The Press of Atlantic City - October 18, 1980
Royal Rally Foils Phils
K.C. Wins 4-3 in 10th
By Pete Wickham, Press Sports Writer
KANSAS CITY — The Philadelphia Phillies tried continuing their game of bet-and-call poker with the Kansas City Royals Friday night, only to find out that in the Royals' home park, the Royals got last call. And Willie Mays Aikens came up aces with a shot to the wall that scored Willie Wilson and gave Kansas City a 4-3, 10-inning victory over the Phillies in the third game of the World Series before 42,380.
After a pair of neat plays by Phils catcher Bob Boone seemingly got the Phillies out of a two-on, no out jam in the 10th, the Phils gave KC one more try and first baseman Aikens put things away with his fourth extra base hit of the series. Dan Quisenberry, the loser in Wednesday's second game, pitched 2 2-3 innings of shutout relief to get the win, while the loss went to Tug McGraw, who came on for Dick Ruthven in the 10th.
It cut the Phillie lead in the best-ofseven series to 2-1, with the fourth game scheduled for this afternoon, 1:45 eastern time. Kansas City ace Dennis Leonard will try to avenge a 7- 6 loss suffered in the series opener while the Phils counter with Larry Christenson.
A super fielding play by second baseman Frank White had gotten Quisenberry out of a potential jam in the top of the 10th. With one out and* on first and second, White snared men liner his fola low and momentum took him to second base for an inning- ending double play.
McGraw got into immediate trouble in the 10th as U.L. Washington singled and Wilson drew a walk on four pitches. Then Bob Boone, a defensive gem the past week, came up with one pretty play and what looked like another. With White at the plate, Boone faked a pickoff throw to first and snapped a perfect strike to Schmidt at third to nail Washington cold.
White struck out and with George Brett at bat, Boone looked like he had Wilson dead to rights on a pitchout. But his ball skipped past Larry Bowa's glove, Wilson got second and Brett was given an intentional pass to set up a force play.
The only thing that was forced was a fifth game in this series, as Aikens, who earlier tripled and scored for the Royals, ended the Phils' four-game, post-season win streak with a shot to left-center.
Three times the Royals took one-run leads on the Phils, thanks to the long balls - a home run by George Brett in the first, Aikens' third-inning triple and a solo homer in the seventh by center fielder Amos Otis, who also set a series record with nine putouts in this game.
Only the Phils didn't let any leads last past the next at-bat. A series of infield shots off starter Rich Gale in the second and Mike Schmidt's post- season home run in the fifth got the Phillies a 2-2 tie.
And after Otis' second homer of the series, Pete Rose, who had been 0-for- 10 in the World Series, singled off reliever Renie Martin, to score Larry Bowa, who had singled and stole second in the eighth.
Quisenberry was nearly crossed up on a squeeze bunt by Schmidt with Lonnie Smith on third base (after reaching on a walk). It just went foul, and he offered a fly ball to Otis.
The Phils threatened again in the ninth as Bake McBride singled, went to second on a fly by Keith Moreland and third on an infield out. But Quisenberry got Bowa to bounce out on a chopper back to the mound.
Phils starter Dick Ruthven went the nine innings, giving up nine hits. But he did not walk a batter, struck out seven and the Royals didn't dent him after Otis' home run.
If there were any doubts about Brett's ability to play last night following minor hemorrhoid surgery Thursday, it took exactly one swing of the bat to dissolve them. A swing that diverted a low, hard fastball by Ruthven into the rightfield seats to put the Royals up 1-0 in the bottom of the first.
The Phils matched that by literally going right at Gale in their next at bat.
With one out, Manny Trillo got an infield hit with a hard shot off the ankle of the righthander, who had not pitched in 12 days. Larry Bowa singled to right and Bob Boone walked to load the bases.
Then rookie Lonnie Smith expressed another grounder to the mound. Gale fielded the ball, but hesitated on where to throw. That allowed Trillo to score from third. Gale walked Pete Rose to load the bases once more, but Schmidt flied out to Amos Otis in deep center to end the threat.
