Moreland’s clutch hit puts Phils in first…

By Rusty Pray of the Courier-Post

ST. LOUIS – Suddenly ,'the Phillies are in first place, leading – if not controlling – the National League East.

They assumed an advantage of a scant one-half game over Montreal by taking a taut 3-2 win in 1 0 innings over the Cardinals last night while the Pirates where beating the Expos.

The Phillies' win could easily be termed miraculous, so many and varied were the components of its creation. Indeed, it seemed that destiny had singled out the Phillies as its choice to lead the anarchist East.

KEITH MORELAND drove in the winning run in the top of the 10th with a pinch double that would have given a tennis linesman pause for thought, so close was it to the right field foul line. Steve Carlton won his 23rd, but only after tiptoeing through tight spots in four of the nine innings he pitched. And first baseman Pete Rose, who went 0-for-5 at the plate, made himself the game's savior with two stunning plays in the field.

Moreland, who later declared his double the "biggest hit" of his short career, sliced a 2-2 pitch off losing reliever Kim Seaman to the opposite field, scoring Larry Bowa with the game-winner. Bowa, who was 3-for-4, began the 10th with a single and was advanced to second by a Bob Boone bunt. Moreland then hit for Carlton.

"He (Seaman) started me off with a breaking ball, then he threw me a change-up that I really pulled off of," said an exuberant Moreland. "He threw me another slider down, then tried the run a fastball away from me. It was a nasty pitch and I thought then he would throw me another breaking ball. But it was a change-up and I was fortunate enough to hit it where they weren't.

"Since I was little, I've wanted to be on a championship team in professional baseball. And I think we're there. I think we took it (first place) over for the last time. I think it's ours the rest of the way."

THIRD BASEMAN Mike Schmidt, having been through a few more pennant races than Moreland, was understandably more cautious in his approach to the 13 games that remain.

"It doesn't feel different to me, whether you're a half in or a half out," he said with a smile. "If the world ends tomorrow, then I guess we win the division.

"But our prospects are good. We're healthy, we're keyed up and the schedule favors us even though we do have to go to Montreal (for the final three games of the year).

"The last 10, 12 games will seem like an eternity, but all we can do is play our hearts out one game at a time and let the chips fall where they may."

SCHMIDT slammed an awesome home run with one out in the fourth off St. Louis starter Pete Vuckovich to tie the game, 1-1. The homer, Schmidt's 42nd of the year and third in three days, cleared the wall in dead center field some 414 feet from home plate. It landed about halfway up the rows of bleachers beyond the wall. It was the first home run to that part of Busch Stadium this season.

"That," said Schmidt, "was a good one. I've never hit a ball out of here to dead center. When I hit it, I thought it had a chance, but I didn't think it would go because every time I hit the ball here to center it gets run down."

Rose first protected the 2-1 lead, then saved a loss with his glove. With two out and a runner on second in the seventh, Rose somehow gloved a hard ground ball off the bat of Ken Oberkfell that hit a seam in the AstroTurf and bounced wickedly toward Rose's head.

In the eighth, with a run in, the bases loaded and two out, Rose dug a Schmidt throw out of the dirt to just nail Tommy Herr. Herr had hit a twisting grounder that Schmidt had to back away to get, ruining any chance for a force at another bag.

"HE (Herr) was out, too," said Rose. "I was waiting for the ball over the bag and I think he slowed down a little so he wouldn't run into me. I think that was the difference. He could have planted me into right field."

Said an admiring Schmidt: "I got into a funny position, so the best I could to do was underhand the ball to first. I wasn't in the right position to throw to second. I had the easy part, Pete did the rest. The man went 0-for-5 and won the game for us."

And put the Phillies a half step in front of the Expos m the mad East race.

PHIL UPS - Phils got a break in eighth when George Hendrick bounced a ground rule double over the right-center field wall... Had it not gone over the wall, two runs would have scored to give the Cards a 3-2 lead... Last time Phils were alone in first was Sept. 4... Carlton beat Cards for sixth time, becoming the first Phillies pitcher to go 6-0 against a team since Robin Roberts beat the Brooklyn Dodgers six times in 1952... Bob Forsch, who was scheduled to start tonight's game for the Cards, left for his home in Sacramento, Calif., because his mother died last night... Al Olmsted replaces Forsch as Bob Walk's opponent.

Philadelphia Sportswriter Eulogizes Colleague Harry Hoffman

Reprinted from the Philadelphia Daily News

By Bill Conlin

Bill Conlin, Margate resident and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, wrote the following tribute to fellow sportswriter Harry Hoffman.

CHICAGO – This is for Harry Hoffman, who was the sports columnist for the Atlantic City Press.

