This was my favorite league in my favorite decade, mainly because this was the crucible of my fandom. I entered the decade literally knowing nothing about MLB, and exited it a stone fanatical, lunatical obsessive encyclopedia of facts, stats, trivia, knowledge, rumors, impressions, anecdotes, as well as assorted falsehoods and useless misguided misinformation about MLB. My two main sources of useless misinformation, aside from watching more games in that decade (or listening to them on the radio) than in any other, were the 1966 Strat-o-matic set, which I played constantly, and the backs of baseball cards, far from the most reliable source of information.
I did backfill my one true gap, the 1960 season ending with the Yankee-Pirate Series, by following the game intensely starting in 1961—most of the 1960s stars remained stellar through the early decade, so I was able to become aware of the pennant races and the World Series of 1960 after the games had taken place. That was the Pirates’ only appearance in the post-season through the 1960s, but I stayed aware of them as a dangerous team. In fact, now that I reflect upon their dangerousness, they were the subject of the only poem I ever managed to get published in SPITBALL magazine. (Winter of 1985, for those of you with thirty-four-year old SPITBALL magazines handy.) I must have it around here somewhere, though most of my books are boxed up now, so I can’t reproduce that poem for you. It concerned the almost mystical terrifying power the black sleeves of the Pirates’ uniforms had over me. I described Bob Veale’s black sleeves as the source of his strength, and I described an almost intimate knowledge of the Pirates’ ability to dominate their opponents. I’ll track it down and reprint it here. It was called "WHAT WE NEED" a nostalgic look back, as I recall, at the strange powers that seemed to exist only in childhood.
It occurs to me now how all eight teams in the NL in 1960 seemed almost equally dangerous to me throughout the entire decade. Some teams more dangerous than others, of course, and I can trace that sense of danger directly to my rooting for the Mets from their beginning, the doormats of the National League, the team that everybody loved to beat about the face and neck. But even stepping back and regarding the NL of the 1960s as objectively as I can, each of the eight had their moments of particular strength.
Certain of these teams’ dominance is obvious—the Cardinals and the Dodgers won three pennants apiece in the 1960s, and the Giants, with one pennant in 1962 but multiple second-place finishes, seemed even stronger at times than LA or St. Louis. The Pirates’ lineup seemed stacked with fearsome hitters and powerful pitching throughout the decade, and the Reds, who won the season after the Pirates’ great year in 1960, were also loaded with great hitters—Robinson, Pinson, Rose, then Perez and Bench-- and dominating pitchers, Maloney, Sam Ellis, Nolan. The Braves won only one divisional championship at the end of the decade, but had perhaps the strongest offense of all, led by Aaron, Mathews and Joe Torre, throughout the 1960s—they were a scary star-led team, but the Cubs’ lineup had some of the strongest-seeming stars in a period before we knew anything about ballpark adjustments.
The team I’m interested in discussing here, though, is a team that won zero pennants, Series, or divisions, and (like the Cubs) had only one season in the 1960s that they dominated for much of the regular season, only to crash to earth disastrously at the end. I’m referring to the Phillies, and 1964, of course, and the quality of their ballclub throughout the 1960s.
The Phillies began the decade as a weak team, and ended it in the same fashion, but when I review their 1964 roster, it seems to me from this remove that it was a very strong ballclub that should have won (but didn’t) a pennant or two before they were done. I’d like to examine the 1964 Phillies roster closely.
They didn’t lack for stars, or even for superstars. They had that season’s Rookie of the Year playing third base: Richie Allen was a historic dominating force, even in that annus mirabilis of spectacular rookies, putting up Mays- or Aaron-like numbers, and until the pennant slipped out of the Phillies’ hands, they had an almost-sure shot for the league’s MVP award in Johnny Callison. These two were not only major talents but young (22 and 25, respectively) and potentially improving major talents, foretelling a very successful next few years. The Phillies also featured other young stars, less stellar than Allen and Callison, but solid players nonetheless, particularly numerous in the infield: it seemed that Cookie Rojas set them up nicely at second base with Tony Taylor as a good (and versatile) backup, while at shortstop they had two young glovemen, Bobby Wine and Ruben Amaro, who could field that position more than adequately. In centerfield, they had Tony Gonzalez, who was, again, solid and respectable both offensively and defensively, and Clay Dalrymple seemed one of the better defensive catchers in the game with a little pop in his bat. All of these players were 28 years old or younger in 1964.
The 1964 Phillies had excellent young players, either offensively or defensively or both, at six positions, but they were elderly or deficient at the other two, LF and 1B. I’ll return to these two weak spots shortly, but first would like to discuss their much-discussed pitching staff in 1964: it was considered both very strong and very weak. Strong, in that two pitchers whom manager Gene Mauch relied on heavily in the season’s last two weeks, Jim Bunning and Chris Short, were almost universally looked upon as among the best starting pitchers in the league, and weak in that, well, Mauch felt the rest of the starters needed to have the ball out of their hands down the stretch. We all know how that decision worked out. Bill has dissected Mauch’s decision exhaustively and IMO brilliantly, and others have chimed in on it at length as well: Rob Neyer has devoted a chapter of his BASEBALL BLUNDERS book to analyzing it, and I spent a chunk of my articles on Bill Wakefield last year taking it apart as well.
