These are not the words that anyone in New York wants to hear today, but no one leaving Connie Mack Stadium on a Sunday afternoon in 1964, exactly forty three years ago, said, “wait until 2007.”
The ghost of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies has haunted this city’s streets, bars and all-night diners for decades. It has been seen riding the Market-Frankford El and buying magazines on Broad Street. It can be heard on call-in radio programs and its words have appeared in the Bulletin, the Daily News and the Inquirer.
Among the current players, only Jamie Moyer was alive forty three years ago when the failing Phils folded like an origami butterfly, yet when the team lost seven of ten games in August, the ghost emerged from the fog in the same way that the USS Eldridge supposedly appeared in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1943.
The 1964 Phillies were in first place for 112 days. On Thursday, September 17, they beat Don Drysdale and held a 6-½ game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals but one day later, their mojo hand went missing and, without it, they lost 12 of their next 15 games. When Jim Bunning, now a United States senator, beat the Cincinnati Reds on the last day of the season, it no longer mattered.
The 1964 Phillies fared somewhat better than the crew of the USS Eldridge—if nothing else, there were no reports of inexplicable madness or mysterious disappearances among the infielders, outfielders, catchers or pitchers—and the team began the 1965 season with more or less the same starting lineup. The manager, Gene Mauch, came back, as did Bunning, Dick Allen, Johnny Callison, Clay Dalrymple, Tony Gonzales, Chris Short, Tony Taylor, Bobby Wine and Rick Wise. Taylor and Wine eventually became coaches; Dallas Green and Pat Coralles became managers. Dallas Green is still the only Phillies manager to win a World Series, and Ruben Amaro’s son is an assistant general manager.
The ghost remained in the shadows, emerging periodically from the fog over the Delaware River near the docks, the warehouses and the shipyard.
Mitch Williams saw it, briefly, peripherally, during the 1993 World Series.
Only thirty eight pitchers have ever saved more games than Mitch Williams and only two have saved more games for the Phillies, but this thought did not comfort Williams when he lost the fourth game of the World Series and the death threats began to arrive. In the sixth game, the ghost watched Williams toss a pumpkin to Joe Carter in the bottom half of the ninth inning. Williams was traded to the Houston Astros less than six weeks after Carter’s three-run, game-winning, series-ending home run caromed off an outfield seat in Toronto’s SkyDome. Squirrels ate the pumpkin and the ghost was satisfied, at least temporarily. A few years later, Williams threw his last pitch as a member of the Atlantic City Surf.
The 2007 Mets were in first place for 140 days and held a seven-game lead on September 12 before the ghost appeared and the Mets lost twelve of their last seventeen games. (This might sound familiar.)
On Sunday morning, the Phillies and Mets had identical records. For the Phillies to reach the playoffs, Jamie Moyer—who probably does not remember a night in 1964 when a full moon rose over the fence at Connie Mack Stadium—needed to win. For the Mets to reach the playoffs, Tom Glavine had to win. Moyer did, Glavine didn’t and the ghost was gleeful.
In December 1988, Mitch Williams was part of an eight-player trade between the Texas Rangers and the Chicago Cubs. Williams went to the Cubs and Jamie Moyer went to the Rangers. If the Phillies reach the World Series this year, Moyer will pitch in at least one game. If Mitch Williams is watching, he will be thinking of a two ball, two strike pitch to Joe Carter. The ghost will not let him forget.
“Wait until 2050.”
These are not the words that anyone in New York wants to hear today.
Some ghosts linger longer than others, but a few facts are undeniable. Connie Mack Stadium is long gone; the Mets are going to hear a ghost whispering in their ears for the foreseeable future; and Cole Hamels, who was not alive forty three years ago, will throw the first pitch of a playoff game in South Philadelphia in a few hours.
