Philadelphia Inquirer - December 1980
December 2, 1980
Howe voted top Rookie; Smith third
By the Associated Press
NEW YORK – Lefthander Steve Howe, who became the long-sought stopper in the Los Angeles Dodgers' bullpen last season, was named National League Rookie of the Year yesterday by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Howe received 12 first-place ballots from the 24-man BBWAA panel and totaled 80 points. It was the first time since the award began in 1947 that the panel has voted on a 5-3-1 basis.
Montreal pitcher Bill Gullickson finished second with 53 points including five first-place ballots, and outfielder Lonnie Smith of the world champion Phillies was third with 49 points and four first-place votes.
Cincinnati Reds infielder Ron Oester finished fourth with 16 points including one first-place vote and relief pitcher Dave Smith of the Houston Astros was fifth with 13 points and two firsts.
Others receiving votes were Phillies pitcher Bob Walk, pitcher Jeff Reardon of the New York Mets, pitcher Al Holland of the San Francisco Giants and outfielder Leon Durham of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Howe, signed off the campus of the University of Michigan, became the ninth Dodgers player to capture the rookie award since the BBWAA introduced it in 1947. Dodgers infielder Jackie Robinson won it that year.
The southpaw reliever was a surprise for the Dodgers. His only professional experience before 1980 was 15 games with San Antonio of the Texas League. But Howe won a job in spring training and went on to post a 7-9 record with 17 saves and a 2.65 earned-run average for Los Angeles.
Gullickson posted a 10-5 record and had 120 strikeouts in 140 innings for the Expos including an 18-strikeout game.
Smith batted .339 in 298 at-bats and stole 31 bases for the Phillies, filling in for the injured Greg Luzinski.
December 5, 1980
Soured
Writers tarnish a great year for Schmidt
By Frank Dolson, Inquirer Sports Editor
In so many ways, Philadelphia is a great place for a professional athlete to play and to live. But all is not sweetness and light – not even when an athlete and his team reach the giddiest of heights, as Mike Schmidt and the Phillies did this year.
You would think Schmidt's most vivid memories of 1980 would all be pleasant. His team went all the way, and so did he – winding up as most valuable player in the National League and in the World Series, a super double if ever there was one.
"Probably nowhere else in the world could you get the reception we got here as world champions," Schmidt said yesterday at Veterans Stadium. "There isn't anywhere in the world where you can get a following like that, a sincere thankfulness, a gratitude for the last three weeks of the baseball season, for the fun the people had. Everywhere I go – everywhere – people tell me how much that did for them, being able to watch that and be a part of that."
But Utopia it's not. If the Philadelphia fans can be warmer, more concerned than any others, the Philadelphia press, Mike Schmidt has come to believe, can be colder, tougher, more critical.
"Nowhere else in the world," Schmidt said, "could you get the buildup of a bad reputation that we have as a team. 'The nasty Phillies.' We kid about that everywhere we go."
They kidded about it in Los Angeles recently, where they went to tape a week's worth of "Family Feud" quiz shows. " 'Don't expect us to cooperate with you,' we jaid. 'We'll tell you where we want to go, when we want to be there, how we want to get there, and don't try to tell us any different. We're the nasty Phillies.' The Kansas City Royals, they're everyone's team. Delightful guys. Deserving guys. They're very cooperative. They all talk to the press. They're funny. They're witty. They're more like the everyday people that watch baseball. But the Phillies, they aren't like that…."
Clearly, Mike Schmidt's great year has been something less than one joyful experience after another.
Not even two of his greatest days – the one on which he went to New York to accept the World Series MVP award and the one on which he won the National League MVP award – were without considerable unpleasantness.
"There's no way in hell either one of those days should have a negative spot on them," Schmidt said. "As cooperative as I was, as thankful as I was to be in that spot, as willing as I was to spread the credit around – and sincerely spread it around – I didn't see how there could be any negatives written at all. But there were.
On the day Schmidt won the World Series MVP award, he was upset by an exclusive interview in the Philadelphia Daily News, in which Bake McBride told Stan Hochman, "If anybpdy should get it (the award), it ought to be Bob Boone or Larry Bowa; They contributed more than anybody on the team."
On the day Schmidt got the National League MVP award, he was blasted by Daily News baseball writer Bill Conlin for refusing to give post-midnight interviews so that writers for afternoon papers could meet their deadlines.
In addition, there was the amphetamine story that surfaced in Trenton during the All-Star break and briefly flashed across the country as headline news. The Inquirer printed a story – considered by Schmidt to be an invasion of privacy – written by a reporter who visited the player's neighborhood and made inquiries about what it was like to live near a baseball superstar.
The relationship between the press and today's highly paid professional athlete is a complicated, often difficult one at best. It is Schmidt's feeling, and the feeling of many of his teammates, that the relationship in Philadelphia has become unnecessarily complicated and difficult.
"I think the writers that cover the Eagles probably as a whole want to see the Eagles succeed more than anything in the world," he said. "I'm not so sure that's true with the writers that cover the Phillies. I may be wrong, but my opinion is (that) not everyone is totally, 100 percent happy for the guys on the Phillies. I think in a lot of cases the script didn't finish like a lot of them would have liked to see it finish. I think in the end some writers were hurt that they had to put 'world champions' behind the Phillies' name. It would have been a much more Philadelphia-type story had we lost in the World Series, had we continued that ongoing saga of 'the team that can't win the big ones.'"
The "war" between the Philadelphia press and the Philadelphia Phillies has been well-documented throughout this and past seasons. But Mike Schmidt is an unlikely participant in that war. Never – not even when he was unfairly dragged into the highly publicized amphetamine story – did he refuse to talk to the press, as did some of his teammates. As a struggling, sub- 200 hitter in the early 70s or as the MVP in the National League in 1980, he has been accessible, cooperative and quotable. Perhaps that's why some of the things that marred his big year hurt him so deeply.
"Let me put it this way," Schmidt said. "First there was that amphetamine thing in the middle of the season. Then there was Hochman breaking that (McBride) story on the most important day of my career, telling me that my teammates didn't think I deserved it. Then, on the morning of the MVP award, one paper tells me to take the award and stick it. Besides that, there's the general feeling of having to answer question after question after question as to why our team doesn't deserve to be world champions because we're a bunch of babies.... All those things could make a guy – and has made several of the Phillies – very adamant about not talking to the press, and rightly so. It's caused some people not to want to live in this town, not to be available, and, ultimately, not to talk, not to have any obligation to the press whatsoever."
Above all, Schmidt was upset by the timing of the two MVP-related articles, which he felt displayed "a lack of compassion."
"It let me down in a sense because I thought I was good friends with those people," Schmidt said. "I thought I had some sort of a rapport with them.... Maybe Bill Conlin thought the same thing about me, and that's why he felt sort of hurt or felt I let him down by not granting him an interview so that he could make his deadline. But I'm not sure I would have stayed up till all hours of the morning (under any circumstances). We've got two kids in diapers. Donna (Schmidt's wife) goes to bed about 8:30. I go to bed about 9 most nights...."
It is Schmidt's feeling that only in Philadelphia, with its enormous sports interest and highly competitive press coverage, would so many negative and controversial stories be written about a world championship team and its most valuable player. Some members of the Yankees or Red Sox might dispute that.
