rest start in Houston ended badly) and on the final day of the season (four days after his third start on short rest also ended badly). Just one additional win by both Bunning and Short, or two by either, could have changed the outcome of the pennant race. In effect, it may be that Mauch turned possible wins into losses by panicking rather than accepting losses for the sake of maximizing the odds of winning when his two best pitchers started.

If Mauch made his decision to start Bunning on September 16 in Houston on only two days' rest in order to line up his ace's remaining starts on normal rest with Game 1 of the World Series--and this seems to be the only plausible explanation, if you study the calendar--it suggests that at that point he took the pennant for granted. Mauch was apparently willing to risk a loss by Bunning on short rest for the purpose of setting him up for the Series even though the National League pennant had not yet been clinched. With a six-game lead at this point, there probably still would have been time enough for Mauch to arrange his rotation for Bunning to start Game 1 of the Series with the appropriate rest between his final regular season starts had he waited for the Phillies to officially cinch the pennant.

While the impact of his starting Bunning in Houston on September 16 could still have been mitigated had Mauch thereafter kept his ace on the normal schedule he apparently had planned, his decision had a cascading effect as the Phillies went into their 10-game losing streak because Bunning turned out not to be available to start against one of the remaining contending clubs, the Reds. In trying to prepare for the World Series, Gene Mauch outsmarted himself and forgot the importance of starting his best pitchers in their appropriate turns to keep them in rhythm.

Baseball has a way of punishing hubris.

This concludes Baseball Historical Insight's series on what happened in the epic collapse of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies ... fifty years ago.

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 of the '64 Phillies (Sept 16): Was Mauch's Greatest Blunder Looking Ahead to the World Series?

The standard narrative of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies' epic collapse always begins on September 21, when the Phillies had a seemingly safe 6-1/2 game lead with only 12 remaining on their schedule. On that day began a 10-game losing streak that famously included  manager Gene Mauch starting his two best pitchers--Jim Bunning and Chris Short--twice each on only two days of rest in desperation to salvage the pennant. This Insight makes the case that the unraveling actually began five days earlier--on September 16 in Houston--when Mauch decided to start Bunning for the first time on short rest, a decision the Baseball Prospectus pennant race book, It Ain't Over 'Til Its Over, calls "inexplicable." An examination of the calendar suggests Mauch's decision was hardly that. It seems quite likely instead that he was trying to line up Bunning, his ace, to start Game 1 of the World Series that seemed a certainty to include Philadelphia as the National League participant.

Was Mauch's Greatest Blunder Looking Ahead to the World Series?

At the start of day on September 16, 1964, the Phillies had a six-game lead over the second-place Cardinals with only 17 games remaining; the Giants were 7-1/2 games back and the Reds 8-1/2 back. Despite such a commanding lead, manager Gene Mauch made his biggest strategic blunder of the season: he decided to start Jim Bunning, his ace, in Houston on only two days' rest. But why? The ninth-place Colts (as the team in Houston was than called) were certainly not contenders. Moreover, in his previous start--just three days before--Bunning had pitched and won a 10-inning complete game. Pitch counts were not much (if at all) in managers' minds back then and were not recorded for posterity, but clearly with nine strikeouts and having surrendered two walks and seven hits, Bunning threw well over 100 pitches in his 10-inning effort. So, why?

A look at the calendar suggests that the most plausible reason is that Mauch was trying to set up Bunning--whose record was now 17-4 with an excellent 2.13 ERA--to start the first game of the World Series, for which the Phillies were beginning to print tickets, scheduled to start on Wednesday, October 7. Ironically, Bunning would have been perfectly lined up to start the World Series by making his last five regular-season starts on normal rest except for one thing: a quirk of the schedule had the Phillies and Reds concluding the season in Cincinnati with games on Friday, October 2, and Sunday, October 4, but with an off-day on Saturday, between the two games.

