May 21, 1995: Phillies vs. New York Mets

I would be willing to wager my entire collection of autographed baseballs that there is nothing cooler a 12-year-old kid could wear to a major league game than a Little League uniform.

You look just a little more important than the other kids in their normal threads. Other parents think it’s utterly adorable. It also brings a smile to the faces of the players on the field to see a child following – albeit distantly and unlikely – in their footsteps.

That cool kid was me on this sunny day in May. I got up bright and early to don my Orioles uniform (wonderful foreshadowing, as I would soon become a fan of the American League team 75 miles to the south) for the purpose of team photos. I loved my Little League team. I got along extremely well with my teammates, which was a refreshing change from the daily torment I received at school. I was also proud to be the third baseman, a position I picked as an homage to the best Phillies player of all time, Mike Schmidt.

To the relief of my dad and I, the photo session went much quicker than expected. That meant we didn’t have to cancel our plans to go to that afternoon’s Phillies game with his co-worker, Greg, who had two extra tickets. That’s always the best way to go to a ballgame. It’s typically unexpected and it’s like finding treasure. I also chose the game over attending the birthday party of my best friend at the time, Brian, but being just as big of a Phillies fan, he understood.

Unfortunately, the actual experience failed to live up to the promise. As is the case with any big city, traffic was atrocious, and the photo session robbed us of the extra time we needed to factor into our trip. We had to settle for cheering to the car radio as the Phillies scored four first-inning runs against the Mets. I was doing most of the cheering, while Greg and my dad lamented about our predicament. It’s much easier to see the silver lining in most situations when you’re a kid.

Parking was another issue since we obviously arrived at Veterans Stadium after all the other fans. By the time we finally got to our seats, the game was in the sixth inning.

The Phillies made our ordeal worth it by letting the Mets back into the contest. The 4-0 whittled to 4-3, and the bullpens on both sides were left to duke it out.

Darren Daulton started some two-out magic in the eighth with a double. Charlie Hayes followed with a catchable line drive to right, but the ball bounced off the webbing of Chris Jones’ glove, allowing Daulton to score. The Phillies won by that 5-3 score, and it came as no surprise to us.

Though the pitching staff had changed dramatically in two years, the Phillies still retained most of their starting lineup from 1993, and they returned to form over the first two months of 1995, jumping out to a 35-18 start. But injuries and a general lack of team chemistry eventually took their toll, and the Phils took a nose dive out of contention in July.

Sadly, those four innings in 1995 would be my last live look at Dutch, The Dude, Dave Hollins and Jim Eisenreich in a Phillies uniform. All things in professional sports seem to go full circle, and the basement from which Philadelphia furiously emerged would become their residence once again in 1996 and 1997.

My bandwagon allegiance to the superstar Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League around this time proved that I had yet to learn the value of loyalty, and so it’s no wonder I turned my attention away from the Phillies. My dad and I curtailed our viewing of them on television, and we stopped going to their games. In a way, I was saying goodbye to my childhood. This incarnation of the Phillies was at its end, and the Little League costume hung in the closet, never to be worn again.

It was the end of an era for sure, but my baseball tutelage was just getting started.

May 18, 1994: Phillies vs. Montreal Expos

Larry Anderson, left, giving us a
shallow thought on Phillies Photo Day.

The following year, my dad and I raised our commitment to the Phillies another level.

It was on a gloomy day in May 1994 that my dad gave me a get-out-of-school-free card to attend a game for the first and only time. I welcomed any break that came my way because sixth grade was the first of three years that I endured taunting and bullying from my peers on an almost daily basis.

The Phillies, fresh off a National League title and their first World Series appearance in 10 years, were going through hardship as well, and that day’s overcast skies and occasional chilly drizzle amplified their struggles. As the year unfolded, it became increasingly clear that the 1993 season was a flash in the pan. Nearly every player had his career year, and then fell back down to earth. This reality hit the starting rotation particularly hard. Terry Mulholland was traded to the New York Yankees in the offseason, while Curt Schilling, Tommy Greene and Ben Rivera all battled injuries.

Danny Jackson was the only starting pitcher on the top of his game in 1994, and he happened to be on the hill this day. He came into it 5-0 with an ERA well under 3 and was named an All Star that July.

We were also hoping Jackson’s dominance would bring an end to the “Curse of the Blue Hats.” Prior to the season, the Phillies unveiled their new blue hats (to be worn during day games), giving more prominence to the team’s forgotten third color. It turned out it was forgotten for a reason because to this point in the season, the boys in red, white and blue were still looking for their first win in the new hats.

My dad and I got to the game early, and I came armed with a baseball. My good luck with securing autographs the year before at Wilmington Blue Rocks games encouraged me to try at the major league level. I gathered with dozens of other fans in the front row along the first-base line. Greene and veteran relief pitcher Larry Andersen were kind enough to grace fans with their John Hancock. Andersen, who was in his final season in the majors, took the ball from my offering hand and signed it just before he and Greene left the field.

