October 4, 1964: Gibson saves Cardinals, and ’64 Phillies are second-best

Bob Gibson was one of the greatest of big-game pitchers in MLB history, and much of that reputation began on this day 56 years ago. Gibson, who died this week at age 84, came out of the bullpen barely 40-some hours after losing a 1-0 duel to Al Jackson and the Mets on Friday night. The Cardinals lost again on Saturday, and on Sunday the last-place Mets were threatening to make it three wins in a row. They had rallied for two runs in the fifth inning and a 3-2 lead when Gibson entered. He ended that threat, pitched four rocky innings — Gibson walked five and gave up two runs — but he kept the Mets at bay as the Cardinals rallied and won the game and the pennant. Gibson’s relief appearance is why he didn’t open the World Series against the Yankees two days later, but was held out for Game 2 three days later. Gibson lost that game — he pitched eight innings, gave up four runs and left trailing, 4-1, for a pinch-hitter. It was the only start in his World Series career he didn’t complete, and he won his next seven Series starts over five years. That included Game 5 of the ’64 Series, when the Yankees tied it, 2-2, with two outs in the ninth on a two-run Tom Tresh homer (Mickey Mantle was on because of a Dick Groat error, so both runs were unearned). Tim McCarver homered in the 10th, and Gibson pitched on to complete a 5-2 win. It also included Game 7 when Gibson staggered to the finish on two days rest, leading 7-3, and giving up homers to Phil Linz and Clete Boyer in the ninth. “’In the ninth inning, I wasn’t pitching, I was throwing,’ Gibson had said,” according to the St. Louis Post Disptach’s obit of Gibson this week. “’Before the inning started, (manager Johnny) Keane said, ‘I don’t want you to try to be fancy. Just throw it over the middle of the plate. I don’t believe they’re going to hit four home runs.’ ‘They hit two, by Clete Boyer and Phil Linz. And Phil Linz couldn’t hit home runs. Clete knocked the crap out of it and then they did it again. ‘I had good stuff. I didn’t just lay it in there, but I looked in the dugout and Johnny wasn’t anywhere to be found,’ Gibson said. At this point, Gibson said he thought he would try a different approach. ‘I thought maybe I should start pitching instead of just throwing,’ said Gibson.” Gibson pitched and popped up Bobby Richardson, who had 13 hits — seven off Gibson — and batted .406 in the Series, and the Cardinals had won their first Series title in 18 years. In 1967, Gibson won three game — the Cards were 1-3 in games he didn’t pitch. He won another Game 7, throwing a three-hitter and homering off Red Sox ace Jim Lonborg, who had won twice and was going on two days rest. Lonborg found pitching on two days rest wasn’t as easy as Gibson made it appear in 1964 or Sandy Koufax in 1965. Lonborg left for a pinch-hitter after six innings, having yielded six earned runs. Gibson was the MVP of the Series, as he was in 1964. A year later he pitched perhaps his greatest game, opening the Series against the Tigers. The opposing pitcher, Denny McLain, had won 31 games and had a 1.98 ERA, but Gibson had the better season. He won only 22 games, but had a 1.12 ERA, threw 13 shutouts, had pitched 47 consecutive scoreless innings and allowed just two earned runs over a stretch of 96.2 innings. In his nine losses, the Cardinals had scored 12 runs and been shut out three times; the three shutout losses were 1-0, 1-0 and 2-0. For the entire season, Gibson had never been removed in the middle of an inning. He opened the Series by getting 15 of the first 25 outs by strikeouts, tying the record set by Koufax five years earlier. The Cardinals led, 4-0, and Gibson was two outs from a shutout. As the crowd cheered and McCarver paused to acknowledge it, Gibson was oblivious. “… McCarver pointed with his gloved hand at something behind Gibson’s head,” wrote Roger Angell in his 1980 New Yorker profile of Gibson. “Gibson, staring uncomprehendingly at his catcher, yelled, ‘Throw the goddam ball back, will you! C’mon, c’mon, let’s go!’ Still holding the ball, McCarver pointed again, and Gibson, turning around, read the illuminated message on the center-field scoreboard, which perhaps only he in the ballpark had not seen until that moment: ‘Gibson’s fifteenth strikeout in one game ties the all-time World Series record held by Sandy Koufax.’ Gibson, at the center of a great tureen of noise, dug at the dirt of the mound with his spikes and then uneasily doffed his cap. (‘I hate that sort of thing,’ he said later.)” Forced to accept the adulation of the crowd, Gibson did so reluctantly and then went back to pitching. He fanned Norm Cash, fanned Willie Horton, and finished with 17 strikeouts and a 4-0 victory. From Angell’s New Yorker profile: “Denny McLain, the starting Tiger pitcher, who had won thirty-one games that summer but had lasted only five innings in the Series opener, said, ‘I was awed. I was awed,’ and Dick McAuliffe, the Detroit second baseman, said that he could think of no one he had ever faced with whom Gibson could be compared. ‘He doesn’t remind me of anybody,’ he said. ‘He’s all by himself.’” Gibson was, and especially in the World Series. He beat McLain again in Game 4, 10-1, and homered off reliever Joe Sparma for his seventh straight Series win. The Tigers again had five hits, and Gibson fanned 10 more. The streak was finally broken in Game 7 when a misplayed line drive led to three Tigers runs in the seventh. Until then, Gibson had pitched 24 innings in the 1968 World Series, allowed 11 hits, one run and fanned 33. He finished with eight strikeouts, giving him 35 in three Series starts, but the Cardinals lost, 4-1. For his World Series career, Gibson was 7-2 with a 1.89 ERA and fanned 92 in 81 innings in an era when strikeouts weren’t as common as they are today. How tough was Bob Gibson? He broke a leg in 1967 when hit by a Roberto Clemente line drive. He pitched to three more batters before exiting, walking two. Even the great Gibson lost a bit of control when pitching with a broken leg. “That was the most extraordinary thing I ever saw in baseball—Gibby pitching to those batters with a broken leg,” Cardinals shortstop Dal Maxvill said in Angell’s New Yorker profile. “Everyone who was there that day remembered it afterward, for always, and every young pitcher who came onto our club while Gibson was still with us was told about it. We didn’t have too many pitchers turning up with upset stomachs or hangnails on our team after that.”