But the fact remains that the long-running war between the Phillies and the Philadelphia press is not the one-way street many sportswriters would like to believe. If the writers covering the Phillies had legitimate gripes last season – and they surely did – then some of Schmidt's gripes are legitimate, too.
"I've thought about refusing to talk (to the press) several times," he said. "I just think joining the silent fraternity at this stage of my career would be more trouble than it's worth for me. I'd feel uncomfortable. Portions of my career, I feel, should be made public. I feel I can be a good example to a lot of young kids."
This is one Phillie who feels he has been wronged by the writers, yet has no plans to break off relations with them. Mike Schmidt learned to live with this city's fans during the bad years; now he is learning to live with this city's sportswriters during the good ones.
December 7, 1980
Lerch looks to a new future
By Frank Dolson, Inquirer Sports Editor
He's bitten his lip. He's counted to 10. He’s tried, with remarkable success, not to pop off at a time when popping off would have been a very easy thing to do. And now the end of the ordeal is in sight. Any day now, any hour, Randy Lerch expects to become an ex-Phillie.
He is working harder now than he ever worked. He shows up in the Phillies clubhouse at the Vet each weekday morning to prepare for a new year, a hew start. But even though this clubhouse has been home to Lerch for more than four seasons, he talks like a man who is just passing through.
Occasionally, he catches himself in mid-sentence and smiles. I m talking as though I've already been traded," he'll say. "It's not for sure I'm going to be traded. I haven't left yet... but we re talking 99 percent.”
In Lerch's mind, in the mind of most who remember his 4-14 season and what the Phillies did to him at the end of it – dropping the left-hander from the postseason roster, then criticizing him publicly for not traveling with the club, as a spectator, for the playoffs and the World Series – there can.be little doubt that his baseball future is elsewhere.
Sat it out
"l never ripped anybody about what happened," Lerch said, "and what does Dallas (Phillies manager Dallas Green) do? He turns around during the World Series and calls me a little baby, a little kid. He said that Nino Espinosa (who was also scratched from the postseason roster, but traveled with the club, anyway) earned his World Series ring and his money and I didn’t.”
Lerch had gone through consider able soul-searching before making his decision not to travel with the Phillies to Houston and Kansas City in October. "They asked me to go," he said. "They asked me to go along and sit on the bench and wear my uniform like a batboy. Well, anybody with any pride, in my opinion, wouldn’t.
"But I made sure I came to every game (which he viewed from a seat in the stands). I came down to the clubhouse about the seventh inning and I saw the guys the night they won it and congratulated them. And I watched the parade (on TV). That was the toughest thing for me to do.
"I made myself watch it. I wanted to make sure I had so much feeling – such a burning feeling, as it were – that something like this would never happen to me again.
Never hungrier
"Wherever baseball takes me, I'm going to make sure that mentally I'm totally prepared. I don't think I was as prepared as I could have been last year. I don't think I worked as hard as I should have in the winter. This year – well, you can see. I was in here two weeks after the World Series. I've never been hungrier for anything in my life.”
If that's the case, and it surely ap pears to be, Lerch may benefit in the long run from his October ordeal. But that doesn't make what happened any easier to stomach, nor does it make him any less eager for the trade he thinks will be completed soon, perhaps at the winter meetings this week in Dallas.
"You're not going to treat someone the way they treated me, then turn around and keep him, Lerch said. "Let's face it. That kind of stuff is hard to forget. I'm going to remem ber and the people are going to remember. Imagine what kind of hill that would be to climb. It was tough for me just to come back here to work out."
But he did it, and with all that he's been through in the last few months he still has a special feeling for this city, this franchise and, especially, for Phillies owner Ruly Carpenter – "one of the finest men I know."
Fresh start
But it's the thought of leaving, of getting a fresh start with another club that excites him now. "Sparky Lyle told me, ‘It’s like a rebirth,’” Lerch said.
Often, a player's first trade is a traumatic experience. Lerch has been a Phillie since the day he signed, as an 18-year-old kid. But for him, the trauma has already come and gone.
"I guess what I went through with the World Series was like what a play er goes through when he's traded," he said, "sort of a feeling of not being wanted. That was my period of getting disassociated with the team."
Next comes a period of getting associated with a new team. For Randy Lerch, at this point in his career, leaving the only organization he has ever known – an organization he still considers the very best in baseball – is the only sensible move. After what the Phillies did to him in 1980, the least they can do is let him pitch for somebody else in 1981.
December 8, 1980
McGraw signs 4-year contract with Phillies
By George Shirk, Inquirer Staff Writer
Nearly six weeks after that magic night in late October when he heaved one final fastball past Willie Wilson and leaped off the Veterans Stadium pitching mound to become one member of a team of champions, Tug McGraw has determined officially that he will, indeed, remain a Philadelphia Phillie.
McGraw, 36, won a four-year, $1,6 million contract from the Phillies, just over a month after each of baseball's 26 teams passed over his name in the free agent re-entry draft in New York.
By all rights, it should have been six weeks of bliss for the" Phillies relief pitcher, a time in which to bask in the afterglow of winning baseball's biggest prize.
But it hasn't been like that at all. Whatever afterglow existed – and it was considerable for the first month afterward – was extinguished by the fact that McGraw had declared himself a free agent, was technically without a job, was without a contract and was losing confidence that he'd ever again take to the mound at the Vet wearing the home team's uniform.
"It began to look more and more like I wouldn't be playing in Philadelphia," McGraw said, "My winter was going by, and I was having so much fun. And then negotiations took over all my thoughts. It became depressing."
Yesterday, however, all the anxiety and depression vanished when. McGraw and the Phils announced they'd come to terms.
"It kind of developed overnight," McGraw said, "and right now, I feel on top of the world."
The pact, according to McGraw, calls for a guaranteed first three years, with the fourth "partially guaranteed." Additionally, McGraw will receive a bonus for signing the contract, although the amount of the bonus was not made public.
Most important to McGraw, however, was deferred money that he wanted as a guarantee for his son's and daughter's education.
It was the deferred payments, more than anything, that had blocked agreement between McGraw and the Phillies, according to Phillies vice president and director of player personnel Paul Owens.
"The key for him was some deferred income down the line," Owens said.
Details of the agreement were worked out Saturday, and yesterday, after an appearance at a surprise "Tug McGraw Day" at the Penn National racetrack in Harrisburg, McGraw phoned Owens and told him that he'd sign the contract.
McGraw, a 14-year major league veteran, pitched in all five games of the National League playoffs against the Houston Astros, compiling an 0-1 record but also saving two games.
In the World Series against the Kansas City Royals, McGraw was 1-1 with two saves. He entered postseason play after coming off an arm injury July 17, and from that date until the end of the season, McGraw posted a 5-1 record with 13 saves in 33 games, and gave up only three earned runs in 52 ⅓ innings. His earned run average for that time was 0.52.
But between that final, sixth game of the Series last October until yesterday, McGraw had run into a string of frustrations at the negotiating table.
Three times, McGraw and his financial advisor, Phil McLaughlin of Boston, sat down opposite Owens and Phillies owner Ruly Carpenter, and three times the negotiations bogged down.
"It was like getting up every morning, putting on my battle fatigues and walking out the door. It got to be very frustrating," McGraw said.
It was at that point that McGraw declared free-agency, but he was spurned by each of baseball's teams in the re-entry draft in New York on Nov.5.