For mostly nostalgic reasons, I regret that I misplaced that ball years ago. Andersen was a big part of that ’93 squad as the setup man for Mitch Williams, and he is still beloved in Philadelphia thanks to his insightful color commentary on the radio during games. I even crossed paths with him again in recent years. He is an amiable person with a wonderfully odd sense of humor. Back in the late ‘90s when he was part of the television broadcast team with Chris Wheeler and the legendary Harry Kalas, my dad and I exchanged anticipatory grins whenever HK would ask Andersen, “LA…do you have a shallow thought for the day?”*

Andersen’s autograph would end up being the highlight of our day. The Montreal Expos scored two runs off Jackson, who was clearly not immune to the curse, in the top of the first inning, and that would be all they needed in an eventual 6-1 win.

Any slim chance Philly had of returning to the playoffs was reduced to zero, along with every other team, that August when the Major League Baseball Players Association went on strike. For the first time in 90 years, baseball had no World Series. My one solace was that due to the strike, the Phillies were the reigning National League champions for two years.

Oh yeah, and those damn blue hats were gone for good.

At the time, I was too young to understand the greed of the players in refusing to accept a salary cap from the owners. I simply felt disheartened that I was cheated out of two months of watching the sport and team I had grown to love.

The owners finally gave in the following March, and baseball resumed. Since then, salaries have grown to ridiculous proportions, and a league-wide drug scandal has rocked the integrity of the game to its core. It almost makes me wish I grew up in another era of the game, but I’m glad that the rowdy “bunch of throwbacks” that first caught my eye in the early ‘90s showed me baseball in what I still believe to be its purest form.

Even if their caps were cursed.

 

*When I saw Andersen at the 2013 Phillies Fan Photo Day, I politely asked for a shallow thought for old time’s sake. Without missing a beat, he replied, “We all know the speed of light, but what’s the speed of dark?”

July 29, 1993: Phillies vs. St. Louis Cardinals

Life’s priorities are not always clear.

My dad had the day off from work, and it at least appeared to me that this free day was taken for the sole purpose of going to a ballgame with me. This was a rare afternoon contest during the work week. It would have been easier to just go to night game, or a day game on the weekend, but this was a special season, and I suppose the Phillies had earned more of a commitment from us.

Perhaps it was a fortunate coincidence, but 1993 was also the year I began keeping a journal. The Phillies are mentioned several times in my sporadic entries, and the one dated July 29 unearthed an interesting and telling fact about this game: my dad said we were going, but we had to talk my sister, Lindsay, out of it first.

When we were children, my sister and I constantly competed for my father’s attention, particularly since he was the more involved and less strict parent. Unfortunately for Lindsay, I was the firstborn and the only son, which meant I won that battle more often. In this instance, my dad probably succeeded in letting my sister down easy because she wasn’t into baseball.

We made a full day of it. We took the Septa Local from the Wilmington train station and arrived a few hours before the game to do some sight seeing. It was always fun riding the train to the big city (I received a big jolt of childhood nostalgia when my dad and I used the same and long-forgotten method of transportation for the World Series parade in 2008), and Philadelphia was still the biggest I had ever seen to that point. I will never consider myself a Philadelphian, but I grew up close enough to know and love cheesesteaks, soft pretzels and Tastycake products. I don’t bother with racing up the steps of the Art Museum because my name begs the belting out of Rocky’s classic line from people I’m meeting for the first time.

The Philly magic once again worked like a charm, as the hosts took a 4-0 lead over the visiting St. Louis Cardinals late in the game. The scrappy Redbirds would not go quietly, however, as they scored two in the seventh and two more in the eighth off emerging ace Curt Schilling to put a victory very much in doubt.

After the game started, I was personally disappointed to see Todd Pratt’s name in the lineup instead of starting catcher Darren “Dutch” Daulton, who was my favorite player for good reason. Daulton wasn’t your typical catcher. He hit in the middle of the lineup, instead of the bottom, and he was one of the best run producers in the league for the second straight year. It was a thrill for me to see his name on the same lists as sluggers like Barry Bonds and David Justice. Surely, a win was guaranteed with him on the field.

I got my wish in the bottom of the eighth. Daulton came in to pinch hit with the bases loaded. He seemed born for these kinds of pressure situations, and while his bat remained silent, he still drove in the go-ahead run by working a walk.

Lenny “The Dude” Dykstra followed. He was in the midst of a career year that would see him finish second to Bonds in the MVP voting, and he padded Philly’s lead with an infield single.

These kinds of rallies were almost second nature to the team by late July. The Phillies hung on for the 6-4 win, completing their sweep of the Cardinals.

My dad and I had to leave at the end of the eighth due to some important family business. The Phillies were moving up in the world, and so were we.