A pair of force plays negated a one-out single by Otis in the second and Ruthven retired the side in the third. The next time around, however, Aikens, who belted a pair of two-run homers in the opener, struck again. The Kansas City first sacker sent a one-out liner to left which got by a diving Smith for a triple - the first of Aikens' major league career. Hal McRae, four-for-seven in the first two games, made it 2-1 with an RBI single up the middle. However Schimdt showed that he hadn't forgotten how to eliminate one-run leads in the top of the fifth, launching a leadoff shot over the left-field wall to erase another Royal advantage.
It was Schmidt's first home run since October 4, when his two-run, 11th-inning homer snatched the Eastern Division crown away from the Expos in Montreal.
Gale struck out Bake McBride for the second time in the game, but DH singled, causing Royal manager Jim Frey to bring the hook for Gale.
Garry Maddox greeted Martin with an infield single to the hole in short, but Trillo hit into a doubleplay to end the inning.
The Phillies put two more runners on in the sixth, on singles by Bowa and Smith, but Martin escaped by striking out Rose and getting Schmidt to hit into a force play.
The Main Injuries to Phils Are A Couple of Bent Egos
By Pete Wickham, Press Sports Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It is the time of their lives, but still it may be borrowed. The boos have turned to cheers but the egos are still bent beyond repair and though the Philadelphia Phillies are two games away from their first-ever world championship, some players still wonder if, in the long run, it will make any difference back home.
"I'll be honest. Right now I'm playing this for the 25 guys around me, for myself, for my family and for those who've stayed with us,' said shortstop Larry Bowa after the Phillies made final preparation for the third game of the World Series Friday night.
"But this year I began to learn what the word frontrunner means. People might be happy now, but you know one thing goes wrong and the boos will start again."
Patience was thread-bare in the Delaware Valley even before 1980 started.
Fans had sat through three straight play-off losses and a lackluster fourth place finish from one of the highest paid teams in sports history.
Word was rather freely spread when Dallas Green replaced the laissez-faire Danny Ozark as manager last August that he was making a list, checking it twice and those who were naughty might land up in Cleveland or San Deigo.
Even now, that the Phils have won their first National League pennant since 1950, talk has not abated. The club only led its division for 16 days during the regular season and nobody is betting against the possibilities that this could be one of the first World Series championship lineups to be broken up by design.
There would certainly be no crying in the press box.
Ever since Steve Carlton made the practice of stonewalling notebooks fashionable in 1973, there have been nights where the only way to get any reaction from a Phillies player about a game was to bug the players' lounge. Even now, a media poll would tilt toward the Royals in numbers that would make Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide look like a squeaker.
"This is the most pampered, spoiled, egotistical, nasty bunch in baseball," said one writer in dismay. "The guys who cover them regularly should get combat pay. If they win the damn Series, they could be absolutely impossible.It seemed for along time that Bowa might be immune to the disease. However, this season he became just another Scrooge to dampen this Christmas in October.
First there was a slow start and persistent rumors that Bowa might be on the trading block next season. Then came the story that he was one of several Phils being investigated in prescriptions connection with being a recipient of phoney - a story that had no substance as it turned out.
Finally there was a celebrated blow-out in the final week of the season over Green's benching of several veterans, coupled with a verbal blast of fan loyalty, and for the rest of this season and the playoffs Bowa and several veterans were greeted more warmly on the road.
"You can never fault the fans for staying power. Hell, they've been there for years when we didn't deserve them," Bowa said. "What got me was the fact that they treated us like we were 35 games out and we were never out of this race. It was like they were waiting for the first signs of choking."
Bake McBride, rumored on his way to Texas last winter but the Phils leading hitter this season, admits there are many times he just shakes his head at what he sees.
'You see seven-year-old kids booing somebody because the parents are booing," he said. "It really doesn't make much sense to find out why for people would say they boo simply because someone else is.”
Is that why this team's record on the road is so good? "It doesn't hurt," McBride said.
Even as serious madness took over, the fans showed twinges of bitterness.
More than once you could hear people in ticket lines say things like," "After what's happened, I could give two hoots. But my father and grandfather have been waiting so long, I bought tickets for them."