With no team drafting him, McGraw nonetheless began sending feelers out to "five or six" clubs, but got no hard offers.
"I did not negotiate in good faith with any other club," McGraw said yesterday. "I called a few teams and asked them how much interest they had in me, but I told them I couldn't sit down and talk money until I resolved all the avenues in Philadelphia.
"I didn't want to get into that kind of negotiating, playing one against the other. I went straight across the top of the table."
With the re-entry draft three weeks past, McGraw, McLaughlin, Owens and Carpenter began talks again last Wednesday. McGraw was involved personally in all of the sessions, and by Saturday a contract had been agreed upon, with only language in the contract remaining as the only barrier.
"Originally," Owens said yesterday, "we offered Tug only three years. He came down in some areas and we adjusted. The key for him was some deferred income down the line."
Both Owens and McGraw seemed pleased with the negotiations, Owens because McGraw represented himself, and McGraw because he'd won some security for his family and an assurance that he could finish out his career in Philadelphia.
Phillies to retain same coaching staff
By the Associated Press
DALLAS – The world champion Phillies will retain all six coaches next year, the team announced yesterday at baseball's annual winter meeting.
Once again aiding manager Dallas Green will be batting coach Billy DeMars, infield coach Bobby Wine, pitching coach Herm Starrette, bullpen coach Mike Ryan, third-base coach Lee Elia and first-base coach Ruben Amaro.
DeMars is the dean of the staff and one of the senior coaches in the league. The 1981 season will be his 13th with the Phillies.
Wine joined the Phillies as a coach in July 1972 after concluding his playing career and Starrette has been with the club two years. Ryan, Elia and Amaro will be starting their second season on Green's staff.
December 9, 1980
Phillies, Brewers talk trade
Lezcano, Lerch, Noles discussed by teams
By Jayson Stark, Inquirer Staff Writer
DALLAS – Paul Owens' biggest trade at baseball's 1979 winter meetings was the earth-shaking exchange of Pete Mackanin for Paul Thormodsgard. No wonder that when the week was over, Owens shook his head and moaned that baseball was just no fun anymore.
Ah, but 1980's meetings look more like the Pope's style. Before Bowie Kuhn could even reach the podium to open baseball's annual blabathon yesterday morning, 14 players already had changed teams. And Owens was hot to make that 19 in a hurry.
Owens, Dallas Green and their scouts had a long talk with the Milwaukee Brewers yesterday afternoon. And they came out of it with a five-player deal more than half-formulated.
The Phillies' chief acquisition would be righthanded-hitting outfielder Sixto Lezcano. They also would get one other player, as yet undetermined. In return, the pitch-ing-famished Brewers would receive Randy Lerch, Dickie Noles and one other player, also undecided upon.
Green indicated the Phillies would like to wrap up the deal quickly, because a trade for Lezcano almost certainly would mean the unloading of Greg Luzinski for a starting pitcher. And the Phillies would like to have as much interleague trading time as possible to explore those options before Friday's midnight (CDT) deadline.
Green said the Lezcano and Luzinski deals are "not contingent" upon one another. But he said getting Lezcano "would probably allow us to do that (trade the Bull) more comfortably."
Lezcano is only 27, might be the best defensive rightfielder in the American League and two years ago hit .321 for Milwaukee with 28 homers and 101 RBIs. He is expendable because 1) he is coming off his worst season ever (.229, 18 homers, 55 RBIs) and 2) the Brewers need pitching like George Steinbrenner needs a fan club.
But the Phillies are so undaunted by Lezcano's lousy 1980 numbers, they even told the Brewers they would rather have Lezcano than 38-homer man Gorman Thomas.
"Sixto's the type of guy who, when he tries to hit home runs, is not going to hit for average," said Phillies farm director Jim Baumer, a former Brewers general manager. "And that's what he did this year.
"He hit three or four the first week, and now all of a sudden he thinks he's gonna hit 60. So he starts swinging for homers, and that's the worst thing he could do. In August, he started trying to get base hits again, and he straightened himself out."
Defensively, said Baumer, Lezcano plays balls down the rightfield line "better than anybody. Balls that look like they're gonna be doubles, he'll throw the guy out."
The question if the Phillies get him, of course, is what they will do with all their outfielders. Owens hinted Bake McBride would wind up playing a lot of left field if the Phils obtain Lezcano. McBride also could play right against righthanded pitching, with Lonnie Smith taking the remaining time in left.
The Astros and Giants also are in the Lezcano hunt. But because Milwaukee seemed to be particularly enamored of Lerch and Noles, the Phillies appeared to have the inside track.
Owens said clubs have shown "super interest" in Lerch, and not just the Brewers. Lerch may have been 4-14 this year, but Green said people still look at him and see a great left arm. "And people in baseball always think they can handle somebody that somebody else couldn't handle," the manager said.
A number of names were thrown around as possible fourth and fifth players in the deal. The Phillies probably will get to choose one from a list including righthanded-hitting outfielder Dick Davis (.271, 4 homers, 30 RBIs), righthanded reliever Paul Mitchell (5-5, 3.54) and righthanded pitcher Reggie Cleveland ( 1 1-9, 3.74).
The Brewers' choice probably will be either Ron Reed or this year's shortstop at Reading, Ryne Sandberg (.310, 32 stolen bases).
Meanwhile, Owens is still after free-agent pitcher Stan Bahnsen, who would replace Reed and Noles as the prime righthander in the bullpen.
"When we get done this week, I'll tell you whether we're gonna sign Bahnsen or not," the Pope said.
Elsewhere on the free-agent front, however, Owens is annoyed by Del Unser's refusal to respond to his initial contract offer, estimated at two years, $200,000 per.
"I haven't heard back from him, and if he doesn't want to play for me, bleep him," Owens said. "I respect what the man did for me. But if you break down the man's year, he really didn't do anything for me until September.
"He had five key hits, he was a big hero, I know. But he didn't hit me one home run. The year before he hit me four home runs. I've offered him two years, and if he doesn't like that, bleep him."
Maybe this was just harsh bargaining talk. But the free agent Owens drafted as Unser's potential replacement, Boston's Jim Dwyer, is still so hopeful of playing in Philadelphia he has told other teams he won't sign until the Phillies make a decision on Unser.
So on a day when the Cardinals got Rollie Fingers, the Astros picked up their eighth starting pitcher and trade fever reigned anew, Paul Owens was playing winter baseball his way again. So hang on – the week has only just begun.
•
Earlier in the day, the Phillies lost four prospects in the annual major league draft. The most noteworthy was Jim Wright, the organization's golden arm as recently as two seasons ago. But the other three – left-handed pitcher Carlos Arroyo (taken by the White Sox) and outfielders Jorge Bell (Toronto) and Orlando Sanchez (St. Louis) – also have a chance to be decent big-league players.
Wright, 2S, was chosen by Kansas City. It is no coincidence that the Royals now employ former Phillies minor-league pitching coach Billy Connors and former Phils farm director Howie Bedell.
Owens said the Phillies felt Wright needed another season to regain all the arm strength he had before his sad chain of injuries began in August 1977. But he was out of options, so the Phils felt this was the year to gamble on not protecting him. If he doesn't make the Royals next spring, Kansas City must offer him back to the Phillies for $12,500.