This scheduling presented Mauch with a fraught dilemma. If Bunning continued to pitch on his normal schedule--every fourth day, which was the standard at the time--his last start before the World Series would have been on Tuesday, September 29, giving him a full week off before the Fall Classic began. Starting pitchers establish a rhythm for pitching during the season, and Mauch probably assumed (rightly) that seven days between starts was too long for a workhorse like Bunning, who might lose his edge with so much downtime.

Mauch could have decided to pitch his ace every fifth day for the rest of the season, which would have had Bunning making his final start on Friday, October 2, giving him another four days of rest before taking the mound for Game 1 of the Series. But this would not have been a viable solution for Mauch even if he had been willing to buck the then-conventional practice of three days of rest between starts for top pitchers. With Ray Culp out because of his chronically sore elbow and Dennis Bennett pitching in pain with a bad shoulder, Mauch really had no option to go to a five-man rotation until the start of the World Series.

Instead, if this analysis is correct, Mauch appears to have decided that keeping to the rhythm of three days between starts was preferable and took the gamble of starting Bunning--presumably just this once--on short rest against a very bad team in order to set him up to have proper rest before his final start of the regular season, which would now be on Friday, October 2. That would have given Bunning an extra fourth day off before pitching in Game 1 of the World Series.

At least, that seems likely to have been the plan. With such a comfortable lead, what could go wrong?

It probably didn't matter to Mauch that Bunning on short rest surrendered six runs to the Colts in less than five innings. But the decision ultimately had huge implications for the Phillies' historic unraveling of 1964. For one thing, it meant Bunning was no longer in line to pitch in any of the three games from September 21 to 23 when the Reds came to town; of course, with 8-1/2 games separating the two teams on September 16, who would think any of those games would be important ... but, the Cincinnati Reds were still in play in the pennant chase--even if with virtually no margin to spare.

For an earlier post on the Phillies' pitching problems, see "Pitching Problems on the Horizon" (May 29); http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/05/back-to-64-phillies-pitching-problems.html

The following is a link to the previous post in this series on the 1964 Phillies, which includes links to those before that: http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-64-phillies-and-whiz-kids-precedent.html

The '64 Phillies' Perfect Father's Day

The Phillies' trade acquisition of Jim Bunning in December was expected to bolster their starting pitching and contribute to building towards a contending team--although competing for the pennant in 1964 was considered by most experts to be a bit premature. After a 118-87 record with the Detroit Tigers, and having been one of the American League's best pitchers the previous seven seasons, Bunning was certainly not disappointing expectations. His Father's Day start in 1964 was his 14th in a Phillies uniform. Bunning, of course, made history that day by twirling a perfect game--not only the first since Don Larsen's in the 1956 World Series, but only the seventh perfect game in major league history. This is the fourth in a series of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies. Links to the first three are at the end of this post.

The '64 Phillies' Perfect Father's Day

When Jim Bunning completed his warm-up pitches to face the Mets in the bottom of the first inning in the first game of the Father's Day doubleheader on Sunday June 21st 1964, he was pitching in only the 31st game ever played at Shea Stadium, the Mets' brand-spanking-new home. That made him the 62nd starting pitcher to take the mound at the new stadium. Three of the previous 30 games in Shea's short history had been shutouts. Bunning pitched the fourth shutout, but his was PERFECT. He was now 7-2 on the season with 10 "quality starts," including three shutouts, and an excellent 2.07 ERA--a worthy addition (having come from the American League) to the ranks of outstanding National League pitchers at the time and future fellow Hall of Fame guys Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal and Bob Gibson.

Bunning's was only the third perfect game in National League history, and the first since the so-called "modern era" began in 1901 when the American League declared itself a major league and had the credibility to do so by virtue of so many NL stars having abandoned the league for better pay in the new league--including Cy Young, who in 1904 pitched the first perfect game of the 20th century. Bunning's perfect game was the first in the National League in 84 years; Monte Ward had been the last to be perfect way back on June 17, 1880, only five days after Lee Richmond pitched the first-ever recorded perfecto on June 12. That was so long ago that the four teams involved in those two perfect games were Worcester (for whom Richmond pitched), Cleveland, Providence (for whom Ward pitched) and Buffalo, none of which survived into the modern era. (Cleveland was downsized out of the National League after going 20-134 in 1899, before being invited to become a charter member of the American League in 1901.)