Let's get the ballgame out of the way quickly. Phillies 7, Cubs 3. Montreal's lead is down to a slender half-game. Dick Ruthven won No. 16 with professional relief help from Ron Reed. Greg Luzinski hit a homer. So did Mike Schmidt, who slammed No. 41 in his last 1980 at-bat in Wrigley Field, a park he treats like a telephone booth.

Harry Hoffman never missed an assignment in a newspaper career which spanned 29 years. He always came to the ballpark early, despite the hour drive from the shore. He hung in there. Once he was robbed at knifepoint in a Connie Mack Stadium phone booth while dictating his game story. "You'll have to excuse me a second." he told the Press rewrite man. "I'm being robbed." "OK." the rewrite man replied, "but don’t forget, we're on deadline."

I was worried when Harry wasn't in the press box for the national anthem yesterday, but he had mentioned that a guy he used to be friendly with in Atlantic City had given him a call. I thought maybe he was sitting down in the stands with his old friend.

The worry increased when he didn’t show up by the second inning. It was getaway day and I knew he had planned to write a column before the game so he wouldn't get jammed up against his morning paper deadline after a 7:45 flight to St Louis.

Guys who travel with athletic teams on a regular basis have a recurring nightmare. Nobody wants to have the big one in a hotel room. Nobody wants the indignity of being found by a maid or a hotel security guy two days after the team checked out. So we quietly look after each other. I remember Rich Ashburn calling me in San Diego after a wearying flight from Philly. The hotel had failed to deliver the wake-up call I had left before the game and my body was still functioning on Eastern Daylight Time. Whitey told me it was the second inning and I better get started for the park.

So, with rising misgivings, I asked the hotel operator to ring Harry Hoffman's room. And when she put the call through without comment, the negative vibes were overpowering. When a ballclub checks out, hotels normally pull the folios for everybody. She should have told me that Mr. Hoffman had checked out. His room didn't answer, so I asked for the bell captain and explained my concern. Would he have the room checked and call me back?

It was the top of the third. The game was tied, 1-1, and the phone next to me in the press box jangled. It rang just as Greg Luzinski launched a towering two-out homer into the bleachers in left-center.

LIFE HAD BEEN too short for Harry Hoffman. He was dead at 56. He is survived by wife Barbara, daughter Lori, 27, and sons Bruce, 25, and Keith, 20.

Life had been shorter still for his eldest son. Gary, struck and killed by a truck last summer. Gary was bicycling home from a doubles tennis match in which he had partnered his dad. He was 27, a devoted conservationist and a brilliant engineer out of MIT.

Harry Hoffman had his son cremated and scattered his ashes in the surf off Ventnor City. Nobody ever had a simpler or more loving funeral.

Harry Hoffman had three great passions in life.

He loved to play tennis, despite painfully arthritic knees.

He loved racetracks – when Atlantic City opened, he was the first newspaper handicapper there. Hairbreadth Harry was the name they put on his selections. For years, he covered the races in the afternoon and the Phillies home games at night, a brutal schedule.

He loved modern jazz.

I'd like to tell his tennis and racetrack friends, the people who knew him at the Vet. his wife and three surviving children that Harry went out the way he would have wanted to go.

When the Phillies got here from Pittsburgh Thursday afternoon. Harry made his executive decision of the day. "I'd like to go out to Arlington Park," he said, "but it's a little late and it's a gorgeous day. Let's play tennis."

We went to the McClurg Sports center, three blocks from the hotel. His knees have been so bad the last couple of years that when he played singles, he asked his opponent to let him play the entire court, including the doubles boundaries. Doubles was his game. He played doubles five days a week, mostly on the courts next to his condominium near Atlantic City Race Track. He played the game with boyish enthusiasm, as if each match was his first. His strokes were wristy from years of winter squash playing, but Harry knew the shades and nuances of doubles. And he battled you.

We only played an hour at McClurg. He said he was tired after the early flight from Pittsburgh.

The next night we had dinner at an Italian restaurant on Rush St. named Armando's. He drove the cab driver crazy, twice telling the guy we were going to Armand's, twice to Armando's. When the cabbie pulled up at Agostino's and shrugged we knew we were in trouble. But we finally got there and the meal was excellent. Afterward, he fulfilled another passion. We caught the 11 o'clock show of bop legend Dizzy Gillespie at the Jazz Showplace.

Sometime between midnight Saturday night and 2 p.m. yesterday afternoon, Harry Hoffman, a good man, died.

Life went on. The Phillies went about their grim pursuit of the Expos. Tug McGraw felt badly. Harry bought him a drink Friday night. Paul Owens felt badly. He bought Hoffman a drink after Friday's game. Most of the Phillies didn't really know who Harry Hoffman was, though. He was a guy from a newspaper which only covers the home games, unless something like a crucial trip in a pennant race comes up. This was the only road trip he made all season.