The guy the Phils were most upset about losing was Bell, 21, who has hit .300 in each of his three minor-league seasons.
December 10, 1980
Jim Wright: Royal chance
By Frank Dolson, Inquirer Sports Editor
Think of Jim Wright – the real Jim Wright, the one who earned a "cant-miss" tag as he blazed his way through the Phillies' minor league system a few seasons ago – and your mind paints a picture of a tall, slender youngster standing on the mound at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater, Fla., facing Reggie Jackson with the bases loaded. It was just an exhibition game, but to the kid on the mound it was opening day, the All-Star game, the World Series wrapped into one.
"My first outing (against a major league team)," he would recall years later. "I was pitching against Catfish Hunter. 1 was pretty nervous...."
The count went to three balls, two strikes, and Jim Wright did what he has always done. He challenged Reggie Jackson. He threw his best stuff at him, again and again and again. And Jackson took his best swing, again and again and again.
"He fouled off a few," Jim said, "and then I threw him a high inside fastball…."
And Jackson swung and missed.
No way to tell
No wonder they loved Jim Wright in the Phillies' front office. No wonder they were counting on him to become one of their top starters for years to come. He had it all – the makeup, the desire, the build, the talent – to become an outstanding pitcher in the major leagues. How could they, or he, have known that a young man who had never experienced any pain in his pitching arm would suddenly develop a dull throbbing in his forearm caused by a bone spur? How could anyone have imagined that the bone would be so weakened by the removal of the spur that it would snap in two while he tried to throw a fast ball past a Cardinal batter in another spring training exhibition?
All of those things and more happened to Jim Wright. So it was that the Phillies took a calculated risk this fall. They dropped him from the big league roster, thereby leaving him unprotected in the annual winter draft.
"We're gambling in a sense," general manager Paul Owens said last week, "but I think we've got a helluva good chance (to get him through the draft)."
A miscalculation
He thought wrong. The pitcher. who almost surely would have been in the Phillies' starting rotation by now if not for a series of incredibly bad breaks, was claimed Monday by the Kansas City Royals.
The news climaxed yet another of the emotional rollercoaster rides Wright has been subjected to in recent years. Initially, word that the Phillies had dropped him from the big league roster jolted him. "I found out in a terrible way," he said. "I read it in the paper. Then I got my form letter from the Phillies notifying me what happened."
But if that experience was momentarily shattering, the phone call he received from Kansas City this week more than made up for it. The Royals, encouraged by pitching coach Billy Connors – who knew Wright from their days together in the Phillies farm system – had decided to take a chance.
For Wright, it was the chance of a lifetime. A native of St. Joseph, Mo., his home is barely 60 miles from Royals Stadium.
After all those terrible breaks, he finally got a good one. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving young man.
Prayers answered
"My aunt called me last night," he was saying yesterday from his temporary winter home in Clearwater, where he's been working out. "She said all their prayers have been answered... I feel like I'm floating. I'll be floating all the way to spring training. This is just fantastic. You know the Phillies come down and play us (in spring training next season) " He laughed. "Us. The Kansas City Royals. It sounds funny."
Just the sound of his voice over the phone, the joy, the enthusiasm in it made you feel good. He'd been through so much. There had been so many setbacks. Maybe now, at long last, things are about to go Jim Wright's way.
"The Phillies were great to me," he said. "I was hoping they'd call me (from the winter meetings) so I could tell them how I feel. They always did what was best for me. That's why I always wanted to pitch in Veterans Stadium. I wanted to win some games for Ruly (Carpenter) and Pope (Paul Owens). But I guess it just wasn't meant to be."
Maybe not, but Reggie Jackson had better get ready for those high, hard ones. The Phillies' calculated gamble backfired; Jim Wright is an American League pitcher now. The guess here is he's going to be a very good one.
Phillies, Blue Jays talk trade
By Jayson Stark, Inquirer Staff Writer
DALLAS – There's a song on a few country jukeboxes in Texas called, "If the Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me."
Unfortunately for the Phillies, Paul Owens' phone didn't ring yesterday at baseball's winter meetings, and he knew it was the Milwaukee Brewers.
Owens remained hopeful about a Phillies-Brewers deal involving Milwaukee outfielder Sixto Lezcano and Phils pitchers Randy Lerch and Dickie Noles, among others. But the Brewers never got back to him yesterday. And Owens wasn't certain what that meant.
"I don't think they're hedging," the Phillies vice president said. "They're just not sure which way they want to go... They could be held up somewhere else. I'm not sure."
While Owens tossed around a lot of young names with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Brewers were going shopping yesterday. They explored a deal with St. Louis fof Rollie Fihgers, but that fell through. They talked with Houston about exchanging prized utility infielder Jim Gantner for a pitcher, but that didn't make it, either.
Their most serious venture was with the Mets, who have to do something thunderous if they want to sign Dave Winfield. Milwaukee is offering homer-strikeout king Gorman Thomas and hoping to get Mets reliever Neil Allen in return. That one is still on the burners.
At any rate, it is clear the Brewers are looking around for one major deal involving any of several characters. Right now, they're just trying to figure out which trade would be most attractive.
"I think they're going to do something big down here," said Jim Baumer, Milwaukee's former general manager and now the Phillies farm director. "I know the way they think. They want to do something big because they need it to sell tickets."
Brewers general manager Harry Dalton said yesterday he didn't think the Brewers-Phillies swap was especially "hot" at the moment. So, while the Phillies waited for the Brewers to call back, they were laying the groundwork for other things.
Owens' most serious discussions were with Toronto. The Phillies mentioned names such as All-Star game pitcher Dave Stieb (12-15, 3.70), righthanded starter Jim Clancy (13-16, 3.30) and shortstop Alfredo Griffin (.254, 18 stolen bases), the 1979 rookie of the year. Primarily, the Phils are after Stieb or Clancy.
The problem was the names Toronto threw back – Marty Bystrom, Keith Moreland, minor league shortstop Julio Franco (Carolina League player of the year) and the pitching prospect in the organization, left hander Mark Davis (19-6 at Reading).
Dallas Green isn't that sure he needs more pitching anyway, but he knows he doesn't need it badly enough to want to give up those guys.
"Bystrom? Moreland? Davis? We're not interested in that kind of deal," Green said. "At least I'm not."
But the Blue Jays also expressed interest in such prospects as infielder Luis Aguayo, centerfielder Bob Dernier (71 stolen bases at Reading) and infielder Jay Loviglio (.277, 33 stolen bases at Oklahoma City). And Owens came away thinking he might be able to group a few acceptable names together and pull something off.
"There were enough names thrown around," the Pope said. "It will be interesting to see what they come back with."
So nothing much concrete was happening. But Owens still said coolly, "I think we're in good shape."
December 11, 1980
Angels get Burleson; Phils wait
By Jayson Stark, Inquirer Staff Writer
DALLAS – A .240-hitting utility infielder-outfielder-catcher signed for $1.1 million. A former Oakland A's manager became a coach with the Chunichi Dragons. The most famous relief pitcher to get traded was Kevin Saucier.
For most of yesterday, baseball's winter meetings, a.k.a. The Whitey Herzog Show, suddenly ground into slow motion. When the big stories were Dave Roberts becoming an Astro (albeit a rich Astro), Jim Marshall heading for Japan and Saucier being traded for the second time in three weeks (this time from Texas to Detroit), you know things were slow.
