June 23, 1979: Rodney, Run: Rogers is rich, but Rader bids no-hitter adieu in hidden Updike game

John Updike’s instant classic “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” lyrically recounted Ted Williams’  dramatic last plate appearance at Fenway Park in the October 15, 1960, edition of The New Yorker. Williams, on the edge of retirement, and Updike, in the first decade of his professional literary life, represented two of the most productive performers in their fields in Massachusetts in the twentieth century.

Updike’s third novel, Rabbit, Run, came out the same year as Williams’ last homer and was the first of four novels on the adventures of former high school basketball star Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. The third novel in the series, Rabbit Is Rich, located the middle-aged Angstrom in greater Philadelphia in 1979 as he battled economic uncertainty, sexual longings, and a tenuous relationship with his college-aged son. The book invoked another baseball game, a Saturday night encounter between the reigning National League East Division champion Philadelphia Phillies and the upstart Montreal Expos, featuring a near no-hitter by Expos ace Steve Rogers.

Having grown up in Shillington and Plowville, Pennsylvania, each about 60 miles from Philadelphia, Updike followed the Phillies closely as a schoolchild and wrote a letter to the Reading Times after Philadelphia forfeited an August 22, 1949, game due to fan misbehavior.1 In Rabbit at Rest, his fourth book in the series, Updike has his protagonist reminisce about the 1950 Whiz Kids, musing on “Curt Simmons, Del Ennis, Dick Sisler in center, Andy Seminick behind the plate.”2

Prior to 1979, the Phillies, a franchise dating to 1883, rarely had to contend with the Expos, who entered the NL in 1969. The teams had little overlap during their first decade together: Gene Mauch was the most prominent manager who had helmed both clubs, Dave Cash the most productive player, and Woodie Fryman the best pitcher. The Expos had a better record than the Phillies only from 1971 through 1973. In 1978 Philadelphia took its third consecutive NL East crown; Montreal finished a distant fourth, 14 games out of first.

Unsurprisingly, the Phillies got off to a strong start in 1979; surprisingly, Montreal did, too. On May 27, the teams tied for first place, both 11 games over .500, with Montreal – still seeking its first winning season in franchise history – having a slightly better winning percentage. By the time the two teams tangled on June 23, however, Montreal had improved to 39-24, while Philadelphia had sagged to 35-32.

The pitching matchup for the middle game of a three-game weekend set at Stade Olympique reflected the divergent directions in which the teams trended. The Expos had Rogers, as of 2026 still the best pitcher in Montreal/Washington franchise history, while the Phils countered with Nino Espinosa, who in his first five seasons in the majors, all with the New York Mets, never had finished a campaign with a winning record.

Rogers pitched around a one-out walk to Larry Bowa in the first by getting a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Pete Rose. The Expos took the lead in the home half of the first with help from poor Phillies’ defense. With two outs, Andre Dawson singled, stole second, and came around to score on a throwing error by backup catcher Dave Rader, spelling regular Bob Boone in a night contest before a Sunday day game. Rader’s throw, per the Philadelphia Inquirer, “plunked [Dawson] directly in the posterior. It rolled into the Bermuda Triangle in short left. And by the time Bowa retrieved it, Dawson was practically at the plate.”3 Philadelphia manager Danny Ozark fined left fielder Greg Luzinski $100 for failing to back up the throw.4

Rogers walked Rose in the fourth, but again he got a twin-killing from a Phillies superstar when Mike Schmidt hit into a 5-4-3 double play. His wildness notwithstanding, Rogers had held the Phillies hitless in the early going. Montreal increased its lead to 2-0 in the bottom half. Dawson singled, went to third on a Tony Pérez single, and scored on a double play.

Neither pitcher allowed another baserunner until the bottom of the sixth, when Montreal’s Warren Cromartie singled. Rodney Scott, who had displaced Cash at second base for the Expos, grounded into a forceout and then stole second, his 20th steal of the campaign. Montreal manager Dick Williams highly valued Scott, who had been traded five times between December 1975 and December 1978: “Scott has won nearly a dozen games for us with his glove,” said Williams in midseason.5 While the manager may have exaggerated the impact of his second baseman, the 25-year-old Scott did have his highest WAR in 1979, stealing 39 bases and hitting all three of his big-league homers. A Dawson infield single, his third hit of the game, and a Pérez sacrifice fly gave the Expos a 3-0 lead.

Rogers issued his fourth walk of the game in the eighth. Afterwards, he discussed his effective wildness. “I had the kind of sinker early (in the game) that was getting me in trouble because it was sinking out of (plate umpire) Terry Tata’s strike zone,” he said.6 Rogers retired the next two batters, leaving him four outs from a no-hitter.

