The Phillies, Dick Allen, and Me
Ruth A. Rouff
Sports Fiction & Essay Contest 2014 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Nonfiction
It was the morning of September 7, 1964, and I was sick with excitement about attending my first Phillies games: a Labor Day doubleheader against the Dodgers. This doubleheader took place two weeks before the ten-game losing streak that would cost the Phils the pennant. Sometimes I think their monumental '64 collapse scarred me for life. Other times I think it taught me the meaning of life.
Let me backtrack a bit: before spring, 1964, baseball didn't make sense to me. I couldn't understand the unique geometry of the game...the diamond path around the bases, the balls and strikes, why some balls hit into the field were considered hits while others were outs. Understanding baseball was like fiddling with binoculars—after some adjustments, suddenly a clear image swims into view.
My love of baseball came as a surprise to my older sister Laura.
"Ruth likes baseball because she wants to win Steve's approval," I heard her sagely telling my mother. Steve was my older brother. Laura was a clinical psychologist who took her marching orders from Freud. A naturally girly girl, she believed in traditional sex roles. Accordingly, the idea that a girl could love baseball for its own sake was beyond her ken.
"Why don't you play with the little girls?" she'd ask me when I'd come home all grimy from playing baseball with the boys. The implication was that I was doing something wrong in hanging with the boys. I guess in her mind I was upsetting the Freudian apple cart. At that time I didn't have enough worldly wisdom to tell her that it wasn't playing ball with the boys I loved so much as simply playing ball.
I also loved watching baseball on TV. Steve and I watched Jim Bunning's Father's Day perfect game against the Mets on our black and white Olympic while sipping homemade lemonade in our recreation room. Steve, who would be going away to college in the fall, was a font of baseball lore.
"This will be the first perfect game in the National League in 84 years," he enthused. "Don Larsen was the last major leaguer to pitch one, in the 1956 World Series."
Steve also clued me in to the fact that players on the pitcher's team weren't supposed to talk about the possibility of a perfect game. That would be jinxing it.
We both idolized Jim Bunning, a veteran who had come to the Phillies in an off-season trade with the Detroit Tigers. Bunning was 6'4" and lanky. After the ball left his hand, the momentum of his sidearm delivery nearly cause him to fall off the mound. His best pitch was a devastating slider. When Bunning struck out John Stephenson to end the game in the long shadows of Shea Stadium, we shouted so loudly that my mother came to the top of the stairs to see what was happening.
"That's wonderful!" she said when we told her.
It was icing on the cake when Bunning took a bow on the Ed Sullivan Show that night. To see a Philadelphia Phillie recognized on national TV was as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth.
Steve was no fair weather Phillies fan. He had begun following the team in 1961, when they lost 23 games in a row, still a major league record.
"I just wondered when they'd ever win a game," he later told me. After 1961, he had witnessed the slow arc of the Phillies' rise to respectability. One big reason they were lousy for much of the 1950s and the early 1960s was that when other teams were signing players like Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella and Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks, the Phillies adamantly weren't.
Phillies owner Bob Carpenter primly explained, "I'm not opposed to Negro players. But I'm not going to hire a player of any color or nationality just to have him on the team." Evidently he thought he would be doing black ballplayers a favor by signing them to a Phillies contract. Those Negroes...they're just such poor athletes!
In 1957, a full ten years after Jackie Robinson made his Major League debut, the Phillies signed a black journeyman by the name of John Kennedy. When he failed to distinguish himself, they released him and hired a few more mediocre black players...mostly from outside the United States.
By the early 1960s, however, Carpenter had seen the light long enough to sign a black phenom named Richie Allen. By 1964 Allen, a clear Rookie of the Year favorite, was not only hitting tape measure homeruns, but was among the league leaders in batting average. The rest of the team was much improved also. Power-hitting right fielder Johnnie Callison had hit a 3-run homerun to win the All-Star Game for the National League. On the mound, right-handed ace Jim Bunning was on his way to 19 victories, while fire-balling Chris Short stood second only to Sandy Koufax among National League lefthanders. Managing them was Gene Mauch, the "Little General." Mauch's knowledge of the game was formidable, as was his temper. After one loss, he famously upset a tableful of food in the clubhouse, splattering gravy on outfielder Wes Covington's suit.
