Center Field Gate

The 1950 Phillies were one of baseball’s memorable teams: a great pitching staff and heavy long-bomb hitters. And they arrived at the Fall Classic in a similar fashion to their 2009 version: having humbled the Brooklyn version of the Dodgers in the season’s final game. Then, as now, their nemesis was the Yankees, as memorable a team as the Phillies — packed with prodigious power and strong arms.  Del Ennis, Dick Sisler and Richie Ashburn were the keys to the Phillies’ line up: Ennis because of his towering bombs (31 in all in 1950) and Sisler and Ashburn because of their nose-in-the-dirt style of play. We’ve forgotten just how good Ennis was — playing for sixteen years, eleven of them with Philadelphia. In 1950 he had 126 RBIs to lead the team. Ashburn didn’t have Ennis’s power, but his career ended in the Hall of Fame: with a lifetime batting average of .308, three different years with over 200 hits – and a skyscraping OBP. There’s a statue of him now, outside of Citizens Bank Park, in Philadelphia. But 1950 was far from Ashburn’s best year and the team needed the likes of Ennis to get into the series.

“The Whiz Kids” took the N.L. by surprise. No one even knew who they were. The left side of their infield was under 25 and their two best players were kids — Ashburn was 23 and Ennis was 24. Even so, if you knew only a little bit about baseball, you’d have easily picked the Phillies to best the Yankees in the ‘50 Series. Their pitching was the class of the National League. The starting rotation was led by Robin Roberts, then in his third year in Philadelphia. He’d gone 20-11 with a 3.02 ERA and he’d thrown 21 complete games. Roberts threw the last game of the season against the Trolleys, and it was a gem: he pitched ten innings of one run ball before Philly won it all in the 10th. Curt Simmon followed Roberts in the rotation — and he looked (at 20) like he was eleven. Like Ennis, he is remembered best by baseball afficiandos. He had very good, but not great years. 1950 was one of his best: he was 17-8 with a 3.40 ERA. The third arm in the rotation belonged to Bob Miller, whose 11-6 record was a surprise to everyone (including Miller). It was the best year he ever had, but Philly needed him desperately — as the war in Korea was culling the N.L. of some of their best pitchers. By the time the series rolled around, the Phillies had lost stalwart Simmons and fireballer Bubba Church to the service.

The Yankees had won the series in ‘49, but they knew the Phillies would be tough. To win, they had to get past their pitching. Their line-up was good, even very good, but these were not the Bronx Bombers of the 1920s. Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio were their power hitters, with Phil Rizutto the sparkplug in the middle of the order. Still, Phillies’ fans would be right to wonder why Phil is in the Hall of Fame and not Ennis. “I never thought I deserved to be in the Hall of Fame,” Rizutto once said. “The Hall of Fame is for the big guys.” That’s right, Scooter. The Yankees’ strength was their pitching staff. Vic Raschi (The Springfield Rifle) was the Yanks best starter (he was 21-8 that year), followed by Allie Reynolds and Eddie Lopat. Formidable, sure, but against the Roberts and Ashburn-led Phillies the Yankees knew they were in for a tussle.

Sadly for Phillies’ fans, that’s not how it turned out. In what has to be considered one of the best-pitched and closest World Series ever, the Phillies lost in four — by a combined 11–5 run total. The first game was the surprise, with Phillie closer Jim Konstanty pitching eight innings of one run ball. That how it ended: 1-0. Game 2 was a Robin Roberts’ gem, but he lost the game in the 10th on a DiMaggio home run. The pattern for the series was now well-established, with the Yankees matching the Phillies pitch-for-pitch. The third game ended 3-2, with the Yankees scoring their third run in a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth. The only game that wasn’t close was the fourth — with the Phillie’s nose-diving, 5-2. The Phillies should have won that fourth game: they were up against a young Yankee hurler by the name of Whitey Ford who’d had only a so-so year.

It seems unlikely that 2009 will see a repeat of the head-to-head pitchers’ duels of 1950. Philadelphia doesn’t have a Robin Roberts or Richie Ashburn or Curt Simmons. In fact, they’re better: with a loaded line-up that makes Ennis and Sisler and Ashburn look like spray hitters (which is, in fact, what they were). Then too, while the current Bronx crew lacks the power and presence of “The Yankee Clipper,” Jeter, Rodriguez and Teixeira hit more like Murderers’ Row than their 1950 ancestors. It will be a real surprise if this is a four-and-out series: and it seems very unlikely to be won by 1-0, 2-1 or 3-2 scores. That said, the 2009 Fall Classic has this one thing in common with the Whiz Kids vs. Empire match-up of 1950: in order for Philly to win, they have to hit Yankee pitching.