I knew him. He covered me when I was competing in beach patrol rowing and swimming events at the South Jersey shore. That was more years ago than I care to remember, a half-dozen years before I decided I might like to write for newspapers someday.

I knew him. Back when caddies at country clubs made more money than small-paper sportswriters, Harry Hoffman supplemented his meager income by hustling ice cream on the Ventnor and Margate beaches during the day.

"Hustling" does not accurately sum up the job. Only World War II vets could get a vending license and the rules were ridiculous. A man could only sell as much as he could carry, then he had to walk his empty box back to his starting point to pick up fresh ice cream. The boxes weighed about 45 pounds each and Hoffman would get around the silly ordinance by carrying three of them.

I still remember him plowing through the soft sand in shimmering heat like a bow-legged camel, sun visor jammed down over his eyes.

I was 18 the humid day I approached him – I didn't even know his name – and asked how the hell he did it.

"Pal," he said, "the money's better than what I make as a sportswriter. And a man could do a helluva lot worse than walk along the beach on a beautiful summer day.

He knew how to smell the roses.

History win record that on Sept. 21, 1980, the Phillies beat the Cubs, 7-3.

Let me add a footnote: On the same day, life ended for Harry Hoffman, a colleague, a friend, a decent human being.

It was the first assignment he ever missed. At 56, he was terribly cheated.

Phils Win; Move Into 1^st Place

ST. LOUIS (AP) Pinch-hitter Keith Moreland's 10th-inning double scored Larry Bowa from second base to give the Philadelphia Phillies a 3-2 victory the St. Louis Cardinals Monday night.

Bowa had singled off reliever Kim Seaman, 3-2, to lead off the 10th and was sacrificed to second by Bob Boone. Moreland's RBI was his sixth as a pinch-hitter this season.

The victory boosted Philadelphia into first place in the National League East by a half-game over Montreal, which lost at Pittsburgh 4-2.

Steve Carlton, 23-8, was the winner with 10th-inning relief help from Tug McGraw, who recorded his 18th save.

Mike Schmidt's fourth-inning homer off Pete Vuckovich, his 42nd this season, cleared the center field wall at the 414-foot mark and lifted Philadelphia into a 1-1 tie. The third baseman has hit in seven consecutive games and it was his eighth RBI in the last five games.

Philadelphia took a 2-1 lead in the fifth. Bowa led off with a single, advanced to third on Bob Boone's single and scored when Carlton hit into a double play.

The Cardinals tied the game in the eighth when Garry Templeton and Keith Hernandez led off with singles. Templeton scored from second when George Hendrick hit a ground rule double to right.

Carlton intentionally walked Ken Reitz to load the bases, but got out of the inning when Keith Smith grounded to third.

The Cardinals grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first when Ken Oberkfell led off with a triple and scored on Templeton's grounder.

The Phillies wind up this road trip tonight with their final meeting of the season against the Cardinals. They have three games left on the road: a season-ending series in Montreal on Oct. 3, 4, 5.

They have nine games remaining at home. The Expos are in Philadelphia for next weekend's series on Sept. 26, 27 and 28.

Services Set for Hoffman; Sportswriter for The Press

MAYS LANDING - Services for Press Sportswriter Hoffman, 56, who died unexpectedly Sunday, will be held at noon Thursday at the Plum Funeral Home, Ventnor Heights.

Jacob Snyder, long-time friend of the family from New York City, will officiate.

Hoffman was found dead in his room at the Hotel, Chicago, while on a Press assignment to cover the Phillies-Chicago Cubs game.

A graduate of Atlantic City High School and Rutgers University, Hoffman joined The Press in 1951. His column, "Tales of Hoffman," was probably the most widely read column in South Jersey. He also conducted a weekly radio sports talk and celebrity show.

A World War II veteran, he was member of the Thoroughbred Racing Association, the Philadelphia Sportswriters Association, the former Haddon Hall Squash Club, the New Jersey Sports Writers, National Baseball Writers associations, and similar associations for football, hockey and basketball.

Hoffman had coached Little League teams in Ventnor for many years, was involved with Biddy Basketball League and was a former director of the Ventnor Summer Recreation program. A tennis enthusiast, he played almost daily.

Surviving are: his wife, Barbara; two sons, Bruce of Linwood and Keith of Mays Landing; and a daughter, Lori Hoffman of Bellmawr.

Friends may call at the funeral home one hour prior to services. Private burial will be in Laurel Memorial Park, Pomona.

Family requests memorial donations to the American Heart Association, South Jersey Shore Chapter.