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

Two teams began play on the final day of the National League’s 1964 season in first place.

A few hours later, though the league had prepared for three teams to be in first place after the 162nd and final game was played by all, there was only one.

It wasn’t the Phillies, who spent 125 of the season’s first 160 days in first place.

It wasn’t the Cincinnati Reds, who were first to catch the Phillies when the latter lost 10 games in a row in late September.

It was the St. Louis Cardinals, who spent a grand total of five days in first place and never led by more than a single game. It wasn’t much, compared to the Phillies, who led by seven-and-a-half games in August and six-and-a-half games with 12 to play. But it was enough.

“We were told to report to the stadium on Sunday night and be prepared to work all night for a Monday afternoon game,” wrote former Phillies public relations director Larry Shenk in an article for philliesinsider.mlbblogs.com. “The house phone never rang.”

According to Shenk, had there been a three-way tie, the NL would have begun a three-team, double-elimination playoff the next day. Reds at Phillies on Monday, Cardinals at Reds on Tuesday, Phillies at Cardinals on Wednesday.

Gene Mauch’s two days rest approach to his pitching staff, like his team, would have earned a second chance. Chris Short, who pitched Friday, would have likely pitched the Monday game; either Jim Bunning, who pitched Sunday, or the hobbled Dennis Bennett would have pitched on Wednesday.

What if? Maybe, granted a reprieve, the two days of rest would have been enough. Maybe, having won their last two games of the season, they would win two more.

For a brief time on this final Sunday of the 1964 season it appeared the Phillies would get an opportunity to do so.

The Phillies and Reds in Cincinnati, playing a time zone ahead of the Mets and Cardinals in St. Louis, started first. And given a second chance against Reds pitcher John Tsitouris, who threw the shutout that began the 10-game losing streak on the night Chico Ruiz stole home, the Phillies knocked him out in the third inning.

They led, 3-0, and then 4-0 after Dick Allen hit his 28th home run in the fourth, and then 9-0 after Allen homered again in the sixth. It was as if the Phillies had opened a vent and all the frustration of the 10-game losing streak had spilled out.

The Phillies won, 10-0, and they were tied again with the Reds. The Cardinals, who had lost to the last-place Mets, 1-0, on Friday and 15-5 on Saturday, were losing again. “Somebody’s been putting Yankees into the Mets’ uniforms,” said Cardinals otufielder Lou Brock after the Mets’ second straight win, according to sabr.org. “Tomorrow they’ll play like the Mets again.” (For the record, the Cardinals in October 1964 had less trouble with the Yankees in the World Series than they did the Mets on the final weekend.)

It took a while for the Mets to play like the Mets. They knocked out Curt Simmons in the fifth on Roy McMillan’s two-run double, led 3-2, and were playing like a team much closer to first place than the 39 games they trailed the Cardinals by.

The Cardinals were desperate enough to bring Bob Gibson out of the bullpen on one day rest, and he stranded McMillan at second. The Cardinals rallied, knocked out Galen Cisco in the bottom of the fifth and took a 5-3 lead. But the Mets, trying to avoid a 109th loss, put two on against Gibson in the sixth. The Cardinals were rattled. Gibson walked Jesse Gonder intentionally to load the bases, and then walked Bobby Klaus to force in a run.