I couldn't wait to see these Phillies in person. I was going along with Steve and his best friend, Ed Patterson.
Getting to the game, however, would take some doing.
"Are you sure it's safe to go to the stadium?" my mother asked Steve. She was worried because a race riot had broken out in the vicinity of the ballpark just a week earlier over an incident of police harassment. Over 300 people had been injured, 770 had been arrested, and over 200 businesses were damaged or destroyed.
"It'll be broad daylight," Steve reassured her. "There'll be cops around. And the bus lets out right in front of the stadium."
It took about an hour for our bus to wend its way north along Route 45 from our hometown of Mantua, through rural Gloucester County and on into Camden County. As the bus drew closer to the city of Camden, past the soon-to-be-shuttered New York Shipyard, the landscape grew ever more urban and ever more depressed. Even then, Broadway in Camden was a chastening sight to a ten-year-old from the sticks. Although the main drag was still lined with businesses, the businesses had that down-at-heels look to them. There were stores that sold furniture that even I could tell was junky, storefronts with grimy, outmoded signs and metal gates, the battered stucco of McCrory's Five and Ten...The people, mostly black and Puerto Rican, looked poor and harried. By now white flight was in full swing, eventually transforming Camden from a thriving industrial city to the poorest, most dangerous city in the country. Of course I didn't understand sociology in 1964. All I knew was that to get to the ball game, you had to first go through some "bad" neighborhoods. Our trip then took on the characteristics of a trek.
In downtown Camden, we transferred to the "Phillies Express," a chartered bus that took us over the Ben Franklin Bridge and up Broad Street to North Philadelphia. North Broad Street had been shabby for years. Now—drained by the loss of manufacturing jobs—it was quickly getting worse. As the bus lumbered through city traffic, we seemed to be catching every red light. When the bus turned left onto Lehigh, I could see signs of devastation—burned out businesses, abandoned row houses, junked cars. However, when we finally made it to 21st, I gazed up at the red brick façade of Connie Mack Stadium and was surprised to see that it looked just like a regular building. I don't know what I was expecting—something more sporting? When the Phillies televised home games, they never showed you the outside of Connie Mack. Location, location, location wasn't something the ownership wanted to stress.
As we joined the crowds heading toward the home plate entranceway, grayish men with carts hawked souvenirs—pennants, buttons, balloons, inflatable Phillies dolls...anything Phillies. I could well imagine these men had done the same thing for decades, back when the park and neighborhood were in their heyday. With the couple of dollars my mother had given me, I bought a large white button emblazoned with the words "Go Phillies Go!" in red and blue. I still have it.
Many baseball writers have described their first hallowed view of a major league diamond in almost religious terms. Walking through the turnstiles, up the concourse ramp and into the stands was certainly a revelation to me. The emerald field was as immaculate as the stands were grungy. It was a green jewel framed by colorful signs.
As Bruce Kuklick relates in his wonderful history, To Everything a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia: 1909-1976, Connie Mack Stadium had once been a pleasure palace. When it was christened Shibe Park in 1909—after an A's owner—its concrete and steel construction was state-of-the-art—far more impressive than the Phillies' rinky-dink Baker Bowl. As such, it symbolized the comparative status of the two clubs. Led by manager/part-owner Connie Mack, the Philadelphia Athletics were among the elite of the American League, winning five World Championships while the Phillies were barely holding their own in the senior circuit.
But the Athletics fell into decline in the mid-1930s, and for much of the 1940s and 1950s they were in last place or close to it. By this time, the Phillies had moved out of tiny Baker Bowl and had begun sharing Shibe Park with the A's. After the Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1954, the Phillies' millionaire owner Bob Carpenter reluctantly bought the stadium, which had been rechristened Connie Mack, simply because there was no other place for his team to play.