At the end of Bunning's perfect day, which included 18-year old Rick Wise earning his first-ever major league victory pitching six innings without surrendering an earned run in the second game of the twinbill, the Phillies held a 2-game lead over the second-place Giants. The Reds were third, 4-1/2 back, and the Cardinals were struggling in sixth place, having already endured two five-game losing streaks, and were 8 games behind with a losing 32-33 record with 40 percent of the 1964 season gone by.

The Cardinals' situation had become sufficiently troubling (if "desperate" is too strong a word) that just six days before they had traded with the Chicago Cubs for outfielder Lou Brock, whose career was so far a disappointment but who the Cardinals thought could shore up their struggling offense, which had been held to two runs or less in 15 of their previous 20 games before they cut the deal. To get Brock, St. Louis parted with one of their top starting pitchers--Ernie Broglio, whose 18-8 record in 1963 was the best on the team and a major reason why the Cardinals had finished second and seemed primed to make a move to displace the Dodgers in 1964. They also sent veteran left-handed reliever Bobby Shantz to Chicago, who two months later, after being hardly used and pitching poorly when he was, found himself in Philadelphia--where he would figure prominently in the Phillies' September fortunes.

It can perhaps be argued that the Phillies' 2-game advantage in the standings was somewhat deceptive since their 12 previous games were with the Mets--the worst team in baseball--against whom they went 7-2, and the Cubs--also a bad team--against whom they were 2-1 in that stretch. In fact, by this point in the season the Phillies had played 44 percent of their games against the three teams that ended the 1964 season at the bottom of the National League standings, going a combined 21-6 against them through Father's Day (9-2 vs. New York; 6-1 vs. Houston; and 6-3 vs. Chicago). Philadelphia was no better than .500 against the rest of the league at 17-17. Of the three other teams that would matter come September, the Phillies were 4-1 against Cincinnati, but only 1-5 against San Francisco and 1-4 against St. Louis.

The Giants, meanwhile, had played only 29 percent of their games as of June 21 against the Cubs, Colts and Mets; the Cardinals 32 percent; and the Reds 33 percent. As we shall see come the final weeks of the season, the Phillies having faced off against the league's bottom-dwellers so often at the beginning of the season would not be helpful to them at the end.

Personal Notes on Father's Day: The memories I will always cherish about my dad--and there were many centered around baseball (and many around other things)--was his coming home from work and, after an hour commute from The Big Apple on the Long Island Railroad, taking me out to the diamond and hitting me 100 ground balls at shortstop and second base every evening. Thank heavens for daylight savings time. He expected accurate return throws. If there was still daylight, then maybe some outfield fly balls and even a bit of batting practice. Helped me stay sharp, at least defensively, for afternoon pickup games with friends--usually five to a side. Anyway, if there is any one thing from my youth that I would really like to do again, because everything was so right with the world, it would be fielding those ground balls and listening to him talk about Phil Rizzuto, Joe Gordon and Jerry Coleman.

And among my fondest memories as a dad with my daughter--and throughout her childhood I kept thinking, it could never get any better than this, and it did--was one summer a game we played called 27 outs. Using a tennis ball and her without a glove, I'd throw her an assortment of ground balls and pop ups that she had to catch cleanly and throw back accurately or be charged with an error. We'd play maybe three or four of these every evening, usually on a lighted tennis court. Happily, she had a nice amount of perfect games: 27 chances, 27 clean fields, 27 accurate throws. Not exactly Jim Bunning's achievement of 50 years ago, but more meaningful--at least to me.

Earlier, on the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies:

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/03/fifty-years-ago-introducing-1964.html

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/04/catching-up-with-64-phillies-mauch.html

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/05/back-to-64-phillies-pitching-problems.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.