Next up was Rader, a 30-year-old reserve starting for only the second time all season. But as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “Then Dave Rader ruined [the no-hitter] with a five-hop single that was maybe the eighth-hardest-hit ball of the night.”7

In Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit tunes into the game at some point after Rader’s hit. Although not directly stating the date, Updike reveals that this is the game in question by placing it on a Saturday, mentioning “the statistic that [Philadelphia has] lost twenty-three of their last thirty-four games[,]”8 and lamenting Rogers’ handcuffing of the club’s once-potent offense: “The Phillies are being held to one hit by the Expos, [Rabbit] can’t believe it, all that power.”9

The young Expos star catching Rogers also felt disbelief, believing he would catch a no-hitter. “I was already getting my game plan ready for the rest of the game,” Gary Carter said later. “I was thinking how I was going to pick him up and carry him off the field.”10 Rogers kept his focus after the hit and got out of the inning. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Scott singled and stole his second base of the game but did not score.

In the ninth, Rogers retired the top third of the Phillies’ lineup to complete the one-hit shutout. Moments later, according to The Sporting News, “Ozark bolted the clubhouse doors and read the riot act. He splattered the walls of his office with beer.”11 Ozark’s seven-year tenure in the Philadelphia dugout had netted three straight division titles, but also three NL Championship Series losses in a row. Now, even after Rose’s high-profile offseason free-agent signing, the Phillies languished in the middle of the pack. Updike captures the antipathy Philadelphia fans felt toward the manager by having a friend of Rabbit demand, “Fire Ozark. … He’s lost their respect, he’s demoralizing. Until they can Ozark … the Phillies are d-e-a-d, dead.”12

For the third straight year, Rogers had pitched a one-hitter, for the fourth and final time in his career. Rogers tied for the major-league lead with five 1979 shutouts, a figure matched by two other NL and three AL hurlers. Rogers did not bemoan losing a no-hitter on such a weak hit, philosophizing, “you’ve got to look at all the balls that were hit hard at people. So for me to feel sorry about one ground ball that got through on an Astroturf infield I’ve got to be crazy…. I can’t in the least bit be disappointed.”13 Rogers engaged in rationalization when he challenged reporters, “If you check the statistics, you’ll find that Rader has always hit me well.”14 To the contrary, Rader finished his career with just six singles in 30 at bats against Rogers.

The 1979 season marked a major reversal in fortune for the two squads, as Montreal finished in second place in the NL East, just two games behind the World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates. Philadelphia came in fourth, 14 games out of first; Ozark was fired on August 31 and replaced by general manager Dallas Green. The Expos and Phillies battled fiercely during the 1980 regular season and the 1981 postseason. Rogers won the first and deciding fifth games of the 1981 NL Division Series.

Rabbit Is Rich came out in 1981 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. For the remainder of the team’s tenure in Quebec, Montreal did not return to the playoffs for many reasons, including the use of cocaine by some of its prominent players, which also derailed the career of Rabbit’s son Nelson. Updike’s novel, parts of which seem deeply dated more than four decades later, for the most part accurately and poignantly conveys the highs and lows of life both off and on the baseball diamond.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Dave Rader, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON197906230.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1979/B06230MON1979.htm

Notes

1 James Schiff, ed., Selected Letters of John Updike (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2025), 8-9.

2 John Updike, Rabbit at Rest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1990), 220. Although Dick Sisler played 676 MLB games, including a career-high 137 in the outfield in 1950, he never played center in the majors, a position ably occupied by Richie Ashburn for Philadelphia from 1948-1959.

3 Jayson Stark, “No-hitter lost in 8th as Expos win by 3-0,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1979: 9-F.

4 Bill Conlin, “Bill, Rawly Fined Out Hard Way,” Philadelphia Daily News, June 25, 1979: 70.

5 Steve Cady, “Montreal’s New Balancing Act,” New York Times, July 5, 1979: B12.

6 Frank Dolson, “Williams was set to pull Rogers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1979: 11-F.

7 Stark, 1-F.

8 John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981), 62.

9 Rabbit Is Rich, 49. The Phillies had finished in the NL’s top three in runs scored every year from 1975 through 1978, topping the league with 847 runs (5.23 runs per game) in 1977. In 1979, however, Philadelphia’s 4.19 runs per game lagged the NL average of 4.22.

10 Dolson, 1-F.

11 Hal Bodley, “Phils’ Ears Burn After G.M. Owens’ Blast,” Sporting News, July 7, 1979: 16.

12 Rabbit Is Rich, 63.

13 Dick Bacon, “Rogers’ one-hitter highlights weekend split for Expos,” Montreal Gazette, June 26, 1979: 19.

14 Canadian Press, “Phillies Unleash Secret Weapon,” Ottawa Journal, June 25, 1979: 49.