For most of the Phillies' history, their fly-by-night owners had been content to field lousy teams and earn a small profit. As their fans used to say, the team stank despite a sign in the Baker Bowl outfield proclaiming "The Phillies Use Lifebuoy." Now, at least, the ownership appeared committed to winning baseball. As the neighborhood around Connie Mack Stadium became overwhelmingly African-American, poor, and resentful of the white crowds who trespassed on their turf, Philadelphia politicians decided to underwrite the construction of a new stadium in another location. They didn't want to lose the Phillies the way they had lost the Athletics.
Of course, I knew few of these facts in 1964. As Steve, Ed, and I negotiated our way to our seats along the third base line, our shoes stuck to concrete that had been christened many times over with spilled soda and beer. Then we gingerly stepped over a mound of squashed French fries. As we took our seats, sharp-eyed vendors climbed steep steps, bellowing "Hey, Hot Dogs!! Hey Peanuts!!" as if they were calling people by name.
I looked out and took in the outfield...the stately, roofed left field bleachers, the bright signage, including the Goldenberger's Peanut Chews sign that looked to me like a giant candy bar in left field, the Ballantine Beer scoreboard topped by the Longines clock, and the high blue wall in right. And then to see the players...their crisp white uniforms with red pinstripes and bright red caps, vivid against the deep green grass. You could have your "House That Ruth Built." On this sunny afternoon in early September, Connie Mack Stadium was good enough for me.
I remember the ambience more than the action. I remember that the Phillies won the first game behind the strong pitching of Dennis Bennett and lost the second game behind rookie Rick Wise and veteran Bobby Shantz, who came on in relief. Steve told me that before injuring his arm years earlier, Shantz had won the MVP award as an Athletic. It was nice to see him do well.
That evening, our parents greeted us, relieved that we had returned safely from the wilds of North Philadelphia. As we ate pot roast around the dinner table, I reflected on the games I had seen. Despite the dispiriting second game loss, I felt that the Phillies were still in great shape to win the pennant. They were still something like six games in front. This happy circumstance made the grim thought of starting school the next day that much more tolerable for me.
I won't dwell on the details of the Phillies' collapse because they've already been repeated ad infinitum. As every Phillies fan of a certain age knows, the team wound up losing ten straight and finishing second to the St. Louis Cardinals. It was an event both sickening and humiliating.
The next several years were worse for the Phillies from every standpoint. Not only did they fall out of contention, but the racial animosity surrounding them only grew worse. Most black baseball fans didn't follow the Phillies because of the club's reputation for racist hiring practices, while the white fan base resented having to travel to a simmering ghetto to see the games. The fans began venting their spleen on an easy target—Dick Allen, who had let it be known that he no longer wished to be called "Richie." It didn't matter that Allen hit monster homeruns that soared over the Coca Cola script topping the left field grandstand and arced through the humid North Philadelphia night. He wielded a huge, 42 ounce bat—said to be the heaviest in the majors. That mighty bat was in itself provocation to a certain type of white man.
In 1965, when Allen got into a fistfight with Frank Thomas, who had called him "boy"—the Phillies traded Thomas, but the white fans blamed Allen for being "uppity." My younger brother Art confirms that when he attended a Phillies game in 1969, fans were shouting racial epithets at Allen. Some even threw batteries and other hard objects at him, forcing him to wear a batting helmet when he played first base. Allen compounded matters, it was said, by behaving "erratically." There were missed practices and rumors of drinking. A white superstar like Mickey Mantle could and did get away with a lot during his playing career. A black superstar couldn't. Not in Philadelphia at least.
Meanwhile, the Phillies front office continued its generally unenlightened ways. In 1966, General Manager John Quinn traded a promising black pitcher, Ferguson Jenkins, to the Cubs in exchange for two veteran pitchers—Bob Buhl and Larry Jackson—who happened to be white. Call it kismet: Buhl would win all of six games for the Phillies before retiring at the end of the 1967 season. Jackson did better, but retired at the end of 1968 rather than report to an expansion team. Jenkins, on the other hand, would win only 284 games in the course of his Hall of Fame career.