For most of my childhood, my family lived in my grandmother’s house on the east side of Wilmington near the Christina River because we could not afford a place of our own. Locals know the east side as one of the most impoverished and dangerous sections of the city. By 1993, it was common to hear gunshots after going to bed, but my parents were finally making enough money to get us out of there.

My dad and I left the Phillies game to meet my mom and sister in Wilmington to look at an apartment. Though it wasn’t the right one for us, we soon found the right one in Little Italy and moved there in December. It was in that neighborhood that I found friends who loved baseball and the Phillies as much as I did.

A new chapter was beginning, but another, less obvious one was ending. 1993 was the big year for baseball in my family. The Phillies’ monster season coincided with the return of minor league baseball to Wilmington after 41 years. The Wilmington Blue Rocks, a Single A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals, offered a destination of family fun in my hometown. The four of us went to several games in that first season and continued to do so over through the remainder of the decade.

When it came to major league baseball, however, those games returned to their previous incarnation as a strictly father-son activity. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but baseball games, as with any other spectator event, are simply more enjoyable when you’re watching with other baseball fans.

As I will illustrate further down the road, the few times we included other people into our special ritual yielded unsatisfying results. A major league game is an impressive sight to anyone, but those non-fans who don’t have the diaper dash and dizzy bat race to keep them entertained between innings will quickly lose interest.

And they won't be willing to skip work for an afternoon game.

July 10, 1993: Phillies vs. San Francisco Giants

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.

July 31, 1991: Phillies vs. San Diego Padres

The mind of an eight-year-old child is a sponge. Nearly everything he or she sees and hears is processed and stored to aid in future experiences.

My father loved teaching me new things, and I could see the excitement in his eye when he did so, like it reminded him of when he learned them himself. My dad stayed informed on a wide array of topics, and he frequently passed that knowledge along to me. For example, on November 9, 1989, we watched the ABC World News’ coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall. My dad said to my sister, Lindsay, and I, “Make sure you remember this date. It’s a very important date.”

Another one of my dad’s ongoing projects was building my vocabulary. I can attribute one word in particular to the Phillies, and more specifically, former corner outfielder Wes Chamberlain. The word of the day was “potential.”

Whenever my dad spoke about Chamberlain, he always talked about how much potential he had as a player; he had the potential to do great things as a Phillie. On this day, Chamberlain sought to prove my dad right.

The Phillies hosted the San Diego Padres. Our seats were in the upper deck (older fans can well remember the seats of school bus yellow), and it turned out that we were at a good altitude for the show Chamberlain was about to put on.

In addition to the new word I had learned, I fell in love with the home run, as Mr. Potential clubbed not one, but two three-run bombs. All I could do was shake my head and say, “Wow,” as the ball sailed out of the yard.

They were the first home runs I had seen at a game, and possibly ever.

Chamberlain finished a perfect 4-for-4, and his six RBI set a career high for a single game. The Phillies cruised to a 9-3 win, and unbeknownst to me at the time, they were in the midst of a 13-game winning streak that would pull them out of last place and make up nine games in the standings. Philly would never return to the basement in 1991 and finished the season in third, its highest standing since 1983.

Chamberlain had a total of three 4-hit games that year and finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting, but sadly, he didn’t live up to my dad’s hype. He never moved beyond the role of a backup outfielder, and by the age of 29, he was out of baseball. My dad and I caught but a glimpse of what could have been. Still, I will never feel sorry for witnessing the best game of Chamberlain’s career.

My dad may not have known it, but Chamberlain’s performance taught me another important lesson in the end. When you put forth your best effort, you may not always succeed, but every so often you can achieve what seems impossible.

August 30, 1990: Philadelphia Phillies vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

This is the first posting in a series about baseball games that I've attended with my father. The series will chronicle my developing love of our nation's pastime, helped along by my dear old dad and the great Phillies and Orioles teams of the past 20 years. It's something I hope to one day turn into a book, so please share this with your friends and family, particularly if they love baseball!

When I was a young child, my dad was my world. I wanted to grow up to be just like him, and everything he said and did I took as gospel.

This also meant I loathed anything that took his attention away from me. Such was the case with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Every Sunday afternoon in the spring and summer, my father parked himself in his favorite chair and tuned into WPHL17 to watch his favorite team. “How could this silly game on TV be more important than spending time with me?” I often asked myself.

My dad did his best to show me that there was plenty of room in life for him and baseball, and eventually, I came around enough to agree to go to a Phillies game with him. I was a month shy of my eighth birthday and had no idea this father-son activity would become such an important ritual that lasts to this day.

But I wasn’t going to root for those nasty Phillies just yet. Clearly, I still hung onto to some of the bitterness from the aforementioned Sunday afternoons.

