The Mouth That Roared (18 page)

From the third-base coaching box, Lee Elia had a perfect view of the unfolding events through the eyes of our team. After each pitch, Lee looked to the bench for a sign. These glimpses of a team on the brink provided him with his most lasting memory of the 1980 season. “I looked in there and saw the faces of guys who had been fighting all year to accomplish something this team had never done before,” Lee recalls. “I’m looking at Dallas Green, Bobby Wine, Pete, Schmitty. I see the tension and the pressure. I see Dallas on the top step, refusing to accept that the season may be coming to an end. I’m also thinking to myself,
You’re the only person who has this picture
.”

What was going through my mind? Memories of the 1976, 1977, and 1978 seasons were certainly in there somewhere. I hated to think we might be headed for the same fate as those teams. If we didn’t at least reach the World Series, I wouldn’t return as manager, and the team would be broken up.

Bobby, who had experienced the three previous playoff losses as Danny Ozark’s chief deputy, couldn’t help but think,
Oh no, not again. Almost, but not quite
. Like me, Bobby was also haunted by ghosts of 1964, the year we were teammates on a Phillies team that seemed destined for the World Series before famously flopping.

Sylvia and our four children nervously watched the final innings at our home. They had attended the two games at the Vet, but like so many Phillies fans, were now glued to their TV, praying for a miracle. Sylvia hoped she wouldn’t have to face a classroom full of disappointed students the next day. And she hated to think that our kids might get taunted at school if their dad’s team didn’t pull the game out.

*

Ryan, chomping on his chewing gum, stared in at Greg Gross. Historically, Ryan was nearly unbeatable when taking a lead past the seventh inning. In nearly 3,000 career plate appearances to that point, Greg had bunted for a base hit just a few times. But with the infield playing back, Greg squared around on Ryan’s first pitch and dropped a perfect bunt up the third-base line. He easily beat it out for a hit.

With the bases loaded and nobody out, Rose, a .382 career hitter against Ryan, came to the plate. Pete worked the count full, fouled off a pitch, and then took ball four. Pete defiantly slung his bat toward the dugout and trotted to first base as Bowa crossed home plate to cut the Houston lead to just two runs.

Bill Virdon decided to end the night for Ryan. With the bases still loaded, Joe Sambito got pinch hitter Keith Moreland to ground into a force out at second, but a run scored on the play to bring us even closer.

Virdon saw the game slipping away, so he called on Ken Forsch, normally a starter, to face Schmidt with the go-ahead runs on base. Forsch struck Schmitty out on three pitches.

In desperate need of a clutch two-out at-bat, I called on a guy who hadn’t had a postseason hit during his 13-year major league career.

Del Unser sized up Forsch from the on-deck circle before coming on to pinch-hit for Ron Reed. First-pitch swinging, he stroked a game-tying single to right-center field.

The enthusiasm level in the dugout was now off the charts. And the Astrodome suddenly quieted. Pete was slapping fives with anybody within arm’s reach. Bowa was jumping up and down like a kid. John and George Vukovich (no relation) and Keith Moreland were hooting and hollering.

The excitement reached an even higher level when Trillo ripped a two-run triple. We had entered the inning trailing 5–2. After Maddox flied out to retire the side, we led 7–5.

*

At 36 years of age, Tugger wasn’t a kid. After losing time to injury in July, he became a real workhorse in September. And he had pitched in each of the first four games of the NLCS, including three innings in Game 3. He needed a day off. Everyone in our beleaguered bullpen did. But given the circumstances, I chose to bring him in to help hold the lead. My other option was Dick Ruthven, my would-be Game 5 starter. Like Noles earlier, Ruthven was champing at the bit to get in the game. But he hadn’t pitched in relief all year. And I believed Tugger had at least one more inning left in his arm. If he looked sharp in the eighth, I would consider keeping him in for a six-out save. If not, Ruthven would still be available to pitch multiple innings in a tie game. In a series where no lead was safe, I felt this was a sound strategy.