Bowa said he understood the late season frustration to a degree.
"After the four-game series at Pittsburgh, I started to worry," he said, about a black Sunday last August, when the Pirates swept a four-game series to put the Phillies four games in the hole. "We played horribly and not one break went our way but right afterwards, we ripped up the New York Mets five straight in New York and I knew there was something there."
Then came the 25-7 charge through September and October, the come-back wins in Montreal and Houston to win the pennant and the two rallies to get the jump on the Royals and a cease-fire has settled in the valley.
"I haven't seen this type of confidence ever in my career," said journeyman Del Unser, one of the key forces in the rally. "It comes from the fact that we are doing it, have done it and expect to do it again."
Even Bowa will tell you now that "this team is not as talented as ones we've had in the past. We couldn't rely on a few guys over a long haul, so we had to get confidence in everybody on this team. We found it."
Mike Schmidt thinks there wasn't much time left.
"Maybe after the Series, somebody will give us credit for having a talented team," he said. "Maybe it was Dallas, or extra confidence that put us were we are this year. Maybe it was just God's will that this was our turn.
"But the time is coming not too far off from now, when the core of this team will have to move aside. And I know if they ever invite me back to an old-timers game, I'd like to go with a Series ring on my finger. Then maybe people would say I was one of the people who helped bring a better era to Philadelphia. Or maybe, if a Series title served to smooth out all the rough edges and frayed psyche around Veteran's Stadium, a new era of peace."
Bystrom May Start 5th Game
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Philadelphia Phillies Manager Dallas Green says would prefer not to pitch Steve Carlton if the World Series goes to a fifth game Sunday.
Someone asked Green before Friday night's third game if he would prefer not to pitch anyone.
"You got it," responded Green. The question and answer, of course, indicated the hope there would be no game Sunday and that the Phillies would sweep the best-of-seven set in four games.
Green hinted he would like to use rookie Marty Bystrom somewhere in the Series.
"It could be Sunday," observed the Phillies manager.
Green explained that he would rather give Carlton extra rest since the 24-game winner had pitched over 320 innings and was likely to be at least a bit tired at this stage.
"But I just want to win tonight," Green added quickly. "I don't to look too far ahead. And I don't want to be cocky.”
Green surveyed the expansive outfield in Royals Stadium and said he planned to bunch his outfielders, taking a chance on giving the Royals the lines.
"Anything down those lines will be very tough to play." Green added. Green also commented on the Phillies' great road record in the last months of the season, in which they won 21 of 28.
"We seem to be more relaxed in the other guy's ballpark," Green said. "Maybe it's because of all the problems the guys face at home. They just seem to get away from it all."
Green said he was glad to see George Brett in the Kansas City lineup.
"'He (Brett) is a heck of a player. know they're weaker without him. But he belongs. He worked hard to get here.”
There was a rumor circulating around Royals Stadium. It has been reported that Whitey Herzog will return to manage the St. Louis Cardinals in 1981 while remaining as general manager of the team.
Herzog, according to the reports, would sign Joe McDonald, vice president in charge of baseball operations for the New York Mets, for a similar post with the Cardinals.
Is Phils’ Carlton The Reason Why Rest of Team Is So Rude?
By The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY (AP) — The wild exuberant “Nothing-Can-Stop-Us" spirit of the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series is counteracted somewhat by a dour, sour note represented principally by the team's Cy Young pitching ace, Steve Carlton.
The towering, veteran left-hander is the Phillies’ recluse, a brooding figure who does his chores, dresses in silence and takes off. He is aloof and distant. He disdains locker room hilarity. He refuses to speak to newsmen — a self-imposed gag rule which he has followed for almost seven years.
He is baseball's Garbo — “I vant to be alone.”
Carlton's exclusivity has contagiously afflicted several other regulars of the team — players such as Bake McBride, Larry Bowa, Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski, who can be very uncooperative as the mood strikes them.
After the Phillies’ victory Wednesday night, McBride, a disgruntled hero, put some heavy tape over his mouth signaling that he was not available for comment. It was a rude slap at the hundreds of newsmen gathered to cover baseball’s biggest show.
