When a strike derailed a would-be Phillies dynasty
For 97 years, the Phillies would begin each season uncertain that they would ever become champions of the baseball world. Then came the 98th, the season that would carry no doubts.
Months earlier, the organization that had suffered record losing streaks and collapses, close postseason calls and strange postssason bounces, rickety ballparks and grumpy fans, had finally won its first World Series.
They no longer hoped they could rule the baseball world.
By 1981, knew.
“We wanted to win two in a row,” Larry Bowa was saying the other day. “Because from ‘75 on, we had good teams. But that year, after winning it the year before, we felt that we could do it again.”
Then?
“Just one of things,” Bowa said.
There was always one of those things with the Phillies. The BunningShort mini-rotation. The Whiz Kids running into Joe DiMaggio. And, by the way, Bowa’s throw nabbed Davey Lopes at first on Black Friday in South Philly in 1977, no matter what Bruce Froemming ruled.
But for the first half of that 1981 season, it looked like it was finally the Phillies’ turn to make one-ofthose-things some other poor team’s lament. They
the
Phillies
those were world champions and it showed, and not just on the front of Dallas Green’s jacket, the crimson one famously embroidered with, appropriately enough, “World Champions.”
The nucleus of a team that reached the playoffs in 1976, 1977 and 1978 before winning it all in 1980 was no longer young, not yet old and altogether confident. A six-game April winning streak, two of the victories of the walk-off variety, signaled the Phillies’ intentions. And when they finished a five-game June winning streak with a 5-4 victory over Houston before 57,386 at the Vet, scoring all of their runs in a ninth inning started by
Nolan Ryan, a classic Phillies season was on.
The next day, the only thing on was the strike.
“People don’t even remember that season, I don’t think,” Bowa said. “You ask people about ‘81, and they ask, ‘What happened?’”
What happened 39 years ago, even if for a different and less catastrophic reason than it has this spring, was that baseball just stopped. For exactly two months, from June
10 through August 10, the players would strike rather than capitulate to ownership demands for better compensation for lost free agents.
Yet once the games did resume, the Phillies had virtually no incentive to win, the result of a weird decision from a sport ever in the habit of handing them down. As a way to inject relevance into the remainder of the crumbled season, baseball decided that the teams leading their divisions at the time of the stoppage would be declared first-half champions and granted automatic spots in the playoffs. The team that had the best record in each division during the second half would also receive a bid. And even if a team had the best record in both halves, it still would be made to play a “wild card” team in what essentially would be a prehistoric best-of-five NLDS.
So if the Phillies won every second-half game, or if they lost every night by
10 runs, the only possible change to their postseason status would be the home-field advantage for the mini-series.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that when we were told that it didn’t matter what we did in the second half, it had an effect,” Bowa said. “I’m not saying we didn’t want to win in the second half. But there was no incentive, really. At first, we thought, ‘Hey, if we win both halves, there’s not going to be a playoff.’ But they said, ‘No, that’s not the way it was going to be.’
“So it was a big blow.” The Phillies were 34-21 in the first half and were peaking, winning nine of their last 11. Pete Rose was within two hits of topping Stan Musial’s National League record. Mike Schmidt was on his way to leading the majors in home runs. Steve Carlton was beginning what would be a 13-4 season. Gary Matthews, new to left field, was providing clout. Bowa was having one of the best offensive seasons of his career.
“We were good,” Bowa said. “We were good.”
Yes, they were. Yet after the break, the Phillies would go 25-27 and end the season two games behind the Montreal Expos, the second-half champs, in the NL East. The incentivedrain was widely blamed. But right-handed pitcher Larry Christenson doesn’t recall that as being the only reason for the dip.
“It doesn’t ring a bell to me,” the longtime Malvern resident said. “But what rings a bell to me is that I know I was in better shape than most players coming back. I wouldn’t point fingers at players, but I was in pitching shape and I was ready. But that was my job.
“I was surprised that guys were saying, ‘We’re not in shape to get out there and play right away.’”
During the early days of the strike, recalls Christenson, the Phillies were permitted to use the facilities at Veterans Stadium. Eventually, though, they were forced to train elsewhere. Then a resident of Ardmore, Christenson says he worked out at nearby Villanova, paying a Wildcats catcher to be his throwing partner.
“I’m not naming names,” Christenson said. “I wouldn’t do that. But some of the guys were not in shape.”
Dickie Noles was in shape, mainly because he had been dumped to Oklahoma City near the end of spring training and spent the entire strike in a regular Class AAA rotation. Aware that they would need fresh arms as soon as the strike ended, the Phillies promoted Noles and used him in two of the first three poststrike games.
“So I was in a different boat,” the Aston resident said. “I got my butt sent down to the minor leagues and thought it would be a while to get back up. So when I did get back, I was in a different mindset. I was trying to make the major leagues again at that point.”
Some
Phillies
may have been behind physically, while others might have experienced an incentive drain. Eventually, Montreal would win the NLDS between the teams, three games to two, effectively harpooning an era. The Phils would finish in second place behind the Cardinals in 1982 and, before the 1983 season, would opt for an onthe-fly rebuild, moving Bowa to the Cubs and reuniting Rose with former Big Red Machine teammates Joe Morgan and Tony Perez. The
1983 team did reach the World Series, but history considered that a fluke made possible by a late September winning streak.
After that blip, the Phillies did not reach the playoffs again until
1993. Not that it looked promising, considering they were 54-61 and in fourth place at the time, but the Phillies technically were denied the chance to defend their National League pennant when the 1994 season ended abruptly in a labor dispute and there was no World Series at all.
One of those things. Now, another stoppage, with all sports being halted during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I hope there is a baseball season,” Bowa said. “But if there is, it will really be different. There will be asterisks next to everything. Whoever wins the World Series, they’re going to say, ‘They only played
80 games or 90 games or whatever.’”
After a 110-game regular 1981 season, the Dodgers won the World Series, beating the Yankees. There was no asterisk. Given what the defending world champions might have been that year, there should have been.