September 25, 1964: Phillies suffer 5th straight defeat despite late homers by Johnny Callison, Dick Allen

The Philadelphia Phillies returned home on September 21, 1964, holding first place in the National League after winning six games on a three-city road trip. With 12 games to play, Philadelphia’s lead was 6½ games over the second-place Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals. The city and team were looking forward to the World Series. “I think everyone in Philadelphia thought we were going to win the pennant,” Dallas Green, a relief pitcher on the team, said 50 years later. “I think everybody in the clubhouse thought we were going to win it. I don’t think there were many doubts at all.”1

On Monday, September 21, the Phillies lost a 1-0 game to the Reds when Chico Ruiz stole home in the sixth inning with two outs and two strikes on former Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player Award winner Frank Robinson. “It shook us to the core,” Green said of the aftermath of the play. “It shouldn’t have been the case; it was just another loss that we should have overcome. But we weren’t able to get ourselves righted after that.”2

The Phillies lost the next two games to the Reds and a Thursday night contest to the Milwaukee Braves. Taking the field on September 25 to play the second game of a four-game series against the Braves, they had a four-game losing streak. Coupled with the Reds’ four-game winning streak, the Phillies’ lead had shrunk to three games. The Braves stood in fifth place with a 79-73 record, 10 games back. They had recently been mathematically eliminated from the pennant race, but were playing for a first-division finish and a small share of postseason money.3

A crowd of 30,447 anxious fans filed into Connie Mack Stadium for the Friday night game. Phillies first baseman Frank Thomas was in the lineup for the first time since he broke his thumb on September 8. Thomas had been acquired by the Phillies on August 7 in a trade with the New York Mets. In the 33 games he played with the Phillies before his injury, Thomas hit seven home runs and drove in 26 runs. The Phillies won 21 games during that stretch, but stumbled to a 7-9 record with Thomas on the shelf.

“It was frustrating sitting on the bench. I know I can help this club,” said Thomas.4 Before the game he went into the clubhouse, cut the cast off his hand, and told manager Gene Mauch he wanted to play. “When he told me he was taking the cast off I said OK,” said Mauch. “I was glad to have him.”5

Chris Short was pitching for the Phillies on two days’ rest after surrendering six runs in the 9-2 loss to the Reds on September 22. Half of the Phillies’ starting rotation was grappling with injuries. Dennis Bennett was pitching with a sore shoulder and Ray Culp had been shut down because of arm trouble, so Mauch was relying heavily on his top two starters, Short and Jim Bunning, down the stretch. Short had thrown a complete-game 6-1 win against Milwaukee almost exactly a month before, on August 26.

Short surrendered four hits and two walks through six innings, and the Braves did not score. In the first inning, rookie Rico Carty stroked a one-out double to right but was stranded when Henry Aaron flied out and Joe Torre grounded out. In the second, Eddie Mathews singled to left with one out and Denis Menke walked, but Sandy Alomar grounded into a double play to end the threat.

Braves starter Hank Fischer was equally effective, holding the Phillies to three hits and one unearned run in the first six innings. Fischer had faced the Phils three previous times in 1964, with his efforts ranging from a two-hit shutout on May 3 to an ineffective two-inning start on July 12.

In the first inning, 22-year-old Dick Allen—on his way to the National League Rookie of the Year Award6— and 25-year-old All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Johnny Callison both singled, but were stranded when Wes Covington popped out to second and Thomas grounded out to third.

The Phillies broke the scoreless tie in the fourth inning. Callison led off with a single to right, his second in as many at-bats, and took second on Covington’s slow grounder to shortstop. Thomas hammered a line drive to left that Carty couldn’t handle and Callison scored on the two-base error.

The Braves took the lead in the seventh inning when they pushed two runs across the plate. With one out, Phillies catcher Clay Dalrymple interfered with Menke’s swing on a foul ball and Menke was awarded first base. “I tipped his bat,” admitted Dalrymple. “Just barely—but I did tip it.”7

Miguel de la Hoz pinch-hit for Alomar and smacked a double off the left-field fence, sending Menke to third base. Lee Maye hit for Fischer and lifted a fly ball to right field. Menke tagged and headed for home. Callison’s throw sailed over Dalrymple’s head and Menke scored the tying run. Felipe Alou followed with a single to right, scoring de la Hoz with the second run.

Aaron’s heads-up baserunning led to another Braves run in the eighth. With one out, Aaron singled. Mauch pulled Short and brought in righty Bobby Locke to face Torre. Locke threw a wild pitch and Aaron went to second. Later in the at-bat, Aaron took off to steal third. Allen ran toward the bag to receive the throw from Dalrymple, but Torre hit a grounder to third and Allen could not recover. The ball caromed off his glove into left field and Aaron scored the Braves’ third run.

In the bottom of the eighth, 38-year-old Braves rookie Chi-Chi Olivo, in his second inning of relief, got two outs before surrendering a single to Allen. With lefties Callison and Covington due up, Braves manager Bobby Bragan replaced Olivo with left-hander Billy Hoeft. Callison hammered Hoeft’s second pitch into the right-field bleachers. The Phillies had pulled even with the Braves entering the ninth inning.

