September 25, 1964: More painful by the dozen as loss No. 5 goes 12

The Braves’ pitching wasn’t very good in 1964 — 17th in MLB in ERA, ninth in the National League — and it kept them from contending. But they made do. Gene Mauch is roundly criticized for pitching Jim Bunning and Chris Short on two days rest, but the Braves’ four-game sweep of losses 4-7 in the Phillies’ 10-game sgtreak was fueled by starting pitchers relieving on short rest. Wade Blasingame started and won the opener on Thursday, then came back and won the third game in relief on Saturday, Tony Cloninger started and lost to the Pirates on Wednesday, lasting just 1.2 innings, then relieved against the Phillies and got the final out on Friday, saving the Braves’ 7-5 win, then started and won on Sunday. Cloninger came on in relief for rookie Clay Carroll with two outs and two on and retired John Hernstein for the final out. On Sunday, Cloninger eased through seven innings of a 14-8 win. Reliever Chi-Chi Olivo pitched in all four games against the Phillies, got a night off, then pitched in the next two games against the Mets, six games and 9.2 innings in seven days. That’s how pitching staffs were handled in 1964. Cloninger was a prime example. He won 19 games, lost 14, saved two and pitched 242.2 innings, turning 24 in August. In 38 games, he received 33 decisions and two saves. Only in three games was he unmarked — an early-season relief appearance and two short starts. Cloninger won 24 games in 1965 and pitched 279 innings and won 14 in 1966, when he hit two grand slam home runs in the same game. But the innings — 779.1 in three seasons from ages 23 to 27 — took their toll. By 1969, he was a mainstay of the Reds’ rotation, though he shouldn’t have been. That he made 34 starts, winning 11, losing 17 and putting up a 5.03 ERA is why a Reds team that led MLB in runs scored finished third in the NL West. A year later he was better — 9-7 and 3.83 ERA — in a lesser role, but because of injuries needed to start games in a surprisingly low-scoring NLCS vs. the Pirates (12 runs combined in three games) and the World Series.

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

Braves 7, Phillies 5

Losing streak: Five games, and the worst is yet to come.

How they stand: Phillies, 90-65, plus one-and-a-half games over Cincinnati, 88-66; two-and-a-half five games over St. Louis, 87-67; three-and-a-half games over San Francisco, 86-68.

What went right: For a team that choked away the pennant, the Phillies were remarkably clutch on this night. Johnny Callison’s 28th home run tied the game with two outs in the eighth. Dick Allen’s two-out inside-the-park home run, his 27th, tied the game in the 10th. “Allen’s blow hit about five feet above (centerfielder Ty) Cline’s head against the center‐field scoreboard and bounced away from Cline,” reported the Associated Press in its account. “Allen easily beat the play at the plate.” Chris Short started on two days rest — the first of four such starts in the streak for Short and Jim Bunning — and pitched well, throwing six shutout innings until a catcher’s interference call led to two Braves runs in the seventh. And Frank Thomas returned for the first time in 17 days. It was a remarkable game that was a lot like the Phillies’ season — full of unimagined twists, stellar play, dramatic performance, costly miscues and ultimate misfortune and disappointment.

What went wrong: Frank Thomas returned. He went 0-for-4 at bat and an Eddie Matthews single that might have been a double play in the 12th clanked off his glove. “Before the game Thomas had literally ripped the cast off his thumb so that he could play;” wrote Steve Wulf in a 1989 Sports Illustrated story on the ’64 Phillies, “in the 12th, a potential double-play ball bounced off his rusty glove.” No wonder they traded for Dick Stuart for 1965. Short took a shutout into the seventh when catcher Clay Dalrymple interfered with Denis Menke’s at-bat, putting Menke on. Two batters later, the shutout was gone and the game was tied; three batters later the Braves had the lead. It wasn’t a good night for Dalrymple. His error as Gene Oliver tried to steal third in the 12th allowed the Braves’ final run to score. At bat he was 0-for-4. The Phillies moved the winning run to second with out in the 11th and couldn’t score him; they put the tying runs on in the 12th with two outs and couldn’t score them. It was one of the three most frustrating losses in the streak — the Chico Ruiz steals home game that started it and the day after this one, when they lost a lead in the ninth, the others. They were the three games the Phillies could look at and wonder what might have been.

Did you know? The winning pitcher was a rookie reliever in just his seventh major-league game named Clay Carroll. He wasn’t particularly sharp — he gave up two hits and walked two (one intentionally) while getting five outs — but he earned his first win. He went on to pitch for 15 seasons, win 95 more, save 143 games and appear in 731 games. He was a major part of the Reds’ 1975 world championship bullpen and had a 1.39 ERA in 32.1 postseason innings. In 1972, he led NL pitchers with 65 games and 37 saves, had a 2.25 ERA and was fifth in the Cy Young voting, though second among relievers (Montreal’s Mike Marshall was fourth). Carroll was, however, the primary victim of Oakland’s pinch-hit attack in Game 4 of that year’s World Series. He relieved Pedro Borbon with one on and out in the ninth, ahead 2-1, and gave up three hits, two to pinch-hitters. Don Mincher’s pinch-single tied the game, and Angel Mangual’s pinch-single won it. A pinch-single by Gonzalo Marquez off Borbon started the rally.