For much of the 20th century, American baseball was largely the property of one city. So when another city’s ballclub, one shut out of the World Series for 35 years, finally did play in one, it made for a season to remember, regardless of the final outcome.
Perhaps that was why they called the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies “the Whiz Kids,” not just because they were so young but because they whizzed across the sports landscape for a bright, quick moment.
Robin Roberts was a young pitcher on that National League Champion team. Forty-six years later, he published a memoir with co-writer C. Paul Rogers III about the experience which serves as a serviceable sports history of a team easily overlooked amid the behemoth legacies of Yankees, Giants, and Dodger teams from that era.
One thing I noticed, early and often, was how tough these guys were:
“I remember once batting against [future Phillie Russ Meyer, known as the ‘Mad Monk’] with the bases loaded and I started fouling off pitches. Finally he yelled in and said, ‘Try and foul this off,’ and he hit me in the back, forcing in a run.” – Richie Ashburn
“One night in Philadelphia there was a loudmouthed guy who was on one of our players, but I can’t remember who it was. Rich [Ashburn] told our man, ‘Point him out to me.’ Richie went up to bat and hit the guy in the chest about five or six rows up in the stands with a line drive foul ball. That’s a true story.” – Johnny Blatnick
Cubs manager Frankie Frisch refused to even warm up a relief pitcher while [Monk] Duval struggled in the sixth, telling the press that he was tired of his starting pitchers “peeping out to the bullpen to see if a reliever is ready.”
 |
| Phillies catcher Andy Seminick was the team's enforcer, according to the book, brawling with Giants players and getting booed lustily when he came to play at the Giants' home field, the Polo Grounds. Phillies fans responded by forming an Andy Seminick fan club. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Phillies_all-time_roster_(S) |
The craziest of these stories is Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer keeping starting catcher Andy Seminick in the lineup after he broke his ankle. Sawyer explains to the authors: “Andy was tough. If Andy could stand the pain and wanted to play, there was no reason to not let him play. It didn’t hurt his speed any because he couldn’t run anyway.”
I guess you had to be tough to be on the field with those New York clubs. The Phillies managed to overcome the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers in the regular season, clipping the latter in the final game. The New York Yankees then swept them in the World Series.
Though he was devastated by that outcome, Roberts was proud of the Whiz Kids. It was his only World Series, and decades later he had his Hall of Fame plaque at Cooperstown amended to mention the 1950 team among his accomplishments. You feel his love for his teammates in every page of this book, several of whom are quoted extensively.
 |
| Robin Roberts won 20 or more games for the Phillies every season from 1950-1955, despite the team being out of contention most of those years. In 1952, he went 28-7. In the book, he credits the advice of coach Cy Perkins with making him a winner. Image from https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/roberts-robin |
Roberts notes a common reason given for the nickname, that the 1950 team had a lot of young players. They were a remarkably fresh-faced cast for a game still dominated by 1930s legends like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. Both Roberts and pitcher Curt Simmons started games well into the 1960s, while other team leaders like shortstop Granny Hamner, outfielder Del Ennis, and centerfielder Ashburn were all still in their early to mid-20s.
Jim Konstanty was a comparatively old man at 33, but he brought something new to the game as well, as a reliever who contributed as much to the Phillies’ success as any starter. Roberts and Rogers explain:
Our 1950 staff would hurl 57 complete games. Jim appeared in 74 of the remaining 97 games. In most of those games, he was the only pitcher used in relief.
According to the book, this did not endear Konstanty to his teammates, who resented him taking the work away from the rest of the bullpen. Konstanty kept to himself and weirded out the team by consulting with a friend (whose day job was undertaker) for game tips. But Konstanty’s emergence in the 1949 and 1950 seasons would solidify the importance of a quality reliever in the game.
 |
| Jim Konstanty went 16-7 with 22 saves for the 1950 Phillies. Here he is throwing the first pitch in the 1950 World Series to the Yankees' Phil Rizzuto, in what was Konstanty's only start all year. He pitched eight innings but lost the game, 1-0. Image from https://www.baseballhistorycomesalive.com/shibe-park-philadelphia-pa-october-4-1950-jim-konstantys-first-pitch-to-the-yankees-phil-rizzuto-in-the-1950-world-series-2/ |
He also gave them consistency on the mound beyond their top two starters, Roberts and Simmons. Along with great hitting, this propelled them to a seven-and-a-half-game lead over the rest of the National League by mid-September. Nearly blowing this lead in the final days of the season accounts for much of the drama in the book.
Roberts and Rogers begin the book with a snapshot of the final regular-season game against the Dodgers (where Roberts was on the mound, for the third time in five days), then backtracks to the history of the Phillies, which was largely a sad one of cheap owners and talent-starved lineups.
