My father lit the spark of my interest in baseball, but the
1993 Phillies fueled the flames.
We all like to pretend that we are not fair weather fans. We
support our team no matter what, but the truth remains that when “our guys” are
winning, we cheer louder, we pay more attention and we are much more willing to
spend some of our hard-earned money to attend their games.
What made the ’93 Phillies such a great team to watch was
that no one saw them coming. The squad didn’t include a single superstar; just
a bunch of scruffy, mullet-wearing goofballs. Hell, their highest paid player
was their closer, Mitch Williams, who was the wildest and bushiest of them all.
My dad and I watched in awe from the very beginning, as the
Phillies swept their opening series and jumped out to a 9-3 start. They carried
that .750 winning percentage into mid-May, and I remember thinking that this
team was really something special following a win on Mother’s Day when Mariano
Duncan slugged a game-winning grand slam against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Speaking of my dear old mother, not even she nor my sister
could avoid the Philly fever gripping the region, so they joined my dad and I
for our first game of the year against the San Francisco Giants.
I paid close attention to this four-game series because to
this point in the season, the Giants were the best team in baseball. They also
had the best player, moody superstar Barry Bonds, who would go on to swipe his
third Most Valuable Player award in four years. In our eyes, this was the
Phillies’ biggest test of the season and gave us a look at how they might stack
up against a postseason opponent.
We went to the third game of the series, and the ugliness of
the first two games didn’t fill us with confidence. San Francisco dropped a few
touchdowns on the Phils, outscoring them 28-10 (the only bright spot being
rookie Kevin Stocker’s first major league home run the day after getting called
up to the bigs).
If the boys in red pinstripes were going to right the ship,
they would have to battle both the Giants and the elements. The two lopsided
losses had mercifully taken place at night, but this Saturday game took place
in the afternoon on the hottest day of the year.
I will never forget how my mom brought a cooler full of ice
into Veterans Stadium. She insisted we rub our arms and face with ice cubes
throughout the game to stay cool. Thinking back, I’m sure sunscreen would have
provided better protection for our skin, but when you’re 10 years old, mother
always knows best.
The beginning of the game featured an exciting
back-and-forth. The Giants scored a run in the first and two in the second, but
the Phillies matched them each time. Philly left fielder Milt Thompson provided
the early fireworks with a rare two-run shot. The celebration in the crowd was
brief, however, when it was discovered that the ball hit a young girl in the
head. She had to leave the stadium with her parents,
but from what I remember, she wasn’t seriously injured and had a story to tell
for the rest of her life, I’m sure.
The Phillies brought back the smiles with a run in the
bottom of the sixth, taking their first lead of the entire series. The lead
would stick thanks to an incredible moment that also remains a humorous one
between my parents and I.
Wes Chamberlain had taught me two years earlier that even
the little guy could be a hero. They didn’t come much smaller than Mickey
Morandini.
The lanky, second baseman would emerge as one of Philly’s
better hitters in the mid-1990s, but to this point, his only claim to fame was
an unassisted triple play in 1992 (amazingly, one of his three victims was
Bonds, who was in his last year as a Pittsburgh Pirate).
The left-handed hitting Morandini stepped to the plate with
the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth. The way he always choked up on
the bat, he needed the fattest of pitches to drive the ball, but he must have
gotten one. All of a sudden, I saw the small, white dot fly over the
right-field fence just inside the foul pole for a game-changing grand slam.
Everyone in Veterans Stadium lost
their minds, except for my poor father. A few minutes before Morandini’s blast,
he had succumbed to the call of nature. When he returned to us, befuddled by
the sudden change in score, we gleefully told him what happened, adding salt to
his wound with a, “We can’t believe you missed that!”
When my mom and I bring this up with knowing smiles on our
faces, my dad always beats us to punch. “Yeah, I know. I was in the bathroom.”
There was every reason to believe we were good luck charms
for the Phillies that day. It was the only game in the four-game set that they
won, and the only one in which the Giants didn’t score in double digits.
Bonds particularly faltered in our presence. He went 0-for-3,
got thrown out at home plate and dropped a foul ball. We had a great view of
that miscue from our seats along the left-field line. The seats weren’t
anywhere near the field, but my dad and I pretended Bonds could hear our taunts.
Looking back, the best thing about this win was that it came
from the unlikeliest of sources. Between the two of them, Thompson and
Morandini amassed a grand total of seven homers during the 1993 season. By
comparison, Pete “Inky” Incaviglia (a fellow platoon outfielder with Thompson)
deposited eight noggin nailers into the stands in the month of August alone.
Despite all the magic we witnessed that day, it came as no
surprise to me. Though there was plenty of season left, I had bought into this
team. However it happened, they were going to win.
Even if it meant forcing Dad out of the room whenever the Phils loaded
the bases.