Locke and Braves reliever Bob Sadowski each pitched a scoreless ninth, and both pitchers remained in the game as the 10th inning began. Ty Cline and Gary Kolb led off for the Braves. Cline, who replaced Carty in the eighth, stroked a single to right. Kolb, who subbed for Aaron when he left the game with a turned ankle, sacrificed Cline to second. 

Braves catcher and cleanup hitter Torre stepped to the plate. The 24-year-old All-Star, in his fifth year with the team, already had two hits, including the grounder past Allen that drove in the third run. With first base open, Mauch chose to pitch to Torre, instead of walking him and bringing up Gene Oliver. Locke threw a hanging curveball and Torre deposited it into the upper left-field stands for a two-run homer, putting the Braves in front 5-3.

Mauch wanted to take the blame after the game. “My choice of who to pitch to wasn’t very good,” he said. “But a manager doesn’t think in terms of hanging curveballs.”8

In the Phillies’10th, John Briggs, hitting for Locke, struck out. Cookie Rojas singled to left and Tony Gonzalez, who was 0-for-6, struck out for the third time. Allen stepped in and hammered a ball off the scoreboard that took a crazy bounce.9 Cline chased it down, but his throw sailed over the head of the cutoff man.

With the ball loose in the infield, Phillies third-base coach George Myatt waved Allen home with a game-tying inside-the-park home run.

Neither team scored in the 11th.  John Boozer, the Phillies’ fifth pitcher, started the 12th. Kolb beat out an infield single despite a great stop by Tony Taylor at second.10 Torre struck out and Oliver walked. Mathews hit a grounder wide of first that Thomas deflected past Taylor into short right field. “I thought the ball was going to right field,” said Thomas. “It glanced off the end of my glove.”11

Kolb scored on the hit and Oliver wound up at third. With Menke batting, Mathews took off for second. Dalrymple threw to Taylor, who tagged Mathews as he retreated to first. Taylor threw the ball back to Dalrymple to cut down Oliver, who was trying to score. Dalrymple tagged Oliver, but the collision dislodged the ball and Oliver was safe on the error.

Rookie Clay Carroll, in his seventh major-league game, retired the first two batters in the bottom of the 12th. But after Allen singled and Callison walked, Bragan summoned starter Tony Cloninger to get the last out. “I was getting down in the barrel,” Bragan admitted. “I had to reach in for Cloninger, who’s going to pitch Sunday.”12

Cloninger coaxed pinch-hitter John Herrnstein to ground to first for the final out. Allen and Callison did their best to lead the team to victory; together, they accounted for seven of the Phillies’ nine hits, drove in four runs, and scored four. But the Phillies suffered their fifth straight loss. Praising his two stars after the game, Mauch said, “These kids give everything they’ve got every game they play all year.”13

The win went to Carroll, his first of 96 victories in a 15-season major-league career, while Boozer took the loss. Cloninger earned the save, his third of six collected in a 12-year career.14 The Braves rallied from a four-run deficit to take Saturday’s game and closed out the sweep with a 14-run outburst on September 27.

The Phillies’ losing streak eventually reached 10 games, and even after winning the last two games of the season, Philadelphia ended up tied for second place with the Reds, one game behind the Cardinals. The Phold, as it later became known, would be remembered as one of the greatest collapses in baseball history.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Trading Card Database.

Sources 

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for information including the box score and play-by-play. The author also consulted Bryan Soderholm-Difatte’s article in the Fall 2010 Baseball Research Journal, “Beyond Bunning and Short Rest: An Analysis of Managerial Decisions That Led to the Phillies’ Epic Collapse of 1964.”

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI196409250.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B09250PHI1964.htm

Notes

1 Sam Gardner, “Phillies Collapse of 1964 Still Stings 50 Years Later,” foxsports.com, September 24, 2014. https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/philadelphia-phillies-collapse-of-1964-still-stings-50-years-later.

2 “Phillies Collapse of 1964 Still Stings 50 Years Later.”

3 United Press International, “Braves Put Crimp in Phillies’ Drive,” Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Daily Northwestern, September 26, 1964: 19.

4 Stan Hochman, “Braves Fracture Phils—Can They Mend in Time,” Philadelphia Daily News, September 26, 1964: 26.

5 Hochman.

6 Allen’s distant runners-up in the Rookie of the Year voting were Carty of the Braves and Jim Ray Hart of the San Francisco Giants.

7 Frank Dolson, “Phillies Give Their All, Nothing Goes Right,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 26, 1964: 22.

8 Dolson.

9 Stan Hochman, “Braves Fracture Phils—Can They Mend in Time,”

10 Hochman.

11 Frank Dolson, “Phillies Give Their All, Nothing Goes Right.”

12 Stan Hochman, “Braves Fracture Phils—Can They Mend in Time.”

13 Frank Dolson, “Phillies Give Their All, Nothing Goes Right.”

14 The major leagues did not officially recognize saves as a statistic until 1969, so Cloninger’s save would have been retroactively awarded.