My first real memory of baseball is Tug McGraw’s 1-2 pitch to Willie Wilson: My parents jumping up and down in the living room, a sense of tension breaking and some unearned joy washing over us. A couple days later my parents let me skip kindergarten and we found seats somewhere in the upper rows of JFK stadium, watching trucks roll into the stadium with our heroes on board. But being five, I really didn’t know much about the season until now. I’ve seen the game broadcasts from the World Series and bits of the NLCS. And my brother and I wore out a Phillies album that replayed Harry Kalas’s calls of the best moments. But this team was more interesting than all of that stuff captured. The team was lucky beyond words. They lost some key players and got big contributions from rookies. The struggled mightily at times. Their coach berated them. Their GM threatened to fight them, and to break up the team. Mike Schmidt had a career year, but even he slumped at times. The team entered its final weekend tied with its final opponent: the Expos. They finally sealed the berth in a rain-soaked extra innings contest, one in which they made five fielding errors and a bunch of baserunning errors. It was a Schmidt home run that put them over the top.
And then there’s the NLCS. Four stright extra innings games. In the final one, they were down 5-2 in the eighth against Nolan Ryan (!), and managed to come back. I’m glad I was five, I couldn’t take that kind of drama now …
You can order a full-size copy of this here.
0 Responses to “My Champs: 1980 Phillies”