The Mets trailed, 5-4, and how bonkers must the Cardinals have felt, the worst team in baseball playing as if it had a chance to make it a four-team NL playoff. Gibson retired McMillan with the bases still loaded.

But then in the bottom of the sixth, the Mets finally reverted to form. Bill White hit a two-run homer, Tim McCarver doubled in another run and the Cardinals led, 8-4. Curt Flood homered in the eighth, McCarver singled in two more, and the Cardinals led, 11-4. Gibson finally tired in the ninth, the Mets scored one, but the Cardinals’ fear had broken.

Three-hundred-fifty miles away, or a short ride down the Mississippi River to the Ohio River east to Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, Mauch listened in hopeful anticipation. The manager who liked total control had none, and was dependent on an iffy radio signal and a team that had lost 108 games.

“After our game was over, I went into the clubhouse and spun the dial on the radio, trying to pick up the Mets and Cardinals,” Mauch said, according to Steve Wulf’s 1989 Sports Illustrated article on the 1964 Phillies’ 25th reunion. “When White hit the homer off (Jack) Fisher, I knew it was over.”

The reception back in Cincinnati, like Mauch’s memory, must have been fuzzy. White hit the critical homer off Willard Hunter, a 30-year-old lefty who never pitched in the majors again. Fisher had been pinch-hit for by Gonder, but apparently Mauch didn’t listen long enough to hear the clarification. Or he wasn’t tuned in by then. The Phillies-Reds game didn’t end, according to sabr.org, until White had hit his homer and the Cardinals led, 8-4, but maybe even a 10-0 lead was enough for Mauch to abdicate his place in the dugout.

“This was the rarest of games,” wrote Frank Dolson of the Philadelphia Inquirer, according to sabr.org. “One team scored 10 runs and the other scored none. Yet both were losers. If anything, the team that scored the 10 runs took it worse.”

The Phillies and Reds, 92-70, tied for second, a game behind the 93-69 Cardinals.

Both teams had reasons to lash out. From the Main Line Times: “(Mauch) confused us,” (pitcher Dallas) Green (said). “All season, he screamed, yelled, hollered and threw things around the clubhouse. During the (losing streak), he never had a tirade. We were all waiting for the volcano to erupt, and it never did. Maybe we were waiting for him to save the season.”

The Reds’ season was saved in the final two weeks, and then lost again. It was the oddest of turns, best summed up by Chico Ruiz, who had stolen home to start the Phillies’10-game losing streak.

“Two weeks ago we didn’t have a chance for it,” he said, according to sabr.org. “This week we lose it.”

The Phillies lost it in the final two weeks, but they could look back on a season of might have beens. So many games to think a run here, a pitching change there, an error, a bad bounce, a bunt, a steal, a bad decision on the bases, one big hit might have made the difference.