But Tugger couldn’t get the job done in the eighth. Craig Reynolds reached base on an infield single, and Puhl soon followed with his fourth hit of the game. With runners on first and third and two outs, Rafael Landestoy singled in a run. Jose Cruz followed with another single that tied the score at 7–7.

We had punched and the Astros had counterpunched. Now it was our turn to try and put Houston on the mat once and for all. We got runners on first and third in the top of the ninth against Frank LaCorte, but George Vukovich, pinch-hitting for Tugger, grounded out to end the threat.

As planned, I brought in Ruthven for the bottom of the ninth. I’m sure a lot of our guys had their hearts in their throats at that point. I know I did. Few teams in baseball manufactured runs better than Houston, and all they needed now was to scratch a lone run across.

We hadn’t had a one-two-three inning all game. But when we needed one most, Ruthven delivered, retiring Dave Bergman, Ashby, and Reynolds to preserve the tie.

It was only fitting, I guess, that a series that had already featured the most extra-inning games in NLCS history wouldn’t be settled in only nine innings.

In the top of the 10
^th
inning, Schmitty struck out, making him 0-for-5 on the day with three strikeouts. It turned out to be his last at-bat of a disappointing NLCS in which he had only one extra-base hit and one RBI.

But this series was all about the unexpected. With one out, a role player came up big again. Unser smacked a ball to first base that took a nasty hop and sailed over Bergman’s head and into the right-field corner for a double. Unser remained on second after Trillo flied out. The responsibility of bringing him home fell on the shoulders of Maddox, who, like so many of the Phillies, had only tasted playoff defeat. Garry and I didn’t always see eye to eye during the 1980 season, but we had become united in our goal of seeing this series to a successful conclusion.

On LaCorte’s first offering, Garry hit a sinking fly ball to center that fell under Puhl’s glove for a go-ahead double.

This time, the lead held. Ruthven came back to pitch the 10
^th
. With two outs and nobody on, Enos Cabell lifted a lazy fly ball to center. Garry loped over and squeezed it for the final out. His teammates carried him off the field, one of several mini-celebrations that broke out all over the infield of the Astrodome.

Pope and I hugged and cried all the way to the clubhouse and continued blubbering as the players celebrated one of the most thrilling playoff series in baseball history.

*

Whether we won or lost, I would have considered Game 5 one of the greatest playoff games ever. As a whole, the series had enough twists and turns to keep even casual fans on the edges of their seats. It represented the game at its best.

Trillo, whose career year in ’80 included eight hits and four RBIs in the NLCS, was named MVP of the series. But five or six other guys easily could have won that honor. Our victory was a total team effort.

I’ll always remember the harrowing intensity of that Houston series. We celebrated our victory with a jubilance normally reserved for teams that have just won the World Series. But after weathering so many storms against the Astros, I don’t think anybody in the Phillies organization felt our run could possibly end. The screaming and the yelling and the champagne in Houston gave us a much-needed release from six days of pure anxiety. That series was memorable, but it was never fun.

On the other hand, with the monkey finally off our back, the World Series had the potential to be a blast.

After our epic five-game victory over the Astros in the National League Championship Series, Pete Rose told me he thought the World Series would be “a piece of cake.”

The Royals were actually favored to beat us, however. Kansas City had six more wins than we did during the season and had just come off a sweep of a Yankees team that won 103 games in 1980. Those who liked the Royals’ chances figured we had spent a season’s worth of energy and emotion in the battle with Houston. We had a couple of things in common with Kansas City. Like us, the Royals had lost three straight League Championship Series between 1976 and 1978. And like me, the Royals were led by a rookie manager, Jim Frey.

With so much on the line, a rookie pitcher making his postseason debut got the start for us in Game 1. Our series against the Astros, which forced me to use starters as relievers in multiple games, had badly depleted our pitching resources. I could have opted to go with Steve Carlton on two days’ rest in Game 1 at Veterans Stadium, but the risk was too great. Lefty had pitched 304 innings during the season, more than anyone else in the majors, and was a much better pitcher on regular rest. I took a chance and gave the ball to Bob Walk, one of the few players not to appear in the Houston series.

