Allentown Morning Call - September 13, 1980
Phillies lose both ends of doubleheader
1st game fun… for Cards
By Ted Meixell, Call Sports Writer
PHILADELPHIA - It was fitting that fun-loving Pete Vuckovich was the St. Louis Cardinals' pitcher in the first game of last night's twinighter against the Phils at the Vet. It was a laugher. Unfortunately for the pennant-hungry Phils, the joke was on them.
Vuckovich, who hurls at a .727 clip (8-3 lifetime) against the Phillies but is rather ordinary (45-40) against the rest of the National League, shut out Dallas Green's bunch for five innings and cruised to a 7-4 win with relief help from John Urrea.
The game assumed laugher status and really became official when Leon Durham curled his first major league grand slam (and his eighth home run of the season) around the foul pole in left for a 7-0 Cardinal lead in the fifth inping, although the Phils teased their loyal and vocal followers with back-to-back, 2-run rallies in the sixth and seventh.
Ken Oberkfell led off the Cards' fifth with a single off reliever Dickie Noles, who was forced into action when starter and loser Bob Walk, 10-5, was hit in the leg by a drive from the bat of Vuckovich. When Noles walked both Keith Hernandez and Ted Simmons, Green summoned Warren Brusstar from the bullpen.
Brusstar came within a whisker of being a hero – but he became the goat instead. He promptly fanned George Hen-drick on three pitches and slipped two Suick strikes past Durham. Durham took the next pitch – barely outside – and fouled off a pitch before stroking a high, outside offering just over the fence in left.
Vuckovich, 11-9, breezed into the sixth with a 2-hitter, but singles by Bake Mc-Bride and Mike Schmidt and a sacrifice fly by Greg Luzinski produced 1 run and an infield single by Garry Maddox another.
The Phils made it 7-4 in the seventh on a pinch single by Greg Gross, a double by Pete Rose and a single by Schmidt. Cards' Manager Red Schoendienst yanked Vuckovich at that point and gave the ball to Urrea, who was promptly greeted by a Luzinski single. But Urrea got Keith Moreland on a soft fly to right to snuff out the threat.
St. Louis grabbed a 2-0 lead off Walk in the first. Oberkfell led off with a single, stole second and scored on a base nit by Simmons, who took second on the throw to the plate. Hendrick got Simmons home and his 100th RBI with a flare to right.
Durham made it 3-0 when he singled to lead off the fourth, stole second and scored on two long flies – the latter by Ken Reitz.
The Phils – and what was slowly becoming a large crowd – weren't laughing when it was over.
Phillies lose both ends of doubleheader
Phillies fall 2 games back
By Ted Meixell, Call Sports Writer
PHILADELPHIA – Phillies broadcaster Richie Ashburn, when he has a hunch a baserunner is about to try to steal a base likes to say to his sidekick, Harry Kalas, "He looks runnerish, Harry." When a batter steps into the box with obvious relish, it's, "He's hitterish."
Along about the eighth inning of last night's doubleheader – against the Cardinals about the time the Phils squandered the third of their four good opportunities to salvage a split – he might have turned to Kalas and said, "This thing looks sweepish."
Sweepish it was. St. Louis, having already put a 7-4 win of the opener in its pocket, scored five times in the top of the 11th off relievers Ron Reed (the loser, now 7-5), Randy Lerch and Warren Brusstar for a 5-0 win that dropped the second-place Phils a full two games behind the Montreal Expos, who hung a 1-0 defeat on the Pirates in Montreal. Pittsburgh is 4½ back.
Ken Reitz began the fateful 11th, greeting Reed with a double off the wall in right. The biggest play of the game ensued. Card manager Red Schoendienst allowed winning reliever John Littlefield, 5-3, bat for himself. He popped up a bunt attempt in front of the plate, but catcher Bob Boone and third baseman Mike Schmidt, either of whom could have made the play, got their signals crossed and it fell between them, pinch-runner Mike Ramsey getting to third and Littlefield to first.
With a 2-0 count on Ken Oberkfell, Lerch replaced Reed and completed the walk to load the bases. But Tony Scott singled up the middle for the game-winner and Keith Hernandez ended all suspense with a bases-clearing triple to right-center. George Hendrick's single off Brusstar supplied an anticlimactic insurance run and the Phils went out in the bottom of the inning despite singles by Boone and Larry Bowa.
Philadelphia wasted masterful pitching performances by starter Nino Espinosa and reliever Tug McGraw. Espinosa, who doesn't look like he throws hard enough to bruise a peach, taunted the Cards with his assortment of slow stuff and sharp control through seven innings, allowing just four hits. McGraw. still on a personal hot streak, set down all nine batters he faced from the eighth through the 10th.