July 7, 1993: First-place Phillies outlast Dodgers in 20 innings in Kevin Stocker’s debut

The Philadelphia Phillies, leading the National League East Division, were concluding a three-game home series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 7, 1993. The Phillies had held first place for nearly three months and led the second-place St. Louis Cardinals by six games, but defensive struggles had forced a lineup change.

The previous night, in a 7-5 loss to the Dodgers, two groundballs had rolled past shortstop Kim Batiste and into center field for hits. After the game, Phillies general manager Lee Thomas told manager Jim Fregosi, “You’re getting a new shortstop.”1

One of the Phillies’ glaring weaknesses was defense, especially at shortstop. Opening Day starter Juan Bell was released in May, and with Mariano Duncan on the disabled list, the team was shorthanded in the middle infield. Five days before the All-Star break, it was time to call up Kevin Stocker, their second-round draft pick in June 1991. “He’s our best prospect and it’s time he gets his feet wet,” Fregosi said.2

The 23-year-old Stocker was playing for the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, 125 miles from Philadelphia. After he got the news of his call-up, he drove to Philadelphia and arrived at 2:15 P.M., a little more than five hours before the first pitch. “I only got lost twice,” he said.3

Fregosi inserted Stocker in the starting lineup, batting eighth. Third-base coach Larry Bowa, the shortstop on the 1980 World Series champion Phillies, said Stocker’s job was to “catch the ball”4 and not worry about hitting. Thrown into the middle of a pennant race, Stocker knew he was there to shore up the defense. “I’m not going to put any pressure on myself,” he said.5

It was a sweltering night, the air was heavy, and the game-time temperature was 94 degrees. Terry Mulholland, the starter for the Phillies, had won five of his last seven starts. Opposing Mulholland was Ramón Martínez, who was aiming for his eighth win of the year.

Both starters had to pitch through first-inning trouble. Los Angeles’ Jose Offerman grounded a one-out single to left and moved to third when Dave Hollins threw away Eric Karros’s grounder to third for an error. Mulholland retired Mike Piazza, a Philadelphia area native who had hit his 16th homer of the season in the series opener, on a pop fly to second to escape the inning.

Martínez’s first-inning jam started with two outs. John Kruk, who earlier in the day had been selected to start in the All-Star Game, hit a line-drive single to right. Hollins and Darren Daulton, like Kruk an All-Star starter, walked to load the bases but Martínez struck out Jim Eisenreich to end the inning.

Mulholland retired the Dodgers in order in the second, but Martínez’s struggles to find the strike zone continued. Mickey Morandini walked on five pitches, and Stocker’s first major-league at-bat was another five-pitch walk. Mulholland pushed a bunt down the first-base line to advance the runners. One out later, Milt Thompson, who was batting .407 in his last nine games, stroked a double down the left-field line. Both runners scored to give the Phillies a 2-0 lead.

The Dodgers cut the lead in half with an unearned run in the fourth. Piazza hit an infield single up the middle and went to second on a groundout by Eric Davis. Tim Wallach grounded to Hollins, who overthrew first for his second error of the game, and Piazza scored the Dodgers’ first run.

Both teams added runs over the next few innings as the Phillies increased their lead. In the Phillies’ fourth, Dykstra singled and Kruk homered. The Dodgers got one in the fifth, on back-to-back doubles by Offerman and Cory Snyder, and another in the sixth on a double by Piazza, a single by Davis, and a groundout by Wallach. Lenny Dykstra hit a leadoff home run in the sixth, his 10th of the season, for the Phillies’ fifth run, and the score remained 5-3 until the ninth inning.

Mulholland had gone seven innings and 110 pitches and Roger Mason contributed a scoreless eighth. Fregosi summoned his closer, Mitch Williams, for the ninth. Nicknamed “Wild Thing,” the left-hander had saved 23 games in 28 appearances so far in 1993. This time, however, Williams lived up to his nickname, losing his control, composure, and the lead without recording an out.

Williams walked leadoff batter Mitch Webster. Brett Butler worked the count to 2-and-2, fouled off a few pitches, then singled to left. This brought pitching coach Johnny Podres out to the mound for a chat, but Williams walked Offerman to load the bases and Snyder to force in a run, cutting the lead to 5-4.