Then the Red Sox and the Angels got into action. And when the dust lifted, the Angels had sent Carney Lansford, Mark Clear and Rick Miller to the Red Sox for infielders Rick Burleson and Butch Hobson.
Until that post-dinnertime maneuver, even Herzog and the Cardinals couldn't work out a deal for anybody more renowned than minor-league catcher Bob Geren. (He was the player named later from Monday's St. Louis-San Diego trade.)
But at least Whitey was working on it. The major reason everybody's trade talk – including the Phillies' – was stopped at a red light earlier yesterday was a six-player deal Herzog was cooking up with Milwaukee.
The Cardinals were mulling sending newly acquired reliever Roland Glen Fingers, catcher-cum-first baseman Ted Simmons and perhaps pitcher Pete Vuckovich to Milwaukee. And the Brewers were considering shipping back starting pitcher Lary Sorensen, much-coveted outfielder Sixto Lezcano and either infielder Jim Gantner or pitcher Jerry Augustine.
Phillies vice president Paul Owens said nearly everybody seems to have something going with St. Louis or Milwaukee or both. So now much of baseball has to wait until they either do something or head back to the marketplace.
What trades the Phillies make this week are largely dependent on a possible deal with Milwaukee for Lezcano. But the Brewers haven't acted very interested since the trade was first proposed Monday. The only word the Phils have heard from them was a brief message yesterday to hang in there while they talked with St. Louis.
Even Owens conceded he was "not too optimistic" about the Brewers trade.
So the Pope again headed in other directions yesterday. The least interesting wes a deal he turned down with Toronto. The Blue Jays wanted Marty Bystrom and phenom Mark Davis (19-6 at Reading) for either pitcher Dave Steib, pitcher Jim Clancy or shortstop Alfredo Griffin. Owens couldn't see much sense in doing that.
"Hell, maybe both of them (Bystrom and Davis) can pitch on our club this year," Owens said. "I know Bystrom can pitch for me. And I'm not too sure how far away Davis is."
After that, he sat down with the Mets for 45 minutes. The prime topic of conversation was Greg Luzinski. The Mets are shopping outfielder Joel Youngblood, a decent contact hitter whose biggest defensive selling point is a great arm (a league-leading 18 assists thisyear).
Owens was looking for Youngblood plus one of the Mets' two young bullpen arms, Neil Allen or Jeff Reardon, for Luzinski.
"It was kind of a preliminary meeting," Owens said. "We really all went in cold."
•
Key men in the California-Boston deal were Lansford and Burleson. Lansford, 23, a third baseman, hit .264 in 86 games with five home runs and 34 RBls for the Angels last season. He is considered an outstanding fielder.
Burleson, a 29-year-old shortstop, batted .278 in 155 games with eight home runs and 51 RBIs for the Red Sox last season, while Hobson, also 29, the Boston third baseman, averaged .228 in 93 games with 11 homers and 39 RBI.
Clear, 24, is a righthanded pitcher who posted an 11-11 record with a 3.30 earned run average in 106 innings for the Angels. He struck out 105 and walked 81.
Miller, 32, returns to Boston, where he played out his option and signed with California on Dec. 22, 1977. The veteran outfielder hit .274 in 129 games for the Angels in 1980.
•
The most noteworthy development of the afternoon was the end of the 13-team chase after Roberts, the free agent the baseball masses seemed to covet most. Roberts, who can play eight positions, signed a five-year contract with Houston. The Astros guaranteed $1.1 million of it. Roberts could make another $200,000 over the five years in incentive clauses.
It was a long drop from Roberts to the second-biggest story of the day – the trading of Saucier from the Rangers to the Tigers for shortstop Mark Wagner.
Saucier went from the Phillies to Texas last month as the player to he named later in the Sparky Lyle deal.
Sports People (excerpt)
Big steaks betting
Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw collected a World Series wager on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The bet was between Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania, both Republicans. Dole wagered 25 pounds of Kansas steaks against a 50-pound soft pretzel and all the beer he could carry. Heinz designated McGraw to pick up the winnings.
"You're going to have to wait many more years to taste one of those pretzels," McGraw told Dole.
McGraw, who has helped raise money to fight multiple sclerosis, said that the steaks would be served to children in Philadelphia’s Police Athletic League.
December 12, 1980
Cardinals may get Lezcano
Phils, Angels talking Boone-for-Baylor
By Jayson Stark, Inquirer Staff Writer
DALLAS – Sixto Lezcano may be headed for St. Louis. Or the Phillies. Or he may stay in Milwaukee.
Among those most interested in how all this turns out are Ted Simmons, who could become yet another instant millionaire; Lezcano, who would like to know where he'll be playing baseball in 1981; and Bob Boone, who just may end up playing in the shadow of Disneyland.
Just as the Phillies were once again closing in on a deal for Lezcano, the Brewers outfielder appeared to be headed to the Cardinals in a multi-player deal.
This one would send Lezcano, pitcher Lary Sorensen and two minor leaguers to St. Louis for pitcher Pete Vuckovich, recently acquired reliever Rollie Fingers and catcher Simmons.
The major factor – maybe the only factor – holding up the deal is Simmons' right to veto any trade involving him. He is asking for a cool $1 million to waive that right.
If no one is willing to buy Simmons' affections, the Phillies are still in the running for Lezcano. The Phils have offered pitchers Randy Lerch, Dickie Noles, Ron Reed and Scott Munninghoff for Lezcano.
But if the Simmons-for-Lezcano deal happens, look for the Phillies to go after the Angels' Don Baylor. He could be had as part of a deal that would send Boone to Anaheim, if some contractual problems involving Boone could be smoothed out.
The interleague trading deadline is less than a day away now, and trading deadlines, like strobe lights and a couple of drinks, sometimes make people look a lot better than they used to.
At first, the idea of dealing Lezcano for Lerch and Noles didn't look so hot to Brewers general manager Harry Dalton. But, as the trade hours dwindled yesterday, Dalton reconsidered.
Suddenly, Noles' live stuff looked appealing enough to outweigh his fiery temperament. Suddenly, Lerch's 4-14 record wasn't a true indication of his abilities.
Suddenly, Dalton decided that it might not be a bad idea to get in touch with the Phillies for the first time since Monday.
The Phillies were keeping their options open, though. Phillies vice president Paul Owens canceled his daily press briefing so that he could continue talks with the Angels. Earlier in the day, Phillies publicity director Larry Shenk, who was appointed to hold the press briefing in Owens' place, boldly appraised the chance of a Phillies-Brewers deal being made as eight on a scale of 10.
That, however, was when it had seemed that Lezcano somehow had been freed from the Brewers' infinitely pending deal with St. Louis.
Owens said Wednesday that he was willing to sweeten his offer for Lezcano, an all-around outfielder who is only 27. But he wasn't sure he would get the chance.
When he got it, he offered as many as four players to get Lezcano, who hit only.229 this year but batted.321 with 28 homers and 101 RBIs in 1979.
Noles and Lerch were definitely in. The problem was agreeing on other names. Milwaukee asked for Mark Davis and Marty Bystrom. They might as well have asked for Steve.Carlton and Mike Schmidt.
Reed's name came up, but Milwaukee apparently wanted more.
