The Mouth That Roared (4 page)

My dad didn’t say much when I told him I was going back to the minors. He didn’t need to. He knew we’d both been defeated.

*

I had to keep my emotions inside for a while. On the night of my demotion, Sylvia and I had dinner guests at our house in Newport, Delaware. I put on a happy face during the meal. After our guests left, I told Sylvia what happened.

I was really ticked off by the demotion. Born and raised in the Philadelphia area, my allegiance to the Phillies couldn’t have been stronger. And now, when it appeared we might win the pennant for the first time since 1950, I was nothing to them.

The team made World Series tickets available to players in July. I bought several and distributed them to friends and family. As badly as I wanted to see the Phillies in the Fall Classic, it crushed the hell out of me that I might be using one of the tickets myself.

The summer of 1964 forced me to take another hard look at myself.

Five years after hurting my pitching arm as a prospect at Triple-A Buffalo, I knew I’d never be the same pitcher again. I had learned to block out the pain, but I couldn’t fix the underlying problem—my arm couldn’t do the things it once could. There were no sports medicine doctors back then, so I never really learned the full extent of the damage.

Prior to the injury, I was considered the hardest thrower in the Phillies organization. But after my right arm went out on me, I had to completely revamp my pitching style. Before then, I would just rear back and try to overpower hitters. After the injury, I tried to outsmart hitters by changing speeds and turning the ball over. I guess you could say I really learned how to pitch after the injury. But it turned out I wasn’t good enough to get successful results on a consistent basis.

I had gone from living at home with my wife and children to holing up in a dingy motel in Little Rock, Arkansas. The only way to get back to Philadelphia was to show Mauch and general manager John Quinn (Mr. Quinn to his players) that I still had enough left in my arm to help the team win the pennant. In the Pacific Coast League, I transitioned from major league mop-up guy to minor league starter. And I put together a couple of really good outings.

From a thousand miles away in Arkansas, I kept tabs on my dad’s worsening health. I used his situation as added motivation to return to the Phillies.

While I was in the minors, the Phillies separated themselves from the rest of the pack in the National League. The team’s inspired play started getting a lot of attention. Callison graced the cover of
Sports Illustrated
in August. In an accompanying story, Jack Olsen wrote, “The Phutile Phillies of years gone by have become the Phantom Phillies of 1964, a bunch of invisible men who do not seem to understand that a team without stars should not be a pennant contender.” Olsen praised Mauch, whom he described as “a gritty, gutsy little thinker who brought the team from the ninth circle of hell to pennant contention.”

Thanks to Gene, I had traveled in the opposite direction.

A few weeks after arriving in Arkansas, I was out raising Cain with teammates Lee Elia and Pat Corrales when Arkansas manager Frank Lucchesi tracked me down to give me the news I’d been dreading. My dad had lost his battle with cancer. I returned home to Delaware for the funeral before resuming a season that was looking worse all the time.

To this day, I believe my demotion killed my father. It took me a long time to come to terms with his death.

Amid my anger and sorrow, I decided to finish out the season and then retire from the game.

Through early September, the Reds, Cardinals, and Giants could only give chase. Back then, there was no wild-card berth. The winner of each 10-team league advanced directly to the World Series. In the Phillies’ case, that would have meant a matchup with the Yankees.

The sizable lead we built just got me more pissed off. Why wasn’t I there to be a part of it? Why couldn’t my arm do the things I wanted it to do? And would I be the ultimate invisible man on a team filled with invisible men?

*

There’s a time for pouting. You get it out of your system, and then you go out and play, or you quit. I didn’t see it this way at the time, but looking back, I know 1964 imparted lessons I carried with me for decades to come. Baseball can kick you in the gut and double you over. And sometimes you have to dig down to find what you need to pull yourself back up.

I pitched well at Arkansas, going 4–1 with a 2.62 ERA in my two months there. The Travelers won the PCL’s East Division with a 95–61 record and met up with San Diego for the league championship. I pitched a shutout in the opener of the series, which we went on to lose in seven games.

The next day I rejoined the Phillies, who led the National League by 6½ games with only 12 games left in the season. The team was coming off a tough 1–0 loss to Cincinnati at Connie Mack Stadium. The only run in the game came on a steal of home in the sixth inning by Reds infielder Chico Ruiz, who made the daring move with Cincinnati’s best hitter, Frank Robinson, at the plate. I don’t think anybody thought much of it at the time, but that play ended up lingering in the hearts and minds of Phillies fans for many years.

I sat and watched from the bullpen as we lost five more games in a row to the Reds and Milwaukee Braves. Suddenly the Phillies clubhouse felt like a different place. You could feel a tension and tightness that comes from forgetting how to win games at the worst possible time.

Before the losing streak started, Gene decided to try and wrap up the pennant by pitching his two aces on short rest. Injuries to two other guys in the rotation, Dennis Bennett and Ray Culp, helped explain why Gene sent Bunning and Short out to the mound every three days. The strategy didn’t work, however. Jim and Chris went 1–5 during the two-week experiment.

As the losses mounted, Gene retreated into a shell. Earlier in the season, he yelled and screamed and threw stuff around the clubhouse. He even goaded opposing players from the bench. Now he was silent. We all waited for him to step up and say something to shake us out of our funk, but it never happened. He let us stew in it. It was unbelievable.

When asked by reporters about the team’s September swoon, Gene expressed defiance: “For a long time, everybody has said we’re lucky. Now they’re saying we’re tense. Before it’s over, they’ll take a bite on those words.”