The odd part that few analysts have spent much attention on, however, is the quality of the pitchers whom Mauch chose to rest while pitching Bunning and Short to death. They were both young and good: Art Mahaffey was a 26-year-old righty who had won 19 games for Mauch two years earlier, and had a 12-9 record for the Phillies in 1964. 24-year-old Dennis Bennett had started 32 games for the 1964 Phillies, and had performed creditably, 12-14 with an ERA around the league average, while the fifth starter was 22-year-old sophomore Ray Culp, coming off a rookie year of 14-11 (third in the 1963 ROTY voting, as Mahaffey had been in 1960) and with a winning record in 1964. A sixth option was rookie Rick Wise, who had had eight starts in 1964, and had gone 5-3. Wise and Culp would go on to combine for 310 big league wins between them.
Not saying that any of the four pitchers Mauch ignored down the stretch were nearly as good as Bunning or Short were at the time, but in retrospect (considering that Bunning and Short took some losses anyway in the games they pitched) it’s hard to see how pitching any of these four young starters more could have cost the Phillies very much, and it’s easy to see how not pitching them more cost Bunning and Short some valuable rest. But this isn’t yet another castigation of Mauch’s choice to rely on his two mainstays—I’m just establishing that the Phillies actually did have an impressive and young group of starting pitchers in 1964. Evaluating their team contemporaneously, most observers would have listed their starting pitching as a plus, and capable of much improvement on an already impressive body of work.
And their bullpen wasn’t too shabby either that year: Jack Baldschun was one of the better relievers in the league throughout the mid-1960s, and former Dodgers reliever Ed Roebuck had a particularly strong 1964. The Phillies’ bullpen led the league in saves that year, in fact, and was both effective and deep. Their pitching, overall, was surprisingly strong, and especially so in view of Mauch’s over-reliance on two men down the stretch, which leaves the overall mistaken impression of a mediocre staff outside of Bunning and Short.
The two spots on the field that I described above as neither manned by young players nor productive players, LF and 1B, were actually pretty strong as well: Wes Covington is listed as their starting LFer, and their 1B-man was a forgettable fellow named John Herrnstein. You will be forgiven for pointing out that LF and 1B are two positions where any contending teams must get a lot of offensive production—it won’t do to dismiss these positions as unimportant ones. But the 32-year-old Covington wasn’t a bad LFer when he had a bat in his hands, even in 1964. He was productive offensively into the next season as well. Playing part–time, Covington combined in 1964-5 for the Phillies to put up one pretty impressive full-time season of stats: in 574 at bats, he hit 28 HRs and drove in 103 runs. His OPS in 1964 and 1965 was .807—it’s hard to ask much more out of a guy at ages 32 and 33 than that.
But the truly intriguing thing about the Phillies left fielders in 1964 was not Covington. (Who, I just learned, shared his Christian names with the Phillies’ star right-fielder: they were John Wesley Covington and John Wesley Callison, both named presumably in honor of the Methodist evangelist.) No, the Phillies had two young (20 and 21) outfielders who would go on to have extensive big-league careers: Johnny Briggs and Alex Johnson. Both would put up most of their stats for other teams, but it’s tempting to apply some retrospect and to speculate that they would have formed a strong platoon in left field for the Phillies after Covington was gone. Not that they were unproductive, even at those early ages. Their OBPs in 1964 were .347 and .345 respectively, and it’s tempting to consider that between Covington, Johnson and Briggs, the Phillies could have struggled capably through the next few years with LF among their weaker positions.
The 1B situation is possibly even more intriguing. The nominal guy, Herrnstein, was a bust, plain and simple, and they had lots of veterans on the 1964 roster who filled in at 1B without particular distinction, Roy Sievers and Vic Power and Frank Thomas among them. Even shortstop Ruben Amaro was tapped to play 1B in 58 ballgames in 1964, presumably as a late-inning defensive replacement for some of these aging 1B-men. But they had another rookie on their 1964 roster whom they played mainly in LF who would go on to have, again, a pretty solid career with the bat as a 1B-man. Like Alex Johnson and Johnny Briggs, Danny Cater would be mostly known as an American Leaguer. The three would combine for 3601 big league hits—not an especially impressive number for three men to accumulate, but not the work of pikers either. If the Phillies had decided to entrust their LF work to Johnson and Briggs and to stick Danny Cater at 1B, they would have done okay at both positions. (Today, btw, is Johnny Briggs’ 75th birthday.)
My overall point being that the 1964 Phillies had an impressive roster—some of these players fulfilled their promise, Allen, Short, Wise (who turned into Steve Carlton), Rojas, Gonzales, while others fizzled out (Callison, who had only a few more good years, and Bennett, who turned into Dick Stuart, and Mahaffey) but they were loaded with talent, especially for a team who didn’t win a goddamn thing. From my first awareness of the Phillies roster, they seemed far more dangerous a squad than they proved to be.
Most of this is due, I suppose, to getting my information from the backs of baseball cards, where even unimpressive players are made out to be demi-gods and impressive ones made out to be super-gods. Over the last half of the 1960s, as I feared the super-strong teams—the Dodgers, the Cardinals, the Giants—who came into Shea to play the Mets, and I feared the other strong offenses in the league—the Braves, the Reds, the Pirates, the Cubs—even the weakest team among them, the Phillies, seemed at times quite capable of dominating the league. I can’t think of a more exciting league to watch as I became a baseball fan, or a more evenly balanced one, unless it was the American League in the latter half of that same decade.