Fifty years later, visions of Connie Mack Stadium still fresh for Bowa, Vankoski
There would be a confrontation and a challenge, a demand and a counterdemand, stress and mistrust. For Larry Bowa, there would be all of that before he ever walked into a Philadelphia ballpark for the first time.
He was 24, a Phillies rookie, far from his California home, outside the players’ entrance to Connie Mack Stadium. It’s when he knew that if he was going to make it around there, he was going to have to prove a few things. And a raised voice might not have been out of the question.
“It wasn’t easy getting in,” Bowa was recalling the other day, with a laugh. “I had to show an ID. I remember telling the guard, ‘I’m a player.’ He said, ‘Yeah, really?’”
Bowa’s credentials cleared, the sentinel like so many others unwilling to believe that a 5-10, 155-pound player would become a franchise legend, he entered the park, played 145 games and hit .250, good for third place in the 1970 Rookie of the Year race. That would be the last season the Phillies would play in Connie Mack, and it remains one of Bowa’s most memorable.
It’s why he has agreed to be the keynote speaker at a Sept. 26 luncheon at the Radnor Hotel, when the 50th anniversary of the final game in the ballpark at 21st and Lehigh will be remembered in a fund-raiser for the Sports Legends of
Delaware County Museum.
Organized by the irrepressible Jim Vankoski, the driving force behind the museum and a man-aboutDelco-baseball for a lifetime, the event will feature former Phillies and others appreciative of the ballpark’s charm … and maybe even the lack of some. In particular, it will commemorate the outrageous final game in the stadium, a bizarre moment in baseball history, the Phillies defeating the Montreal Expos, 2-1, in 10 innings even as the fans literally ripped the joint apart, seat by seat, plumbing fixture by plumbing fixture.
Vankoski was among the 31,822 at Connie Mack that night, in the left-field bleachers with his wife, Barbara, and another couple, standing through the final moments, captivated by the carry-on.
“I couldn’t get over what I saw,” Vankoski said. “There was a guy who brought in a box full of crowbars. He was selling them. I don’t know how many ‘final games’ he was at, but he was selling crowbars for the people to tear up the seats. I was mesmerized by that. I was thinking, ‘How does this guy know that this was going to happen?’ But he had to have like 50 crowbars in this huge box. It was really an experience.”
Though Vankoski didn’t partake in the destruction, he eventually did wind up with one of the most valuable souvenirs from that final game.
Story?
“You could write a book on it,” he said. “Mickey
Vernon presented it to me. George Myatt was a coach with the Phillies that year, and he was Mickey’s roommate in the minor leagues with the Washington Senators. And Mickey Vernon’s first game was July 8, 1939, at Shibe Park, which became Connie Mack Stadium. George Myatt remembered that and saved first base from the final game and gave it to Mickey.
“Later on, I was in Mickey’s kitchen with his wife (Lib) and his daughter, Gay, and his son-in-law, John (Brande). He asked me about the best baseball game I ever saw. I said, ‘Mickey, the best game I was ever at was the final game ever played at Connie Mack Stadium.’ He said, ‘Jim, do want to have a souvenir from that game?’ I had no idea what he was talking about. But he takes me in his garage, finds it, and says, ‘Here’s first base from the last game ever played in Connie Mack Stadium.’”
The bag is on display at the Sports Legends Museum at the Radnor Township Municipal Building, a tribute to Vernon, the two-time American League batting champion from Marcus Hook.
Vankoski has many memories of Connie Mack Stadium, including the time he was able to take the field.
“I was lucky,” he said. “A bunch of American Legion players and college players were invited by the Phillies to go to Connie Mack Stadium and work out. I am going back to 1963. I was with the Chester Baxter Post American Legion team. I was 16, a left-handed pitcher. It was magnificent. The thing I remember most of all was the mound. You know the Delco League, and what the mounds are like. You’re trying to keep balance on the rubber. You’re falling. There’s holes all over the place. But a major-league mound, your foot goes exactly where it should be, and your control is so much better.”
Connie Mack Stadium was 61 years old in 1970, and it showed. Yet it was spectacular in its own ways.
“I grew up loving Connie Mack Stadium,” longtime Phillies public address announcer Dan Baker said. “Oh, my gosh, it was like heaven. I walked into that place and saw the beautiful green grass and how much of it there was. I remember walking up from Broad Street, those seven blocks to 21st Street. To see those light standards in the sky, oh, man, it took your breath away.”
The Phillies moved to Veterans Stadium for the 1971 season. Baker became the P.A. man in 1972 and has entertained fans ever since. Depending on the Phillies’ schedule, Baker plans to be at the luncheon, helping out as the M.C.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Bowa said. “That stadium was great to play in. No question. The field surface was great. I’m glad I got to play in it. There was a lot of history there. Everyone talked about guys hitting balls over the roof. But I could never envision the ballpark. Then when I saw it, and I knew Richie Allen had hit a few over there, and I thought, ‘Oh, wow.’ Johnny Callison, too. He hit some tape-measure shots.”
There were no home runs in the final game, which ended with Oscar Gamble delivering Tim McCarver from second base with a 10th-inning single. That sent the crowd, already low on seats to shatter, swarming onto the field for dirt, grass and other organic souvenirs.
“I remember the umpires calling the two managers together in the eighth inning of that last game,” Vankoski said. “They said they were going to forfeit the game. I remember Gene Mauch, who was managing the Expos, saying in the paper the next day that he told them, ‘If you think it’s bad now, if you forfeit the game, then you will really have problems. That’s not a smart move to make in this situation.’”
Mauch, the former Phillies manager, knew the stadium and the fans and the situation. On the way out, just as it once was for Bowa on the way in, there might have been the occasional touched nerve. So, the sportsmen of Delaware County will recall it all, limiting the lunch crowd to 100. Contact Vankoski at 610-909-4919 or at vankoski21@comcast.net for reservations or information.
Tickets will be $100. Crowbars will not be provided.