September 23, 1964: Pinson pins loss No. 3 on the Phillies

Vada Pinson was on the ballot for the Hall of Fame 15 times and never received more than 15.7% of the vote, which he did in 1988. That’s not a lot for someone who had 2,757 career hits, 256 of them home runs, stole 305 bases, and won a Gold Glove in center field. He also led the National League in hits twice, doubles twice and triples twice, and had four 200-hit and .300 seasons and seven 20-homer seasons. Nineteen-sixty-four, despite the tutelage of Dick Sisler, whom he appears with on the card above, wasn’t one of his best to that point. Pinson, at age 25, hit what was then a career-low .266 and stole what was then a career-low eight bases. He hit 23 homers, scored 99 runs and drove in 84, so the season wasn’t a total loss, but his .764 OPS was nearly 50 points less than his previous lowest. A normal Pinson season might have won the pennant the Reds lost by one game. Pretty soon, though, that kind of season became the norm for Pinson, despite his relative youth. “Why would a guy who was putting up MVP-type numbers every season and tracking to be a future Hall of Famer all of a sudden become just a league average type hitter during what would normally be his peak years?” asked Barry Gilpin on the blog banishedtothepen.com. “Was he injured? … This would be a lot easier to figure out today, because we have pitch/fx data and spray charts and other things at our disposal to try and explain these things. But as it is, Pinson’s early decline is somewhat unexplainable.” Pinson has been a nominee before the Hall committees in their various iterations, and will be on the Golden Days Committee that is scheduled to meet in 2021. Dick Allen is on the ballot, too, and there’s no question here that Allen should go in first. Gilpin on Pinson at banishedtothepen.com: “So, what we really wind up with is the tale of two careers. A great one from 1959-1965, and an average one from 1966 until his final season in 1975.” Unfortunately for the Phillies on this night in 1964, the great Pinson was the opponent.

Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles retelling the 1964 season. This is the unhappy ending part of the story.

Reds 6, Phillies 4

Losing streak: Three games, all to the Reds. Milwaukee Braves up next for four games.

How they stand: Phillies, 90-63, plus three-and-a-half games over Cincinnati, 86-66; five games over St. Louis, 84-67 and San Francisco, 85-68.

What went right: Nobody stole home. Rookie Alex Johnson, age 21 and having hit .316 and slugged .590 at AAA, homered, and the Phillies led, 3-2, after six. Clay Dalrymple tripled, which wasn’t easy if you remember how he ran. Dick Allen hit his 35th double, Johnny Callison his 30th. Personal milestones, though, are like political endorsements — they don’t mean much if you don’t win.

What went wrong: Vada Pinson. He homered to give the Reds a 2-1 in the sixth inning, homered again after Johnson’s homer to give the Reds the lead for good in the seventh. That one came with two on to break a 3-3 tie and gave Pinson three hits and four RBIs on the night. His third hit was a bunt single. There probably haven’t been many games where a batter had two homers and a bunt single. The second homer came off Ed Roebuck, who gave up the game-tying single to Pete Rose in the seventh and the game-losing homer in an ineffective inning. It was Roebuck who pitched for 1.2 innings the previous night when Morrie Stevens was ineffective. Who knows if Roebuck might have been better had he been better rested. It was also typical of the bullpen’s ineffectiveness during the losing streak. The Phillies didn’t have many leads, but when they did, the bullpen lost them. When they were tied, the bullpen put them behind. In the 10 games of the losing streak, Phillies relievers pitched 39.1 innings and had a 4.58 ERA, giving up 48 hits, 20 runs and six unearned runs.

Ruiz watch: Chico had no steals. But he homered in the fourth inning for his only hit in four at-bats, tying the game 1-1. For the series, Ruiz was only 2-for-10, but he scored three runs, walked twice, was hit by a pitch and stole two bases.

Young talent exodus: Johnson’s tenure with the Phillies was short-lived. The Phillies lost not only 10 games in a row in 1964, but their patience in young players thereafter. Ferguson Jenkins, traded for aging pitchers Larry Jackson and Bob Buhl with outfielder Adolfo Phillips, was the best known of the young players they divested. Johnson was another. He hit .303 and slugged .495 in 43 games as a rookie in the crucible of a pennant race and batted .294 in 97 games in 1965. The Phillies then traded him to the Cardinals for aging infielders Bill White and Dick Groat. White hit 22 homers and drove in 103 runs, but Groat hit .260, slugged .320 and was no better than Bobby Wine or Ruben Amaro. If at all. Johnson was traded by the Cards to Reds, where he became a teammate and close friend of Ruiz, and the Reds traded him to the Angels, for whom he batted .329 and won the 1970 batting title. Danny Cater, who once fetched Sparky Lyle, returned the Phillies only Ray Herbert, who won them seven games in two seasons.

Did you know? Pinson and outfielder Curt Flood were Little League teammates and high school teammates at McClymonds High in Oakland. They were also major-league teammates for one season on the 1969 Cardinals. It was when St. Louis traded him to the Phillies in the big package for Dick Allen that Flood refused to report and sued baseball, beginning the legal process that ended the reserve clause. Frank Robinson was also a graduate of McClymonds, though he was three years older than Pinson. McClymonds has produced two MLB Hall of Famers — Robinson and catcher Ernie Lombardi. The school also produced a pretty good basketball player in NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell.