The Press of Atlantic City - October 15, 1980

Phillies Grab Opener

Rookie Picks Up Win

By Pete Wickham, Press Sports Writer

PHILADELPHIA — Bob Boone and Bake McBride saved rookie pitcher Bob Walk from being sacrificed, and Tug McGraw put an axe to the Kansas City Royals in time to save a 7-6 bonus win for the Philadelphia Phillies in the opening game of the World Series Tuesday night at Veterans Stadium.

After using their entire pitching staff in a wild league playoff finale in Houston, Phils' Manager Dallas Green ' sent out Walk. 11-7 after an 8-0 start and the only pitcher not used in the playoffs.

Walk. who hadn't pitched in 12 days, was trying to buy time for the rest of the staff to get into sync. And with the Royals throwing ace Dennis Leonard, 20-12, it looked as though the Phils were trying an early quick kick.

The Royals provided a couple of early belts, a two-run homer by Amos Otis in the second and the first of two two-run blasts by Willie Mays Aikens in the third for a 4-0 lead.

But the first rookie pitcher to open a Series since Joe Black in 1952, wasn't going to be the loser this night.

A five-run third inning, sparked by the first of two RBI-doubles by Boone, who got three hits as the ninth man in Green's batting order to lead an 11-hit attack, and a three-run homer by McBride, got Walk off the hook.

Boone's second double in the fourth chased Leonard for Renie Martin, and the Phils added an insurance run in the fifth to make it 7-4 Phils before a third straight record crowd of 65,791, biggest in the World Series since 1964.

Walk’s night ended when Aikens brought the Royals to within one in the eighth with another two-run blast to right. But McGraw continued his remarkable three-week streak with two innings of one-hit relief work, including a double play to end the eighth and two strikeouts to cap the ninth.

“Right now you don’t really think about all you’ve been through the way we’ve been going,” said McGraw, who had pitched all five games of the National League playoffs against Houston. “You just keep trying ways to find your way out. And if that means calling me, I’m ready.”

In the second inning Walk, bothered by control problems through most of the latter part of his rookie year, walked leadoff man Darrell Porter and fell behind 2-1 on Otis, who then parked the homer in left for the first of three hits.

With one out in the third DH Hal McRae singled to center. Walk pulled the string on George Brett for a strikeout and got ahead of Aikens 1-2, but then grooved one good enough to wind up over the wall in right-center.

The homer helped Aikens celebrate his 26th birthday in the proper manner. Aikens, obtained from the California Angels last winter, was bom in 1954, and the attending physician suggested he be named for Willie Mays, who made his celebrated circus catch against Vic Wertz in the Giants-Indians series that year.

Walk was in no mood to celebrate, however, and the mood got potentially bleaker as he issued another free pass to Porter and Otis beat out an infield single despite a nice play by Schmidt, who barehanded the bouncer and flipped to first in one motion.

Clint Hurdle then singled to left. Lonnie Smith, who launched the shortest throw in playoff history while trying to gun down a runner in Houston, was on the money this time and Boone was waiting with the ball for Porter.

As they had in the two climactic games of the playoffs, the bottom of the Phils order got the comeback started.

After a groundout by Manny Trillo started the third, Larry Bowa singled up the middle, stole second and scored on the first of Boone’s doubles, which went to left-center.

Boone scored when Smith singled to left, went wide on the bag by mistake and drew a mistaken throw by relay man Brett. Smith died in a rundown, but Boone went home on the play.

Leonard made a second big mistake by hitting Rose with a two-strike pitch. Schmidt got another walk and McBride followed with the three-run blast to get the lead.

"That was the killer," said Green. “Bake has been the RBI guy all season, and I really don’t know where we’d be without his consistency. But character-wise I thought we held up well, and Bobby pitched very well for a rookie in this situation.”

The Phils got insurance runs in the fourth on an infield single by Trillo and Boone’s second double down the right-field line, loaded the bases in the fifth (walk, single by Schmidt and hit Luzinski) and Maddox made it a three-run lead with a fly to left.

Walk retired the next nine batters he faced through the sixth, though McBride hauled in a McRae shot at the right field wall, and Maddox did the same in center on a blast by Brett.

“I had been a little shaky in the early going, even though I wasn't that nervous coming to the park,” said Walk, who had carried a lame Phils’ staff through June and July. “But that big inning gave the team a lift, and maybe an even bigger lift. It’s easier to pitch in this situation when you’re ahead.”

Frank White led off the seventh with a single, but the next three Royals went down.

That was not the case in the eighth, however, as Brett broke through for an opposite-field double and Aikens parked a 2-0 pitch over the same wall.

With that shot, Aikens finally got a leg up on his namesake, who never parked two in a contest.

He also prompted Green to throw caution once more to the wind and pitch McGraw.

Porter flied out and Otis singled, but pinch hitter John Wathan hit into the oouble play on a slider, and Willie Wilson was caught on a screwball for the Phils’ first World Series win in 65 years.

It was the fifth pressure save in the past three weeks for McGraw, who also picked up a win in the 11-inning division clincher in Montreal Oct. 4.

Now, with their rotation intact, the Phils take the upper hand into tonight’s 8:20 p.m. start in which Steve Carlton, 24-9, goes against Larry Gura, 18-10. Both pitchers won their respective league playoff openers.

Game Is Easy Part For Smith

By Pete Wickham, Press Sports Writer

PHILADELPHIA — It didn't take long for Lonnie Smith to learn how things are done before a World Series game. He didn't have much choice.

Take one step out of the dugout — sign an autograph. Two steps out, and smile pretty while we take your picture 27 times. Go for a game of catch, and you’d better leave enough room for the notebooks. And say, you got five minutes when we go on the air at 6:13?

“Worst thing of all has got to be tickets,” the rookie left fielder said as the crowd subsided and the business of actually playing the 1980 World Series actually began.

“I wasn’t going to buy tickets at first, but the phone keeps ringing at all hours,” he said. “Now I'm buying tickets by the ton and there are still not enough.”

There also hasn’t been a whole lot of time to savor the fact that, after six years of playing in the minors he was finally in the big leagues, and in the World Series and that he was a big reason why the Phillies made it so far.

“Having something like this at the end of the season, you begin to think that all that time is worth it,” said Smith. “But then you also think of what might happen if you had made it sooner.”

Whatever might have been, the Phillies know that Smith is one of the big reasons the Phillies are here.

Coming on for Greg Luzinski when he banged a knee, Smith hit .339 and added 32 stolen bases worth of speed to the Phillie lineup. And thanks to the designated hitter rule, which is in force for the Series with Kansas City, he’ll stay in the leadoff spot and play left field where his speed usually makes up for his defensive deficiencies.

“That’s the easy part, the playing,” he said. “We’ve been through so many tests in the last few weeks that we don’t doubt ourselves. But the last two days have been so amazing.

“Really, I haven’t had any time to share this with my wife (Pearl). This you’ve got to accept, though. What else can you do, the people keep coming.”

A few feet over, Del Unser was busy getting ready to play the Royals, and his routine was a bit different. So were the circumstances.

“It hit me just about the point where the (last NL playoff) game with Houston ended and we mobbed each other on the field,” said Unser, the journeyman who has bounced around six times — including an earlier term with the Phils in his 13 years — and he had yet to taste the roses until now.

“That was my thinking through most of that stretch drive, this was the last time, perhaps, that I’d be in this position,” said Unser, who spent most of the pre-game introducing his father who had traveled here from Illinois.

When Manager Dallas Green benched Garry Maddox following the 8-3 loss to Montreal Sept. 28 (the one where Maddox lost a line drive in the sun), Unser was put in center field and was a steadying force the final week.

Then in the final game of the playoffs, after striking out in two previous pinch hitting roles, he was sent up to hit in the eighth inning with the Astros up 5-2.

He singled and scored the tying run in that inning, and then in the top of the 10^th, he doubled to the gap in right and etched his name forever in this town’s sports lore by scoring the run that won the Phils’ first pennant in 30 years on a double by Garry Maddox.

Unser is a realist, and remained so even in the heat of pennant fever.

“What we do here is all fantasyland,” he said. “The more important things are what happens every day to real people."

Royals’ White Followed The Indirect Route to The Top

By Dave Bontempo, Press Sports Writer

PHILADELPHIA — It was like winning a raffle. Frank White put his name in a baseball academy jungle 10 years ago. Fate drew him a future.

The Kansas City Royals, sponsoring their first-ever tryout camp, saw something in the raw 20-year-old. His speed and coordination convinced them to select him among the survivors. Kansas City sent him to Sarasota, Fla. for skills-honing.

From a field of 600 green hopefuls, White was about to weave his own Horatio Alger epic. From rags to Most Valuable Player in the Royals’ sweep of the Yankees in the just-completed divisional playoffs.

Along the route, three gold gloves, one eight-error season and an all-star berth in 1979.

“We were all guinea pigs,” the Kansas City Royal second baseman recalled of the camp before Tuesday night’s World Series opener with the Philadelphia Phillies at Veterans Stadium. “They had it advertised in the paper and everybody just came down. We didn’t know what it all was.”

White knew by the end of the two-day session. He was a speed and glove man.

Before going 6-for-11, with a two-run single in the opener and a solo homer in the clincher against the Yanks, White’s glove always did the talking.

Loud enough to allow him to travel an indirect route to the major leagues.

His high school in native Kansas City did not field a team. Thoughts of earning a draft selection, contract and minor-league start quickly vanished.

It was an indirect blessing. White was a backup centerfielder on a semi-pro summer-league team before entering the academy.

“It would be nice if every team had a place like that,” White said. “They could take their high school draft choices to one and just work on fundamentals. It’s better, I think, to go that way then go right to the minor leagues and have one manager do everything.”

That is the irony of baseball’s minor leagues. Instructors are needed most at the rookie league and Class A level. That is where they are found least, for franchises’ balance sheets don’t travel that far. Good talent often goes sour.

There are Frank Whites everywhere. Players buzzing along the fringes of professional sports. They need a break to separate themselves from the hungry pack.

White received needed attention. The Sarasota unit became a conditioning and drills machine. They went 136-53 in two seasons of competition against college units.

White shuffled from the outfield to third, shortstop and finally second base.

White began his ascent in the spring of 1972. He became a regular in 1976, compiling a .976 lifetime fielding average before this season. The rest is gold-glove history.

“The key to playing good defense is making the routine play,” White said. “Good plays come instinctively. You make some of these plays in the playoffs and wonder how you did it.”

A .249 lifetime batting average is a bonus.

White has carried enough fielding clout to be considered the game’s premiere second baseman by some. More hopped on the bandwagon this season, as he hit .264, drove in 60 runs and stole 19 bases in 25 tries.

He has spurred the development of Royal shortstop U.L. Washington, a second-year academy graduate. Washington has blossomed this year, hitting .326 with 20 stolen bases.

They are the two big-names to leave that camp. Eleven others are still in the minors. White, for one, is pleased with his education.

Phillies Grab Opener

Rookie Picks Up Win

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Bake McBride hammered a three-run homer and Bob Boone rifled a pair of RBI doubles as the Philadelphia Phillies stormed from behind for a 7-6 victory over a battling Kansas City team Tuesday night in the 1980 World Series opener.

A crowd of 65,791, largest to watch a World Series game since 1964, kept up a steady roar as the Phillies won their first Series game in 65 years. The last one was won in 1915 when the pitcher was Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Tuesday night, the winning pitcher was a 23-year-old rookie, Bob Walk, who began the season in the minors and was pressed into the opening game assignment because of the scrambled condition of the Phillies pitching staff after the grueling National League playoff series against Houston.

Walk recovering from a rocky start, did a gallant job against the Royals, champions of the American League, until he was shelled out in the eighth inning. He became the first rookie to pitch and win a Series opener since Joe Black did it for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952.

It was a night for newcomers as the 'expansion team Royals made their first World Series appearance, the Phillies played their first Series game since 1950, and both clubs went into the Series with rookie managers — the first time that has happened in the history of the Fall Classic.

Early on, this looked like it would be a Kansas City night as the Royals rushed to a 4-0 lead against Walk on a pair of two-run homers. Amos Otis connected in the second inning following a walk to leadoff man Darrell Porter, and Willie Aikens, celebrating his 26th birthday, unloaded the first of his two home runs in the third after Hal McRae had singled.

Aikens became only the second player in baseball history to hit two home runs in his first Series game. His second homer in the eighth, also good for two runs, brought Tug McGraw in to relieve Walk.

The Phillies, following the pattern they had established in the dramatic five-game National League Championship Series against the Astros, quickly wiped out the 4-0 deficit.

Kansas City starter Dennis Leonard, who won 20 games this season for the third time in his career, retired the first seven batters be faced on was sitting on the 4-0 lead with one out in the third when Larry Bowa stroked the first Phillies hit. a single up the middle.

Bowa then stole second and raced home when Boone. playing on one healthy leg. doubled to left field. Boone suffered a badly bruised foot in the playoffs but pledged to play in this Series. That brought up leadoff man Lonnie Smith, inserted in left field when Philadelphia Manager Dallas Green decided to use his regular, Greg Luzinski. as the designated hitter.

Smith delivered a single to left and Boone stopped at third as George Brett cut off the throw. When Smith made a wide turn around first, Brett decided to run him down. As the Royals closed in on Smith. Boone dashed home, making it 4-2.

Pete Rose was the next batter and got into a cat-and-mouse contest with Leonard, stepping out of the box to try to break the pitcher's concentration. Leonard then hit Rose on the right knee. Mike Schmidt walked as the right-centerfield scoreboard led cheers, asking if the K.C. pitcher was experiencing "A Touch of Wildness?"

The cheers really rocked Veterans Stadium moments later when McBride, batting cleanup, slammed Leonard's 1-1 serve over the right field wall The shot banged into the line of National League logos that decorate the fence just below the Scoreboard over the 371-foot sign.

That made the score 5-4 Philadelphia, but the Phillies weren't finished. In the fourth. Manny Trillo, their playoff MVP, beat out a single behind second base.

When Leonard bounced a pickoff throw past first baseman Aikens for an error, Trillo took second. Bowa grounded out, but Boone delivered again, this time drilling a double to the right field corner which scored Trillo and made it 6-4.

In the fifth, the Phillies came back for more.

With one out, Schmidt walked again and McBride, who had three hits in the game, singled to left. Reliever Renie Martin, who had come on in the fourth, then hit Luzinski in the back, loading the bases.

The count went to 3-2 before Garry Maddox lifted a sacrifice fly to left, scoring Schmidt to make it 7-4.

While the Phillies were building their lead. Walk had settled down nicely. He was perhaps a batter away from being knocked out in the third when a two-out walk to Porter and hits by Otis and Clint Hurdle threatened to increase the Royals' lead to 5-0. But Porter was cut down trying to score on Hurdle's hit, ending the inning and saving Walk.

When be next took the mound the Phillies had shot to the front on their big five-run inning. The young right-hander mowed down nine straight batters over the middle three innings, and going into the eighth he had a string of 12 out of 13. But then he ran out of steam.

Brett, the major league's leading batter with a remarkable 390 average this season, opened the eighth with a double to the fence in left-center — his first hit of the night. Then Aikens ripped his second homer — another rocket that jumped out beyond the fence in rightcenter field.

It marked the 29th time in Series history that a batter had bit two homers in a World Series game and the first time since Gene Tenace in 1972 that a player making his Series debut belted two homers.

Phils Manager Green then went to the bullpen and it was no surprise when the man who popped out of the relief cart was McGraw, the 35-year-old left-hander who was all but unhittable down the September stretch drive.