In addition to angling for Baylor, Owens also talked with Atlanta about Gary Matthews yesterday. The Braves would like pitchers Larry Christenson or Bob Walk.
But Lezcano is the most complete player of the three available outfielders, and his $303,000-a-year contract has several more years to run. Baylor and Matthews are approaching free agency.
So, Lezcano was the guy they wanted.
NOTES: Elsewhere, the Cubs swapped well-traveled catcher-outfielder Cliff Johnson to Oakland for lefthanded pitching prospect Mike King, who hasn't won a game in professional baseball. Free-agent pitcher John D'Acquisto (2-5 with San Diego and Montreal) signed with California.... The National League voted to limit to five the number of coaches a team can dress for a game.
Versus K.C. or “Casey,” Tug is a joy
By Frank Dolson, Inquirer Sports Editor
"It looked extremely rocky for
the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood two to four,
with but one inning more to play...."
Ernest Lawrence Thayer's epic poem, "Casey at the Bat," never sounded the same as the night Tug McGraw, backed by Peter Nero and the Philly Pops, performed it at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. That's the beauty of Tug McGraw. Nothing he does – whether it's throwing a baseball or holding a press conference or heading for the dugout after a game-ending strikeout or reciting a poem – turns out the same as when anybody else is doing it.
Only a Tug McGraw could move, in one swift, graceful leap, from center stage in the World Series at Veterans Stadium to center stage at the Academy... and appear equally at home in both places.
Only a Tug McGraw could squeeze so much fun, enjoyment, delight out of a championship baseball season.
No need to search for the man's secret. With Tug, you always get the feeling there are no secrets, that he's sharing his innermost feelings with the world. One look at him and you know he cares. You know he's caught up in whatever it is he's doing – be it putting a third strike past Willie Wilson with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of the final World Series game or past the legendary Casey in the last stanza of Thayer's poem.
There have been a lot of big moments in Tug McGraw's life, but surely those two strikeouts rate a special place on his all-time list. So what if Wilson was fighting a World Series slump when he came to the plate with the bases loaded in the ninth inning? Who cares if Casey, for all the clutch hits he'd collected over the years, never could hit a good screwball? Those two strikeouts will always be a part of the Tug McGraw story... and of the Philadelphia story, too.
The emotions surrounding the strikeouts were "in many ways very much the same," Tug was saying yesterday at a press conference called to herald the release of a record album featuring -natch – "Casey at the Bat."
"Oftentimes, 99 percent of the time, when the phone rings in the bullpen and they say, 'McGraw warm up,' I get butterflies and my knees get real weak. I feel like I'm totally out of shape," McGraw told an. admiring audience of music-lovers who had gathered in a three-floor auditorium at Wanamaker's downtown store to get a close-up look at the man who injected new life into Phillies baseball and Thayer's poem.
"It's just a nervous reaction," Tug went on. "Sometimes I'll get to the mound and I'll look around and I'll still have that real weak, nervous feeling. But then once you throw a pitch and you get into the action it seems like all that goes away, and the nervous energy turns into a positive force and it feels like it makes you stronger. And sometimes when that's happening and everything, as Schmitty (Mike Schmidt) would say, is in the flow, you feel like you can throw any pitch to any hitter at any time.... "
At the Academy that night... I'd never done it before; I had no idea what the response was going to be. I didn't know if I was going to freeze up, get confused, forget my lines, blank out or whatever. But once I got the first couple of sentences out it was a great feeling. It was back to the ball park with all your pitches working. It was really fun."
Naturally. Tug McGraw was involved.
His presence, his actions, his antics added fun to the World Series and to the post-Series celebration at Kennedy Stadium, not to mention yesterday's press conference.
You'd think he would be talked out by now, somewhat jaded by the weeks of TV appearances and signing autographs and answering questions. Not McGraw. He was as fresh, as enjoyable, as much fun as ever.
Somebody asked him if he had any background in dramatic work prior to his debut at the Academy of Music, and Tug replied, "Just talking to sportswriters. I really put on an act there."
Another man said, "Tug, when you pitched in the World Series you gave us all heart failure."
And McGraw grinned at him and said, "You sure recovered fast."
Within minutes, he had them eating out of the palm of his hand, had them as helpless as Willie Wilson had been in the ninth inning of the sixth game.
They asked him how difficult it had been to memorize all those lines, and he said, "That was a real challenge for me because in the past all I had to worry about was one's a fast ball, two's a curve, three's a slider and wiggle the fingers for the screwball, and that's been the extent of my mental concentration. It worked out well, but that certainly was a surprise to me because I was never paid a dime for my brains."
For the better part of an hour he had them laughing, had them asking him for autographs, had them enjoying the Tug McGraw those of us on the sports beat have been enjoying for years. "It's been a lot of fun," he said about his entry into the recording field. "Certainly it's not going to be a primary career, at least for another 10 years until I retire from baseball."
He's 36 now, and so there was more laughter, and Tug cheerfully joined in. It wasn't until the formal press conference was over that he grew totally serious and talked about how close he thought he was, only a week before, to becoming an ex-Phillie.
"Last Thursday – that was the breaking point day in my negotiations," McGraw said. "I was getting scared (about the possibility of not being able to reach an agreement). 'You know what it took? 'Goodbye. Thank you. That's it. It's all over.' That's what it took. Then they called me back."
He had made up his mind "to exhaust all avenues with the Phillies" before signing with anybody else. "I didn't want to go to, say, Milwaukee, Montreal, St. Louis, or out on the West Coast and talk to those people if I wasn't prepared to sign," Tug explained. "I wasn't going to take an offer from them and run back and show it to Ruly (Phillies owner Ruly Carpenter), because I don't think it should have made any difference to him."
The owner, not surprisingly, saw it a little differently.
"Ruly told me, 'I'm not sure those offers (from other teams) are out there. Show me,' " Tug said. "I said, 'No. If we can't agree, then I'm going to go out there and I when I talk to them I'm going to sign with them.' I said, 'I'm not going through this all winter long. I'm not going to be miserable all winter working this thing out. That's it. Boom.'"
At that point, McGraw said, if the Phillies didn't act he was prepared to sell his services to the highest bidder. "I was going to go for money," he said frankly. "I wasn't going to use. the city, the location or anything else (as a factor). I was going for top dollar if I left here. Top dollar.
But the Phillies did act, and the deal they offered – "better than people think," Tug said – kept him in the city that has taken him to its heart.
For that, we should all be happy. Not that baseball wouldn't have survived in Philadelphia without. McGraw. It has survived, and flourished, despite the loss of Simmons and Foxx, of Alexander and Klein, of Roberts and Simmons, and it will survive when McGraw leaves.
But let's face it: Without Tug it won't be as much fun.
December 13, 1980
No wheeling, no dealing for Phils
By Jayson Stark, Inquirer Staff Writer
DALLAS – Baseball's interleague trading deadline fluttered past the Phillies last night like a Phil Niekro knuckleball.
No wheels, no deals, hardly a rumor left on. The Phillies did more swinging and missing this week than they did in their first look at John Pacella.
When the winter meetings came to an end last night, Greg Luzinski was still a Phillie. Randy Lerch was also still a Phillie. Ron Reed, Dickie Noles and Keith Moreland were all still Phillies, too.
A whole lot of people were still not Phillies, as well.