So bad was Philadelphia's reputation around the National League that when the St. Louis Cardinals traded Curt Flood and some other players to the Phillies in 1969 for Dick Allen and some other players, Flood refused to report. He later filed the famous lawsuit that helped pave the way for free agency. So, one could say that, with the worst of intentions, Phillies fans ultimately did a good thing for major league players.
The Phillies played their last game at Connie Mack Stadium on October 1, 1970. It was an event that novelist Nathanael West should have written about—a real day of the locust type of affair. Even before the last out had been made, fans began stealing anything they could get their hands on, including seats that had been bolted to the concrete. (Even now you can buy wood from these seats on eBay—two red slats sell for $78.00.) At the time, the wholesale plundering left a bitter aftertaste. It was like desecrating a temple, albeit a seedy one. Weeds sprang up in the field that had once been beautifully tended. The next year the place caught fire, and in 1976 the twisted mass of steel and concrete was demolished. Today an African American church sits on the site.
After the Phillies moved to antiseptic new Veterans Stadium in South Philadelphia, Steve, Art, and I used to shiver through chilly April games there that featured such luminaries as Billy Champion, Roger Freed, and Joe Lis. In the later innings, we usually moved up to the box seats because a lot of fans had left. But, to paraphrase Eliot, in the Phillies' nadir was their rebirth. A more enlightened owner, Ruly Carpenter, had taken over from his father. In 1972 the Phillies finished dead last, but future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton won 27 games, and sluggers Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski began to establish themselves. Together with other talented young players, they would lead the team to years of excellence culminating in the 1980 World Series title. The Phillies' first-ever championship was sweeter for being so long in coming.
So what has following the Phillies taught me? American history, for one thing. Being exposed to Camden and North Philadelphia at an early age made me curious to learn why these places were the way they were. In studying urban America, I learned how patterns of discrimination perpetuated poverty. I also learned about the white flight to the suburbs and the impact of globalization on American manufacturing. On a purely sports-oriented note, I learned that racism hurt the Phillies by making them less competitive. It wasn't luck that led the Cardinals to overtake the Phillies to win the 1964 pennant. It was Gibson and Brock and White and Flood, among others.
On a more elemental level, following the 1964 Phillies made me realize that disaster can occur when you least expect it. Nothing is a sure thing. But there are fleeting moments of bliss, as when a veteran pitcher no-hits the Mets.
My father died in 1966 and so never lived to see the Phillies win the World Series. He wasn't a real baseball fan, but he had worked at the Navy Yard with a lot of South Philly guys, and I think he would have enjoyed the moment. My mother, who lived to be 95, saw two. Each one pleased her. My sister Laura, who moved out to Los Angeles in 1976, has grown much more open-minded about sex roles. She still can't fathom sports, though, and has never been to any kind of professional game. We like to joke that she becomes despondent whenever the Dodgers lose. And my brother Steve still watches every game he can.
After some great seasons with other teams, Dick Allen returned to the Philadelphia area. For years he helped the Phillies with community outreach in urban neighborhoods. He still does baseball memorabilia shows and appears from time to time at Phillies-sponsored events.
As for me, I like to recall my greatest Phillies memories. There are three. Watching Mike Schmidt hit a homerun into the cold October mist of Montreal, defeating the Expos and sending the Phillies back to the playoffs in 1980.
"He buried it," announcer Andy Musser cried.
When Schmidt crushed that ball, I knew that the ghosts of futility would finally be laid to rest.
And Brad Lidge, after striking out Eric Hinske to win the 2008 World Series, falling to his knees and looking up into the chill Philadelphia night, as fireworks shot off and the electronic Liberty Bell rocked in victory.
And of course, my first sight of the playing field in Connie Mack Stadium that Labor Day long ago. In memory still green.