Even the ballpark was a wreck:
Soot and grime from the Reading Railroad tracks across the street made the seats less than desirable, and during the 1920s and 1930s when a foul ball landed on the roof patrons covered their heads against showers of rust cascading down. Not only was Baker Bowl an unpleasant place to watch bad baseball, it had proven to be dangerous as well.
 |
| In 1938 the Phillies relocated to Shibe Park, above, a much nicer stadium, though one they would share with Philadelphia's American League team, the Athletics, until the A's moved to Kansas City in 1954. Image from https://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/ballparks/shibe-park/ |
The book weaves Roberts’ first-person account of his time on the Phillies with recollections from teammates. It is a very laid-back, somewhat oral-history approach that doesn’t gel narrative-wise (much chronological jumping-around) but gives a feeling for that time.
One recent addition to the Major Leagues in the late 1940s was black ballplayers, as Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947. The Phillies were late to that party, and in the early days of integration, notable for their hostility to black players, which the book lays out in depth.
Lou Possehl: “I was with the Phillies in the beginning of ‘47 when Jackie Robinson came up. They called him every name in the book. How he took it I’ll never know. When he was in the on-deck circle he would just put his head down over the bat. We had a lot of guys from the South, like Jim Tabor, Skeeter Newsome, Dusty Cooke, and Ben Chapman. They just let him have it. Unbelievable. He went through hell. He had to be quite a man to do what he did.”
Chapman, the Phillies manager until 1948, was especially proficient at dropping N-bombs on Robinson in the runways under stadiums after games, according to the book. One player interviewed regretfully admits giving Robinson similar treatment.
 |
| The racial abuse manager Ben Chapman and other visiting Phillies dumped on Jackie Robinson in April enraged his Dodger teammates. Even when forced to make nice with Robinson for the cameras later in the season, Chapman showed his true feelings, above. Image from https://www.philliesnation.com/2022/02/watch-one-phillie-apologized-to-jackie-robinson-for-ben-chapmans-racism/ |
The 1950 World Series was the last in a long time not to field a single black ballplayer; both Roberts and Ashburn wonder how much this failure contributed to the Whiz Kid-era Phillies not returning to the Fall Classic. “The Phillies were just slow to change,” Ashburn concludes.
The book never lands on a particular topic for long. Even the 1950 season gets equal treatment to the three seasons before it, with extensive insights presented from players interviewed who were gone before 1950.
Roberts was grateful to play with all these guys, and lets you know it over and over. He also spends a lot of time on games that got away from him and what he perceived as his in-game deficiencies:
In those days I was not too proud of my breaking ball, which was generally a big looping job, and I did not throw many unless I was ahead in the count. But [Gil] Hodges was known as strictly a fastball hitter, so I figured if I got a curveball over I could get him. I was mistaken. Hodges hit my 3-2 breaking pitch on a line into the left field stands for a three-run homer.
Highlights in the book are often violent, including an epic brawl between the Phillies and the Giants. According to Ashburn, Phillies catcher Andy Seminick “hit poor Henry Thompson with a forearm shiver and Henry’s teeth looked like chiclets flying out of his mouth.” In another game, pitcher Bubba Church nearly lost an eye to a line-drive comebacker, but recovered.
 |
| Phillies pitchers gather for a group portrait during the 1950 season. From left, Russ Meyer, Robin Roberts, Ken Heintzelman, Bubba Church, and Jim Konstanty. Curt Simmons, the second-winningest pitcher on the club after Roberts, was called up for Army service late in the season. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/baseball-xvl--229050331029857189/ |
More famous was the shooting of first-baseman Eddie Waitkus by a female fan in a 1949 hotel room ambush immortalized decades later in the film The Natural. Waitkus recovered to lead the Phils in runs scored in their 1950 pennant drive.
The Phillies made an impression in their own day. Ernest Hemingway had his title character in The Old Man And The Sea call them the best team in the National League but for the Dodgers, though not before favorably comparing Phils’ first-baseman Dick Sisler to Joe DiMaggio.
Sisler hit the game-winning home run in the final regular-season contest with the Dodgers; it often mentioned as the most important clout in Phillies history. Roberts notes how quickly it all came down:
The World Series was a big disappointment to us. In some ways the Series might have been anticlimactic because we had had such a tough time winning the pennant and had felt such a sense of relief when we finally beat the Dodgers in Ebbets Field on the last day of the season.
 |
| Yankees' second baseman Ken Coleman drove in the winning run for Game 3 of the 1950 World Series when his ninth-inning drive fell between Ashburn in center and Jackie Mayo in right for a 3-2 New York win. Image from the 1950 World Series highlight film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4TzokUSKvY |
With so much young talent coming to fruition, the possibility of a non-New York dynasty seemed realistic. But in addition to the failure to integrate (the Phillies stayed lily-white until 1957, when shortstop John Kennedy joined the team), the authors note a failure to evolve in other ways. In beating the Dodgers, its management became too content with the players they had, rather than continuing to invest in young talent.
However
brief a moment, the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies made it count for something.
This makes for a solid history of how it all went down.
No comments:
Post a Comment