*

On September 27, I finally got into a game. The Braves had knocked Bunning around pretty hard, and I entered in the top of the fourth inning. The Phillies trailed 4–3, and the Braves had two men on base and nobody out. By the time I retired the side, it was 8–3. The damage might have been much worse had Hank Aaron not grounded into a double play. I returned for a second inning of work and gave up four more runs. Milwaukee went on to win the game 14–8.

The loss dropped us into second place for the first time since July 16. With a week left in the season, we never saw first place again. The losing streak eventually grew to 10. If not for two meaningless wins at the end of the season, we would have finished in third place. The Cardinals won the pennant and went on to beat the Yankees in the World Series.

Hindsight is always 20-20. The most frequently cited reason for the Phillies’ collapse was Gene’s overreliance on Bunning and Short at the end of the season. What most people neglect to mention is that he also mismanaged the bullpen. And I don’t say that because I thought I should have played a greater role down the stretch. Baldschun had been our closer all year. But Gene got mad at him and stopped using him in tight situations. He also didn’t go to Roebuck often enough. We lost a lot of games in the late innings because Jack and Eddie weren’t in there. John Boozer, Bobby Locke, and, yes, Dallas Green, all of whom pitched well at Arkansas in 1964, came up short at one time or another for the Phillies in September.

My experience that year gave me strong feelings about what it takes to be a major league closer. Obviously talent is part of it. But preparation and head and heart are also vital. Jack and Eddie had the mental and physical attributes required to do the job. The rest of us might have
thought
we were capable of pitching in those situations, but we weren’t. You can think of yourself in whatever light you want, but when you’re out on the mound late in a game facing Willie Mays with the bases loaded, you show who you really are.

The events of 1964 were traumatic for the team, its fans, and the city of Philadelphia. Entire books have been written about the catastrophic end to what looked like a dream season.

The whole thing hit me particularly hard. We lost the pennant, I lost my dad, and all I saw in the mirror was a pitcher with a gimpy right arm.

I still have those tickets for the 1964 World Series, by the way.

Certain games in my playing career stand out in my memory. I remember the shutout I tossed against the Los Angeles Dodgers in my rookie season, a big save I got against the Chicago Cubs in 1963, and the rough outings that led to my demotion to the minors in 1964.

Also near the top of that list is a high school basketball game that took place in a gymnasium in Newport, Delaware, in the winter of 1952.

On that night, Bernard “Bunny” Blaney and the Newark High School Yellowjackets came to our school and got humbled. Blaney, the top high school scorer in the state of Delaware, scored 12 points, half his per-game average that year. I scored 22 for Henry C. Conrad High School. And we won the game 52–38.

At the time, I couldn’t imagine a better feeling or more satisfying win. On the heels of our victory, my teammates and I couldn’t resist having a little fun at Bunny’s expense. So, we drafted him a letter:

Dear Mr. Blaney,

Any time you feel like being held to a minimum in scoring, please get in contact with the point-average wrecking crew of Conrad H.S. Any request that we receive from you will be complied to immediately and done with great pleasure. When you stop crying over last Friday night’s disappointment, you can come back to Conrad and pick up your girl because you forgot her. I guess the reason for your low point production wasn’t the fact that you were deathly sick. Ha ha. The real cause was probably because your two left feet were getting in the way.

Sincerely,

The Conrad Wreckers of 1952

For a 17-year-old kid growing up in Delaware, the win over Newark High represented the height of athletic accomplishment. Newark was big-time, and Bunny, who went on to play football at Duke, was the top dog in the state. All these years later, I still remember the defensive scheme we used to shut him down that night. While four of our players, including me, hung back in a loose zone, our fifth and speediest guy shadowed Bunny all night. And it worked like a charm.

Newport, Delaware, located 40 miles down the road from Philadelphia, was the center of the basketball universe that night, as far as I was concerned.

Sixty years after our upset of Newark High, my old high school pals and I still get together to reminisce about that victory and other good times we had at Conrad.

Like most people, I look back on my teenage years with a great deal of fondness. I knew adulthood and the responsibilities that come with it were right around the corner, but I was too preoccupied with sports and other diversions to think very much about my post-graduation plans. The future didn’t concern me too much.

I came of age between wars. As a kid in suburban Wilmington, I remember the gas rations brought about by World War II. But by the time I reached high school, our boys were coming home from Europe and the Pacific. With the Korean War still a few years away, the late 1940s were a great time to be young. It helped that Delaware enjoyed a lot of post-war prosperity. Chrysler and General Motors built factories there, and the population of the state boomed. I remember it as an upbeat time.

My parents shielded me from any bad news, whether generated at home or in the larger world. We didn’t discuss the war or politics, and my dad never talked about business. I’m sure he and my mom, who kept the books at the garage he owned, had it out a time or two over finances, but I never heard any yelling or screaming about it. Despite mounting money problems, we somehow found a way to move into a bigger house as I was starting high school. And that’s where I lived until I left home for good.

*

My young life revolved around sports. I lettered in football, basketball, and baseball every year of high school. And in my senior year, just for kicks, I went out for the track team. I threw javelin, did the high jump, and even made one illfated attempt at pole vaulting.

Of all the sports, basketball held the biggest place in my heart. Having reached my maximum height of 6'5" during high school, I had enough size to exert my will near the basket. My scrawny frame earned me the nickname “Spider,” but I still relished the physicality of posting up and boxing out opponents in the lane. In my senior year, only Bunny and two other high school players in Delaware scored more points than I did. My play that year earned me a spot on the All-State Scholastic Quintet.

I loved whatever sport I happened to be playing at the time, but I guess you could say basketball was my main sport. If you mentioned my name around Delaware back then, most people would have said, “Oh yeah, Dallas Green, the basketball player.”