Sixto Lezcano did not become a Phillie yesterday, although he did become a Cardinal. Don Baylor did not become a Phillie, but then a California Angels official said he was never close to becoming a Phillie in the first place.
Nobody named Cruz became a Phillie, although the second Cruz of the meetings did get traded yesterday (Heity-Hector, from Cincinnati to the Cubs). And Gary Matthews didn't become a Phillie, although the Braves would still like to talk about him.
It was one of those weeks. But then, Phils vice president Paul Owens still has six months to make deals within his own league. And there is a second, six-week interleague trading period coming up in a couple of months. So a wasted week in Dallas doesn't necessarily mean the Phils are planning to stand pat, although that isn't impossible.
"I wouldn't be afraid to open (with this club) tomorrow if I had to," Owens said late last night. "I didn't start out to make 18 trades. We have a second (interleague) period where we can do stuff. And within our league we can still get together. I'm not going to be stampeded into bargaining the future of the club just to make a trade."
One thing this week definitely indicated was that the Phillies are much more interested in trading Luzinski than they had let on earlier.
The Mets and Cubs inquired about him yesterday. But the conversation stayed very general. The White Sox liked him once, but their ownership soap opera has canceled that.
Before Owens trades Luzinski, anyway, he would like to deal Lerch, Reed and possibly some kids for another outfielder.
The Mets, who dropped out of the bidding for free-agent lefthander Billy Travers, have interest in Lerch. But they don't want to add either of their prize relievers, Neil Allen or Jeff Reardon, to any package involving Joel Youngblood. Detroit likes Lerch. But Owens can't find anything on the Tigers he wants.
Toronto was the last American League team Owens negotiated with. But the Blue Jays still insisted on untouchable minor-league pitcher Mark Davis. So that never worked out.
Actually, the guy who killed the Phillies' chances of making a big deal or two this week was not Owens or Luzinski or Lerch or anyone else on the payroll. It was a former St. Louis Cardinal named Ted Simmons.
If Simmons had not balked at moving from catcher to first base in St. Louis, Whitey Herzog never would have looked around for somewhere to trade him. And if Herzog had never looked around for somewhere to trade Simmons, he never would have made yesterday's seven-player deal with Milwaukee.
That deal, the biggest of the week, sent Simmons, pitcher Pete Vuckovich and reliever Rollie Fingers to Milwaukee for Lezcano, pitcher Lary Sorensen, a hot outfield prospect named David Green. and minor-league pitcher Dave LaPoint.
But if the Brewers had not been able to make that deal, they probably could have worked something out with the Phillies for Lezcano, Milwaukee general manager Harry Dal-ton said yesterday.
"Well, we'd sure have been friendly for the next six hours, I'll tell you that," Dalton said late yesterday afternoon.
Dalton never exactly turned down the Phillies' proposal of Lerch, Noles, Reed and Scott Munninghoff for Lezcano. He just had that offer from the Cardinals that he couldn't refuse. Once he worked out a financial inducement for Simmons to waive his veto rights yesterday afternoon, that was about it for the Phillies.
"If we could not have made the Cardinals deal, the Phillies are the next club we would have talked to," Dalton said. "We talked to them (Thursday) and put something together, but I told them not to hold up on us."
The Simmons trade makes Milwaukee a more imposing force in the American League East. But it seems to have undone a lot of the good things the Cardinals had accomplished earlier this week.
They gave up Simmons, one of the best and most consistent offensive players in baseball. And in return, they got Lezcano, a fine all-around outfielder but a guy who did hit.229 this year.
They also swapped Vuckovich, their most dependable starting pitcher, for Sorensen (12-10, 3.67 this year). And that leaves them with at least as many starting-pitching problems as they had before.
Plus, they lost Fingers, who could have helped them in two ways – for what he accomplished himself, and for all the innings he could have taken away from Bruce Sutter.
"Yeah, well, there were other considerations," said Herzog. "Two of the guys I gave up (Fingers and Vuckovich) I couldn't sign. If I keep them I'm not going to be able to sign them in a year anyway.
"At least Sorensen I'm able to control for three more years. And I think so much of David Green that the deal would not have been made without him."
But Green is still a year or two away. And now so, perhaps, are the Cardinals.
NOTES: Other deals: Ex-Phil Jerry Martin, outfielder Jesus Figueroa and a player to be named went from Chicago Cubs to San Francisco for pitcher Phil Nastu and infielder Joe Strain.... Atlanta traded pitcher Doyle Alexander to San Francisco for pitcher John Montefusco and rookie outfielder Craig Landis.... Cincinnati traded outfielder Hector Cruz to the Cubs for outfielder Mike Vail.... The Expos re-signed free agent Willie Montanez to a two-year, $600,000 contract. Montanez has played for seven teams since 1975.... Montreal also acquired lefthanded pitcher Richard Wortham (4-7,5.97) from the White Sox for infielder Tony Bernazard.
December 16, 1980
Phillies boost most tickets by 50 cents
When the World Champion Phillies open their 1981 home season April 13 against the Pirates it will cost most fans more to enter Veterans Stadium than it did this year.
Club officials yesterday announced a 50-cent increase in the price of most seats for the 1981 season. Box seats on the 200 level will go to $7 from $6.50. Box seats on the 300 and 500 levels will go to $6 from $5.50 and reserved seats on the 600 level will go to $5 from $4.50.
There has been no increase in the price of 700-level reserved seats, staying at $4; for adult general admission, $2.50, and children under 14 general admission, 50 cents.
The Phillies start the season at Cincinnati, April 8.
December 21, 1980
Mauch bides time, waiting for offer he can’t refuse
By Allen Lewis, On Baseball
Gene Mauch never kidded himself that he'd be able to be happy playing golf seven days a week. The former Phillies manager, who quit as skipper of the Twins late last season, is merely waiting for the right offer to come back into baseball. In the meantime, he's living in his fairway condominium on the ninth hole of the Sunrise Country Club at Rancho Mirage, Calif., and staying in shape chasing the little white ball.
"I just don't want a job where I'm going through the motions," he said. "I want to feel I have a chance to win. I want my players to feel they have a chance."
So far, Mauch says, he has turned down three managerial offers, two of which also included being a general manager. He also admits the collapse of the 1964 Phillies, who blew a 6½-game lead with 12 games left, still haunts him, that he has kept a list of the mistakes he made then, determined they won't happen again.
If something doesn't develop by March, you have to feel apathy for Mauch's lovely wife, Nina Lee. Not being in spring training for the first time in 36 years might just make living with Gene akin to sharing an abode with a hungry saber-tooth tiger.
•
How quickly things can change in baseball is demonstrated by what has happened to lefthander Randy Lerch and righthander Jim Wright. Just four years ago, those two Phillies-owned players were regarded as two of the best young pitchers in the game, headed for almost certain stardom.
Now, Lerch is looked upon as a big question mark, a pitcher who, although physically sound, may never be more than a journeyman. And Wright, who suffered two major arm injuries, was removed from the Phillies 40-man roster before the recent major league meetings. Left unprotected, Wright was taken by the Royals in the draft for $25,000. In July 1977, before his first arm problem, you couldn't have bought him for 10 times that much. Both will be only 26 when the 1981 season begins and, despite their difficulties, have to be rated "worth taking a gamble on."