• There was the night of May 11 when Ray Culp took a one-hitter and a 2-0 lead over the Cardinals into the seventh inning. He got two outs before Johnny Lewis singled, Charlie James reached on an infield single and Julian Javier hit a three-run homer. The Cardinals won, 3-2.
• There was a 4-3 loss to Houston five days later when the last batter Culp faced, Walt Bond, singled in two runs to wipe out a 2-1 Phillies lead. Don’t think Mauch had forgotten the two blown leads of May when Culp, his elbow sore, was rarely used in September.
• There was a 5-4 lead Jack Baldschun couldn’t hold at Pittsburgh on May 28. Willie Stargell homered to lead off the eighth and, after Baldschun retired the first two batters of the ninth, Stargell singled the winning run to third before Dick Schofield singled him in.
• There was a Sunday game on June 7 vs. the first-place Giants, who used four pitchers in the first inning alone. The Phillies only scored twice, but led 3-0 going to the ninth with Bunning pitching. But .193-hitting Duke Snider, his best days for a borough that no longer had a team long behind him, homered in the ninth. And then a rookie, Jim Ray Hart, homered, and the game was tied, and the Phillies used three pitchers, all wild, in the 10th. They walked three Giants, hit another, and the Giants won a game, 4-3, in 10 innings in which they used a modern-day seven pitchers.
• There was an amazing comeback not completed against the Cardinals on July 25, when the Phillies trailed, 10-2, (it went from 6-2 to 10-2 in the last two innings against Green). And then in the bottom of the ninth the first eight Phillies reached base, the Cardinals used four pitchers, the lead was down to 10-8 with runners on first and third and still nobody out. The tying run was at first and the winning run at bat. John Hernstein flew out to center to score Dick Allen from third to make it 10-9 but rookie Alex Johnson, who had three hits in his first major-league game, was thrown out trying to advance the tying run to second. Instead of one out and a runner on first, the Phillies had two outs and nobody on. They scored seven runs in the ninth, but lost 10-9. Don’t think Mauch had forgotten that when the Phillies traded Johnson to the Cardinals after the 1965 season.
• There was a 4-3 loss in 16 innings to the Cubs on August 18 after Johnson pinch-ran, stole second and scored the tying run in the ninth on Tony Taylor’s single.
• There was the Sunday afternoon on September 6, when the Phillies rallied against Juan Marichal and the Giants with two runs in the sixth to tie the game, 3-3. It was still tied in the eighth when Baldschun walked Wille Mays. Baldschun tried to pick him off, and the Phillies committed three errors on the same play, one by Baldschun and two by first baseman Frank Thomas, and Mays scored all the way from first. The Giants won, 4-3.
• There was the night Frank Thomas broke his thumb, September 8, a makeup of a rainout from August 3 on a night there was little to no rain. The Phillies avoided facing Sandy Koufax on September 8, but they lost anyway, 3-2, and lost Thomas, who slugged .517 for the Phillies in 39 games, as if a surcharge for their manipulation of the rainout.
• There was September 16 at Houston when rookie Adolfo Phillips pinch-ran for catcher Clay Dalrymple as the tying run on first with the bases loaded, the Phillies trailing, 6-3. Ruben Amaro singled in two runs to make it 6-5, but Phillips, already in scoring position, was thrown out trying to go to third for the third out. The Phillies lost, 6-5. Don’t think Mauch had forgotten that when the Phillies traded Phillips to the Cubs in 1966.
• There was the Saturday night in Los Angeles three days later when Willie Davis singled in the 16th inning, stole second, went to third on a wild pitch by Baldschun, and stole home against a rookie lefty named Morrie Steevens. The Dodgers won, 4-3, in 16, and it was an ugly foreboding of what was to come two nights later.
• And finally there was the 10-game losing streak, of which three in particular stand out: Game 1 when Ruiz stole home and the Reds won, 1-0; Game 5 when Johnny Callison hit a two-out homer to tie the game in the eighth, Richie Allen hit a two-out, two run inside-the-park homer in the 10th to tie it again but the Braves won in 12, 7-5; and Game 6 when the Phillies took an early 4-0 lead, didn’t score again, still led 4-3 in the ninth before Rico Carty’s bases-clearing triple hit the chalk on the right-field line and the Braves won, 6-4.

There was so many games that might have made a difference. What if? Reverse any one of those games, any combination, and the Phillies wouldn’t have been preparing for an offseason but a playoff or World Series. Winners count their money and losers cry deal at the poker table; in baseball winners advance and losers replay the frustration which only mounts.

“You take a collapse like that to the grave,” said Cardinals, and later Phillies, catcher Tim McCarver, who did so much to make it happen, in a 2014 story for Delawaretoday.com.

And maybe some of the ’64 Phillies, so many of whom have died in the last 56 years, did. But maybe many of them also came to acceptance. There’s no 12-step program for the calamity of blown pennants, but to be human is to strive, and to strive is to fail, and the 1964 Phillies did both spectacularly.

The 1964 Phillies are remembered for their collapse — the 1951 Dodgers thank them — and they’re ignored for the unlikeliness they were even in position to do so. There’s a nobility to the 1964 Phillies that’s easily overlooked — they won 10 more games by one run than they lost, they were 45 games better, with many of the same players, than the team which lost 107 games just three years earlier.

The 1961 Phillies lost 23 games in a row and when they returned to Philadelphia a crowd was waiting at the airport. “Get off in 2- or 3-yard intervals,” pitcher Frank Sullivan said, according to Stan Hochman’s 2011 Philadelphia Inquirer story. “That way they can’t get us all with one burst. … They’re selling rocks for a dollar a bucket.”

The fans who threw snowballs at Santa Claus seven years later weren’t there to denigrate, but to hurl encouragement at a team in need of it. Three years later, they lost 10 games in a row, and history judges the latter the sorrier fate.

“What happens to a dream deferred?” asked the poet Langston Hughes.

“… Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.”

The blown pennant was just that for the 1964 Phillies, a heavy load they’ve borne for the last 56 years. Like Bill Buckner, who committed the best-known error in the sport in a century, they needn’t have. There’s no nuance in sports, only winners and losers, clutch performers and chokers. There’s no column in the standings for valor.

The 1964 Phillies were flawed and they didn’t win the pennant. But they won a lot of hearts in their failure to do so. Here’s hoping that’s lightened their load just a little.