Fregosi slowly walked to the mound intending to remove Williams. At the same time, Williams headed toward home plate to have a word with umpire Jim Quick. Quick immediately tossed Williams from the game. “I didn’t think he was squeezing me until that last pitch, but there was no way that last pitch [to Snyder] wasn’t a strike,” Williams said later.6

Larry Andersen replaced Williams. Karros lined a single off Andersen’s leg, scoring Butler with the tying run. The Dodgers were in position to go ahead with the bases loaded, none out, and sluggers Piazza and Davis coming to bat.

Piazza hit a grounder to shortstop. Stocker charged the ball and threw an off-balance strike to catcher Daulton, forcing Offerman for the first out. “It was kind of a reaction play,” Stocker said. “I got a nice hop.”7 Davis took a called third strike on the outside corner for out number two, and he took umbrage with Quick about the strike zone. Pinch-hitter Dave Hansen lined to right for the final out. When the Phillies failed to score in the bottom of the ninth, the game headed to extra innings.

Action continued on and on and on, past the midnight hour, with neither team able to score. After Eisenreich’s two-out single in the seventh off Martínez, who threw 133 pitches, the Phillies managed just one more hit through the 19th inning. As a parade of six Dodgers relievers covered the eighth inning through the 19th, the Phillies went down in order eight times.

For Philadelphia, David West followed Andersen with two scoreless innings, and veteran José DeLeón blanked the Dodgers on one hit from the 12th through the 14th.  Fregosi then turned the game over to 24-year-old right-hander Mike Williams, making his ninth major-league appearance.

Williams was in his sixth inning of work as the 20th began. With one out, Offerman beat out an infield grounder for his fourth hit of the game, and Snyder followed with a line-drive single to right-center, advancing Offerman to third. Reserve catcher Carlos Hernandez hit a grounder to third. Batiste, who had entered the game in the 10th on a double switch, threw home to cut off the run, but the throw ticked off Daulton’s glove, allowing Offerman to score the go-ahead run on the error.

Los Angeles’ Ricky Trlicek had turned in four scoreless innings, the longest outing of his career, but manager Tommy Lasorda sent him back out in the bottom of the 20th with a 6-5 lead. Eisenreich wasted no time, hitting Trlicek’s first pitch for a single, the Phillies’ first hit since the 12th. After Morandini followed with a single to center, Lasorda reached into his bullpen for Rod Nichols, the Dodgers’ scheduled starter for the second game of a doubleheader the next night against the Mets in New York.

Stocker, hitless in his first eight plate appearances with two walks, pushed a sacrifice bunt toward the mound. Nichols fielded the ball and threw to third, trying to force the lead runner, but Eisenreich beat the throw, and the bases were loaded. One out later, Dykstra slapped a ground-rule double down the left-field line, scoring two runs to win the game. Finally, at 1:47 A.M., the grueling 6-hour, 10-minute game was over. “It was a big win,” Dykstra said, “because we had been in command all along, before we ran into trouble.”8

What started as a long day for Stocker in his hotel room in Scranton ended with a celebration in the Phillies’ locker room with his new teammates. “A night of firsts,” Stocker said. “Not my first hit, but first error, first strikeout, first walk, first bunt.”9 Stocker stabilized the infield defense, while hitting .324, and finished sixth in the NL Rookie-of-the-Year voting. His major-league debut resulted in a memorable win for the Phillies in an improbable season, when they rose from last place in 1992 to win the franchise’s first pennant since 1983.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Evan Katz and copy-edited by Len Levin.

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/PHI/PHI199307070.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1993/B07070PHI1993.htm

Notes

1 Paul Hagen, “Stocker Went Up Quickly,” Philadelphia Daily News, July 8, 1993: 85.

2 Ralph Bernstein, “Phils Think Stocker Is Ready for Majors,” Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Intelligencer Journal, July 8, 1993: E4.

3 Timothy Dwyer, “Stocker Has Tall Order for a Rookie Shortstop,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 8, 1993: C1.

4 Dwyer.

5 Frank Fitzpatrick, “Dykstra’s Double Lifts Phils in 20th,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 8, 1993: C1.

6 Paul Hagen, “What a Marathon, Man,” Philadelphia Daily News, July 8, 1993: 86.

7 Rich Hoffman, “Stocker’s 1st Day a Long, But OK Night,” Philadelphia Daily News, July 8, 1993: 87.

8 Hagen, “What a Marathon, Man.”

9 Hoffman.