NOTES: Expos catcher Gary Carter, a fine receiver who knocked in 101 runs, is a Pete Rose-type hustler and who finished second in the 1980 Most Valuable Player balloting, has to be the game's most underpaid player. He has two years left on a five-year contract that pays him $200,000 a year, and is seeking an extension at a much higher figure. The only regular National League catchers who make less are Bruce Benedict of the Braves and Ed Ott and Steve Nocosia, who split the job with the Pirates. Alan Ashby, Milt May and Biff Pocoroba are among those making more.... It would seem that a world championship team would have a most attractive home Grapefruit League schedule, but the Phillies will not only play more road (13) than home (12) games in spring training, but have none at home with the Royals, Astros, Dodgers or Yankees, all of whom have been opponents in past springs.... Reds pitcher Tom Seaver said he came up with a new pitch last season – the wish pitch. "I was wishing they'd hit it at someone," he explained.... Todd Demeter – whose father, Don, once hit over.300 and knocked in more than 100 runs for the Phillies and was then traded in the deal that brought pitcher Jim Bunning from the Tigers – played for Greensboro, N.C., in the Class A Western Carolinas League last season after signing for a $200,000 bonus from the Yankees. He's a power-hitting first baseman.
•
Answer to last week's Trivia Question – which stumped everyone: The last team to use eight different pitchers in 40 or more games in one season was the Chicago Cubs in 1974. The eight pitchers were Oscar Zamora (55 games), Ken Frailing (55), Dave LaRoche (49), Burt Hooton (48), Bill Bonham (44), Jim Todd (43), Rick Reuschel (41) and Ray Burris (40).
Trivia Question of the Week: Name the last major league team whose pitchers led the league three years in a row in shutouts.
December 23, 1980
Del Unser signs pact with Phils
Outfielder returns to fold for 2 years
By George Shirk, Inquirer Staff Writer
Del Unser, the Phillies' 36-year-old pinch-hitting outfielder whose last 11 at-bats in 1980 catapulted him to playoff and World Series stardom, yesterday signed a two-year contract with the Phils, making him the second Phillie-turned-free-agent to sign back with the club in the last month.
With the signing of Unser and the earlier signing of relief pitcher Tug McGraw, the Phillies today stand with the same personnel that won them the World Championship.
Unser agreed to the two-year pact after his agent, Dick Moss, and director of player personnel Paul Owens reached agreement on contract terms.
The financial end of the deal was not disclosed by the Phillies, and Unser, in a telephone interview from his home in Moraga, Calif., declined to comment on the terms of the contract.
"The thing that pleases me most," he said, "is that the contract is with Philadelphia. First of all, we are the champs, and I know I helped a little bit in that. Secondly, I enjoy the people of Philadelphia – the fans, and the people with the club."
Unser said he had made no progress in hatching a deal with four other clubs. He said he and his agent "had a couple of conversations" with both the Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates, and said he talked briefly with the Milwaukee Brewers and the San Francisco Giants.
It was the second time in his career that Unser had opted for free agency. After the 1978 season, in which he was with the Montreal Expos, he declared himself a free agent but was signed by no one.
In the spring of 1979, he turned up at the Phillies' spring training camp as, in his words, "an insurance policy against injuries," was signed and became a Phillie for the second time. He had been a Phillie in 1973, but was traded to the Mets in 1974 in the deal that brought McGraw to Philadelphia.
In the National League playoffs last October, after a so-so season (.264), Unser came off the bench to collect a game-tying single and a 10th-inning double in the crucial fifth game against Houston, scoring the run that won the pennant.
They were big hits, but they were the only two that he got in five trips to the plate in the playoffs.
In the World Series, Unser hit an eighth-inning double to spark a four-run outburst against Kansas City that won Game 2 for Philadelphia, 6-4, and he finished the Series by going 3-for-6.
With Unser going the free-agent route, the Phillies sought to protect themselves by drafting outfielder Jim Dwyer of the Boston Red Sox in the 1980 free-agent draft, but the Phillies were notified Sunday that Dwyer was to sign a three-year contract with the Baltimore Orioles. Shortly after that, the Phils announced the signing of Unser.
The timing of the Unser signing was, to Unser, "no big deal."
"I'm sure Paul was looking for some kind of deal during the winter meetings," he said, noting that the Phillies did not make a single deal during the meetings earlier this month.
As a pinch hitter the past two years, Unser has collected 26 hits, 20 RBIs and has hit.310.
Unser said he had one meeting with Owens immediately after the World Series, but had not talked with the Phillies until last weekend.
"This was put together just a couple of days ago," he said.
"The bottom line," Unser said, "is that I'm very well pleased with being back in Philadelphia, where I can be with a team that I can help."
December 26, 1980
December 28, 1980
1980 – It Was The Year Things Changed
What kind of year was it? It was a year a lot of things went right (Far right, some Democrats would say.) And some things went wrong. But little remained unchanged – unless, sadly, it would be the status of the hostages in Iran.
One event, though, definitely set the year apart. For the first time in the history of Western man, the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series. Not only that, but as December arrived the Eagles were offering me prospect that tney would equal the accomplishment of their Veterans Stadium co-tenants. And earlier in the year, across the street at the Spectrum, the Flyers and Sixers had reached the championship series of their respective recreational activities.
In the cases of the city's hockey and basketball franchises, though, finishing second wasn't good enough for the urban peasantry that makes up a substantial portion of Philadelphia sports fandom. They churlishly demanded Unconditional Triumph, and were abetted by some evidence that the Sixers and Flyers had snatched defeat from - the jaws of victory in the course of their championship tests.
This brand of boorishness in the stands continued, per usual, into the baseball season, resulting in a renewed falling out between the fans and some Phillies, notably shortstop Larry Bowa, who implied unpleasantly that the fans of Philadelphia deserved a return to some of the less thrilling seasons of yesteryear (1971 Phillies, 59-97; 1972 Eagles, 2-11-1; 1973 Sixers, 9-73; 1970 Flyers, 17-35-24). The serfs in the bleachers, as you can well imagine, didn't take kindly to that sort of guff from someone being paid a six-figure Salary to participate in a children's game. They booed Bowa right through the Series (during which he hit .375).
So what did it all mean? They were, after all, just games. Some elitist aristocrats are probably even now sniffing at our choice of sports to lead off our review of 1980. But we're right, and the elitists are wrong. The third strike Tug McGraw zoomed past Willie Wilson to end the Series united the region in euphoria as nothing since Washington's troops bayoneted the Hessians at Trenton.
Some social scientists have suggested that professional teams are substitutes for armies in the psyche of modern city-dwellers, and when our little armies beat other metropolises' little armies, we pile up rich stockpiles of psychic rewards in lieu of tangible booty.
The season had other military parallels. The Phillies and their fans, like generals who are always getting ready to fight the previous war, kept looking to the west for the enemy, to the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny where the barbarian brigands of Pittsburgh have their base. But this time the threat was lurking to the north, on the AstroTurf-carpeted tundra of Montreal's Olympic Stadium.
The Phillies mushed past the Montreal Expos, then represented the embattled northeast in Houston, the silicone-studded buckle of the Sun Belt, and there we whipped their Astros. The Phillies then blew the Royals back to Kansas City.
At last, with the war over, came the love feast Larry Bowa took it all back. So did the fans. Using another metaphor, Tom Boswell of the Washington Post described it as "the kind of loving reconciliation that comes after years of marital friction."