“It's the strangest locker room in baseball,” one longtime Philadelphia writer commented. “Only Pete Rose and Tug McGraw are natural and outgoing. The other guys can be real prunes.”
Rose, the 39-year-old warhorse from the Cincinnati Reds, never changes. Natural, earthy, outgoing, he perhaps is the most popular player in the game. The effervescent McGraw, relief pitching star, talks enough for the whole league.
The Philadelphia locker room, despite the blithe spirits of Rose and McGraw, is a stark contrast to that of the Kansas City Royals, who from Manager Jim Frey to the lowliest rookie are accessible and agreeable.
The college-like ferver that has erupted on the Philadelphia bench in the late innings, inspiring the Phillies to comeback victories over the Royals in their first two games, is fueled not by the front line guys but by the fringe players, the subs and the have-nots such as young Keith Moreland, John and George Vukovich (no kin) and Bob Walk.
Carlton, meanwhile, has emerged as a mystique — to his teammates as well as to the press. What bugs him? What brought about this sudden isolationism? What is his hangup?
Even his closest friends have not been able to explain it satisfactorily.
One of these friends — former catcher Tim McCarver, now a Philadelphia broadcaster — is reluctant to discuss the matter.
“I don’t like to be singled out as Carlton’s caddy," said McCarver, who became the only catcher Carlton would throw to when they were teammates.
“I first met Steve in spring training with the St Louis Cardinals in 1966. We had a strange relationship. We disagreed on almost every subject. We became very close friends.
“He is a fine thinker and into a lot of deep things. I respect his privacy. I don’t push him. We go on hunting trips together. Twice we traveled 5000 miles in Montana. We argued every other mile.”
McCarver, 39 on Thursday, was a batterymate of Carlton on three different occasions in a 20-year career that carried him to five different major league clubs.
The first occasion was the late 1960s with a Cardinals, a team that played in the World Series in 1964, 1967 and 1968. McCarver joined the Phillies in 1970 and Carlton in 1972. McCarver did stints with Milwaukee, St Louis and Boston before being released by the Red Sox in 1975.
The veteran catcher planned to retire but, at the insistence of Carlton, he was summoned by the Phillies. His job: Catch Carlton and when not catching do some pinch hitting.
"Steve was in a dither," McCarver said. “I seemed to help settle him down. He doesn’t need me now. He needed me then."
McCarver’s value was recorded in the statistics. The 6-foot-5 pitcher, with McCarver behind the plate, went 20-7 in 1976, 23-10 in 1977 and 16-13 in 1978. Already the winner of two Cy Young awards, he appears a cinch for a third this season.
Carlton's first Cy Young and his biggest year was 1972 when he won 27 games and lost 10. At that time, he was a pleasant, outgoing fellow liked and respected by those who dealt with him, including the press. He talked freely.
"A bright guy, Steve was into a lot of deep and serious things,” a close associate said. "He was into the positive thinking bit. He read Shakespeare, was versed in the classics and was a wine connoisseur."
The next year Carlton had a slump, losing 20 games while winning 13.
“The press guys hopped on him unmercifully,” a Philly team spokesman said. “They chided him about his previous positive thinking statements. One guy particularly upset him by invading his privacy during spring training in Florida.
“That’s when Steve clammed up. He hasn’t unclammed since.”
A Florida sports editor recently teamed with Carlton in a celebrity golf tournament.
“I never found anyone nicer,” he said. “We talked freely with each other and I got a tremendous column. Later, though, I went into the locker room after a game and reintroduced myself.
“’I’m Larry,’” I said. “’Remember we played golf together?’ ‘I know,’ Carlton replied curtly, wheeled and went into the shower room.”
Remarkable Remarks (excerpt)
Philadelphia Phillies relief pitcher Tug McGraw loves the game and his appearance in all five playoff games enabled the team to reach the World Series. But one of those close games was marked by many weird plays, and McGraw's summation:
"It was like riding a motorcycle through an art museum. You don't remember seeing the pictures."