Walk won 11 games during the season but hadn’t been too sharp in August or September. Marty Bystrom’s tremendous run in the final weeks of the season earned him a start over Walk in the NLCS. I hadn’t considered using Bobby in relief, either. He was a bit of a flake, and I didn’t know how well he would handle the tension of pitching in the playoffs.

Now he was the only fresh arm we had. I hoped he could keep things competitive in the most important start of his young career.

By the time we came to bat in the bottom of the third inning, my decision to start Bobby wasn’t looking good. The Royals already led 4–0 behind a pair of two-run home runs by Willie Mays Aikens and Amos Otis. Early on, it looked like Royals starter Dennis Leonard, a 20-game winner during the season, might send nearly 66,000 fans at the Vet home disappointed.

But unlike the series against Houston, this time we didn’t wait until the late innings to mount a comeback.

With one out in the bottom of the third, Larry Bowa singled and shocked the hell out of all of us by stealing second. We had been trying all year to get him to run more. And he finally got the message in a World Series game we trailed by four runs! The steal shocked the hell out of the Royals, too, and in my opinion, it kick-started our offense. We pounced on Leonard for five runs that inning, three of them coming on a blast by Bake McBride, a left-handed hitter I inserted in the clean-up spot to provide a cushion between righties Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski.

A run apiece in the fourth and fifth innings expanded our lead to 7–4.

Walk settled down after his rocky start, giving up just one hit between the third and seventh innings. But another two-run shot by Aikens in the eighth kept the Royals close.

With the score 7–6 and nobody out, I had to deprive Tug McGraw of a much-needed night of rest. For the sixth consecutive game in the playoffs, I called on him to help secure a win. And that meant I needed six outs from him.

Tugger gave up a hit in the eighth and breezed through the ninth to shut the door on the Phillies’ first World Series victory in 65 years.

Walk gave up three long balls, but he helped himself immensely by keeping Royals speedster Willie Wilson off the bases. Wilson, a .326 hitter who led the majors in runs scored, went 0-for-5 in Game 1. Walk also held George Brett, who flirted with .400 for much of the season, to just one hit in four at-bats.

Other than having to use Tugger yet again, I felt upbeat about Game 1. Walk gutted out seven innings, giving everyone in the bullpen not named McGraw the night off. And our bats helped make that possible. I wouldn’t have been able to stick with Walk as long if our offense hadn’t staked him to a lead.

Before every game of the playoffs, pitching coach Herm Starrette checked with everyone on the staff to see how they felt. A long season takes its toll on the body, but having come this far, nobody in the bullpen wanted to say anything that might discourage us from using them. I knew I was wearing Tugger out. But with a game on the line, I wanted a guy on the mound who showed no fear. That was Tugger.

“Certainly I was tired,” he told Philadelphia sportswriters after Game 1, “but there’s always room to reach back for a little extra. I don’t have enough brains to realize how important this is. I just enjoy myself. Emotionally, I can’t get enough of it.”

*

I liked that we were playing with confidence, but I didn’t want us to get too relaxed.

“I’m not saying what I’ll do,” I said before the series. “But I don’t think I’ll wait for a guy to be 0-for-12 before I make a lineup change.”

Under the rules at the time, every game of the World Series was played either with or without the designated hitter, no matter the ballpark. Even-numbered years were the ones when the DH was used, so that meant I had a spot in the lineup for an extra bat. In the series opener, I used Bull as our DH and put Lonnie Smith in left field. When Bull’s name was nowhere to be found in the Game 2 lineup, my statement was interpreted as a commentary on his performance.

My decision to stick with Lonnie in left and use Keith Moreland as our DH was at least partly based on the fact that Bull had come down with a mild case of the flu. A lot of people didn’t buy it. Mindful of our battles during the season, many interpreted the lineup adjustment as my way of punishing Bull for his 0-for-3 performance in Game 1. To this day, a lot of people cite his absence in the second game against the Royals as evidence that I had it out for Bull.