McGraw had set a league championship series record by appearing in all five games and Green wanted desperately to give him another day's rest. But with the lead down to a single run, he could not risk it.

The veteran left-hander, who has become something of a folk hero in his historic town, permitted a one-out single to Otis — his third hit of the game. But he got pinch-hitter John Wathan to slam into an inning-ending double play as he carried the slender 7-6 lead into the ninth. The fans roared louder and louder as he retired leadoff batter Frank White on a grounder to third. With the crescendo of cheers building, McGraw then struck out U.L. Washington for the second out in this battle of former also-rans. Both the Phillies and Royals bad won their divisional titles in 1976, 1977 and 1978, only to fail in league championship playoffs. But now they were closing the first game of the 1980 World Series.

As the scoreboard flashed a sign that said: "This Joint is Jumping," and with most of the fans on their feet to prove the scoreboard right, McGraw struck out Willie Wilson to end it.

And as McGraw lifted his hand high and flashed a No. l sign, the fans turned this brisk autumn evening into a New- Year's Eve in October. The so-called boo-birds of Philadelphia opened a wild celebration that they deserved.

Sixty-five years is a long time to wait between victories.

Roberts Returns To Philadelphia

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Robin Roberts has been watching Philadelphia pitching ace Steve Carlton this season — and wistfully remembering the Phillies' team he led to the World Series 30 years ago.

Roberts, now head coach of the University of South Florida's baseball team, planned to quietly watch the Phillies' first Series appearance since his 1950 "Whiz Kids" on television at home Tuesday night.

Today, he will fly to Philadelphia, where he will throw out the first ball of the second game and get to see his favorite pitcher first-hand.

"I'm excited about it, and I'm extra happy because Carlton is pitching,' said Roberts, who calls the veteran left-hander "the best pitcher in baseball today.”  Roberts, as a 23-year-old rookie, pitched three games in the final five days of the 1950 season, including a 4-1, 10-inning victory over Brooklyn on the final day to help the Phillies win the National League pennant. A 20-game winner during the regular season, Roberts lost a 2-1 duel to the New York Yankees' Allie Reynolds in the second game of the Yankees' Series sweep.

At the time, Carlton was a 5-year-old, playing games in North Miami.

Roberts sympathized with rookie Bob Walk, given the Phillies' starting assignment Tuesday night.

"I never felt any special pressure. The game was the only pressure I felt," Roberts said. "There was nothing from the fans.

"Today it's different. They are higher paid, there's more pressure, big stadiums, big salaries, television — all big, big, big. I don't think the players are allowed time to relax and enjoy things."

Roberts said that since his retirement he has been an avid Phillies fan. He has suffered with other Phillie' fans through the team's previous, recent failures.

"I think the team has potentially had what it takes in the last four or five years, but they weren't able to pull it off before. They've had some hard luck," he said.

This year's team, a slight underdog against Kansas City, seems different, he said.

"It's a miracle they came back. There were times when they were out of it... They pulled it out in September. I hope they can pull it out now. I've never been a gambling man, but I would not bet against them. They're solid," Roberts said.

Roberts, enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame in 1976, won 286 games in his 18-year career. He pitched for Philadelphia for 13 years, and won 20 games six straight seasons.

Roberts misses the competition of major league baseball, but said, "I'm happy here.”

In five seasons here, his South Florida teams have compiled a 110-120 record.

"We've done fair. We were poor last year. Hope it gets better,” he said.

Editorial:  Go Phillies!

The Philadelphia Phillies earned the respect of the baseball world and the admiration of their fans when they won the National League Pennant, climaxing one of the most exciting play-off series in the history of the game.

Now, World Series competition is underway and the action is expected to be just as exciting.

With the support of loyal fans behind them, the Phillies are capable of taking the world championship from a talented Kansas City team, bringing more honor and glory to the city they represent.

We join with the hundreds of thousands of fans throughout this area in extending our congratulations to the Phils on a job well done, and our best wishes for success in winning the world title.