While the AL champion has not yet been decided, the crowning of the Phillies as N.L. champs sets up a classic I-95 tussle with the Yankees — or maybe it’s the Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed series. Despite the dominance of the Phillies in every aspect of their series with the suddenly sputtering Dodgers, the Ashburns would be decided underdogs in the match-up against the The Evil Empire, whose front line pitching of Sabathia, Burnett and Pettitte would match-up well against Utley, Howard, Werth and Ibanez. And while the Phillies’ bullpen outclassed the Broxtons, they’d have a tougher time with the middle of the Yanks order. “We’re gonna get it,” Phuzzie manager Charlie Manuel says. We can forgive the over-confidence:  anything can happen in a seven game series and the Phillies are hardly pushovers. Even if they will be (and it’s still a pretty big maybe) facing the class of baseball.

It didn’t use to be this way. For over seven decades the Phillies were the pushovers of the National League — only one step ahead of our very own Washington Senators. As our pals over at Real Dirty Mets Blog point out, the Phils were once the doormats of the league: “From 1918-1948 they were above .500 once. 78-76 in 1932, finishing 4th. In an 8-team league, that was the only time in 31 years they finished above 5th place.” Before winning it all in 1980, the Phillies had appeared in the postseason twice — and lost both times. The Phillies might not have been “first in war, first in peace and last in the National League,” but they were next-to-last; the only thing they had to show for their efforts were a bunch of gamers who entered the hall: Richie Ashburn, Jim Bunning, Jimmie Foxx and Robin Roberts. Not a bad crew, but near-beer when compared to the Dodgers, Giants, and even the Cubs. Even when the Phillies were good they were bad. Baseball fans who know the game well scoff at the Mets collapse of 2007: the ‘64 Phillies led the league by 6.5 and blew it in seven games. They were “the pholding Phillies.” It took them until 1980 to win their first series — a record of futility unmatched even by the North Side Drama Queens, who dominated the game in the early part of the century. It took Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt to turn it around, though it would be another twenty-eight years before the Phillies took another championship.

These are not grandpa’s Phillies. The turn in the franchise is not simply the result of lots of money (their 2009 opening day payroll was a whopping $113 million), or a strong fan base (third in all of baseball), but a reflection of one of baseball’s best front offices. Phillies’ GM Ruben Amaro (Jr.) never stopped building: the 2009 version of the Phils is his handiwork. He added a key piece in the off-season (Raul Ibanez) and two starters that will be the backbone of the staff in the series: Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez. Even so, it might not be enough. While the Phillies would be favored to humble the Belinskis, it’s doubtful Lee could pitch as well in two games against the Yankees as he did against the Dodgers. And could we really expect Pedro to match his seven inning NLCS effort? Then too, there’s the Phillies bullpen. Scoured clean during the regular season (they were simply awful, and in chaos, in the late going), Brad Lidge was once again Brad Lidge in the Trolley series, keeping the ball away from their best hitters. He would have to do that again, and then some, against the Jeters. Bottom line? In any match-up against the Bombers, the Phillies would have to be Rocky Balboa to win. But it would be exciting.

It’s Not A Motorcycle Sweetie, It’s A Chopper: Mark Lerner just bubbles over about the great progress the Nats have made over the last season, identifying the hiring of Mike Rizzo as one of the five great things that has happened to the team. Agreed. But the real question here (never asked in the on line interview) is whether the owners are willing to shell out what it will take to bring ballplayers to the club. The Nats payroll for 2009 was at $60 million, a little more than half of what the Phillies paid . . . The Lerners should know better than to complain about the media. They can’t win: and it’s hard to argue with columnists who roll their eyes at the obvious penny pinching. The Lerner family says they operate the Nationals as a public trust and are committed to the city. They should be celebrated for that: but the midseason argument that the Lerners have given back never really sounded right. Is that why they bought the team? To be good citizens?

The report of the day has Don Mattingly being interviewed for the Nats managerial job. “You listen to everyone,” Mattingly said about taking a job with a team that is rebuilding. “I’m flattered there’s some organizations out there that think I’m capable of it, or at least talked to me about it. You get to know them, they get to know you, and you see where it goes from there.” Mattingly knows the game and has been angling for a top dugout job since he left baseball. He was the reputed successor to Joe Torre in New York and was angered by the hiring of Joe Girardi. But the knock on Mattingly has nothing to do with his willingness to manage a last place team. The question is: does a last place team really need a guy who’s never been a manager — or wouldn’t the Nats be better off with someone with a few more years under their belt. No matter his experience, Mattingly would be an experiment: and the Nats have had enough of those.