Chicago Tribune - October 1, 1980
Phillies abandon feuding long enough to punch out Cubs
By Dave Nightingale, Chicago Tribune Press Service
PHILADELPHIA – On Monday, the Cubs deported themselves with honor; they died with their spikes on after 15 long innings.
But Tuesday night, they collapsed like a pup tent in the teeth of a desert sirocco.
The Phillies, visions of a National League East pennant still dancing inside their strife-torn brains, prevailed 14-2 to remain one-half game behind Montreal.
How one-sided was Tuesday’s game? It was such a laugher that:
• The Phils were able to concentrate on baseball instead of continuing to bicker among themselves with a fervor unknown even to the 1971 Oakland A’s.
• The winners finished the game with such stalwarts as Bob Dernier, Orlando Isales, Don McCormack, Ramon Aviles, Luis Aguayo, John Vukovich and Tim McCarver on the field.
• “Even Eric Gregg couldn’t have messed this one up,” said Phillies Manager Dallas Green with a laugh. [He wasn’t laughing when ump Gregg ejected him from Sunday’s game against Montreal].
RIGHT HANDER Lynn McGlothen was the Cub starter. “It sometimes takes me an inning or two to find out whether I’m going to have my good stuff,” McGlothen said before the game.
It didn’t even take the Phillies an inning. Pete Rose walked. Bake McBride singled. Mike Schmidt hit a sacrifice fly. Del Unser walked. Keith Moreland doubled for two runs. Larry Bowa singled for another and the Phils had a 4-0 lead.
“Lynn’s a good pitcher, but his fastball wasn’t moving tonight,” said McBride, who was 2-for-2 with two RBI. “But it really didn’t matter who was pitching against us tonight. We would have killed anybody. It was destiny, I guess.”
McGlothen didn’t try to name any one of the Phillies as a principal villain. But he did have kind words for Moreland, the kid catcher who has replaced slumping Bob Boone.
“Moreland looks like a carbon copy of Schmidt, and he may be just as good a hitter some day,” McGlothen said.
SOME OTHER PHILLIE youngsters had their days, too. Outfielder Lonnie Smith, currently replacing the slumping Greg Luzinski, was 3-for-5 to boost his season average to .341 and improve his candidacy for NL rookie of the year.
And rookie right-hander Marty Bystrom ran his September record to 5-0 [two of them over the Cubs] with seven innings of two-run, four-hit ball. Bystrom might have been with the team all year, but he hurt his right hamstring in spring training when his spikes skidded on a concrete floor while he was on the way to a team publicity photo session.
AFTER BUILDING a 6-1 lead after four innings against McGlothen, the Phils hammered George Riley for four in the sixth and Doug Capilla for four more in the seventh.
The key hit in the rally against Capilla [who all but gave away Monday night’s game] was a two-run triple by the 20-year-old Isales, in his first major league at-bat. Isales had waited five years in the minors for that moment. The Phillies signed him when he was 15.
“Our kids had some fun tonight, and that’s good,” said Green.
“Fun” has not been in the Phillies’ vocabulary lately. The troops are still restless about the benching of Luzinski, Boone, and Garry Maddox this week.
“We gotta have the guys who got us here back in the lineup this week,” said McBride, without malice.
SHORTSTOP BOWA WAS considerably more malicious, however, when he aired his views of the Green maneuvers on his radio show Monday night.
Green was outraged by the Bowa critique, declaring: “If I wanted to open up about Larry Bowa, he would never play another inning in Philadelphia.”
Bowa won’t be playing another inning for the Phils after 1980, if Green has his way.
The Veterans Stadium crowd obviously sided with Green on the matter. Tuesday night, they booed Bowa when he was announced as a starter. They booed him before and after all three of his appearances at the plate – even though he had two hits.