A product of the “cookie cutter” era, Veterans Stadium was well known as a bit of an eyesore and an unpleasant place to play, particularly considering the Phillies and Philadelphia Eagles had to share it. But to a kid who had only known beat-up, neighborhood diamonds – where my dad would frequently take me for a game of catch or batting practice – this cathedral of our National Pastime was a sight to behold.

As my mother would later articulate for me, another big attraction of seeing a live, professional baseball game is the crowd. Veterans Stadium seated nearly 60,000 people. To put that into proper perspective, my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware has a population of approximately 72,000 people.

The crowd completely surrounded the field in several levels that seemed to ascend indefinitely, and the circle of fans created this vacuum of noise that my youthful ears had never heard. How amazing it was that these tens of thousands of people were all there for the same reason.

I was still learning the rules of the game, so I didn’t really follow what was happening on the field after the game began. I was also distracted by a teenager, there with his dad, sitting next to me, who kept on calling out, “Hey battah battah battah…”

The Phillies offense could not accommodate him, losing to Tommy Lasorda’s Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2. This would be my one and only time going to a Phillies game and rooting for the opposing team. They appeared to me as strangers in white uniforms and red caps, but I would soon know and enjoy the exploits of Darren Daulton, Lenny Dykstra and John Kruk.

The most memorable part of the night amazingly occurred after the game. My dad’s used Toyota was on its last legs. The engine kept overheating as we made our way back to Wilmington, forcing us to stop on the shoulder of 1-95 several times. The car finally conked out for good after we got off our exit, and we had to walk home from Gander Hill Prison, an impressive accomplishment in one of the most dangerous parts of the city.

Considering the deep significance this night now holds in my memory, I feel extremely fortunate the car mercifully waited until the drive home from my first-ever major league baseball experience to die. It seems quite poetic.

I was still five days from starting third grade, so my dad suggested we continue our special evening by staying up well past midnight to watch the re-broadcasting of the game we had just attended. We played Super Mario Bros. on my old-school (then brand new) Nintendo Entertainment System to pass the time. We watched about half the game, and then finally went to bed at 3:30 a.m., the latest I had ever stayed up to that point. It remained a bedtime record for the next nine years.

Now that I look back on that night, it was probably the first time I sat down and watched a Phillies game on TV with my dad. Two precedents were set mere hours from one another and soon, Sunday afternoons would turn from times of frustration to times of joy.

Are those numbers real??

That ball looks like a melon, don't it, Shane?

Believe it or not, I am back.

Currently, I am working on a blog series that I think is really exciting and more focused and meaningful than what I have posted in the past.

I will leave you all in anticipation of that, and instead, share with you a cool nugget of information that may only serve my amusement, but I will try to present in a way that will peak your interest as well.

As you may or may not have known, I rooted for Boston in the most recent Fall Classic. I get a sick pleasure out of watching New York Yankee fans suffer, and I have been a minor supporter of the Red Sox since their improbable comeback in the ALCS nine years ago.

In order to better justify my leanings this October, I decided that I wanted to see former Phillie Shane Victorino get another ring.

Those of us watching remember well Victorino's heroics in Game 6 of the ALCS and Game 6 of the Series. He drove in a combined eight runs in the those two games, including a grand slam over the Green Monster in the former.

All of those RBI came with the bases loaded, and toward the end of the game that would result in Boston's third title in nine years, Fox commentator Joe Buck revealed that Victorino was 6-for-8 with 20 RBI with the bases loaded in his postseason career.

Yowsah! (figure I'd thrown in some Boston-ese)

With my baseball stat appetite whetted, I hopped on my favorite website, baseball-reference.com. More than anything, I wanted to prove that Buck misspoke because just two of those six hits for Victorino were grand slams. Twenty runs driven in seemed far-fetched.

But Buck was right, and I now share with you all of Victorino's postseason RBI with the bases loaded. It's quite astonishing when you think about it.

Bases-Loaded Walk, 2008 NLDS Game 1
Grand Slam, 2008 NLDS Game 2
2-run Single, 2008 World Series Game 5
Hit-By-Pitch, 2009 NLCS Game 5
Sacrifice Fly, 2009 World Series Game 3
2-run Single, 2010 NLDS Game 1
Bases-Loaded Walk, 2010 NLDS Game 2
Grand Slam, 2013 ALCS Game 6
3-run Double, 2013 World Series Game 6
RBI Single, 2013 World Series Game 6

Those numbers blew me away. Despite my appreciation and respect for sabermetrics, I still think that clutch hitting is a credible term. Like anything else, hitting is mental and if you go into an at-bat believing you're going to succeed, then there's a higher chance you will. Just ask David Ortiz.

Honestly, what really sticks out to me in that list are the two walks. Victorino is not a player that comes to mind when I think of plate discipline. Much like the guy he followed in the Philly lineup during the glory years (I think his last name is Rollins), Victorino is an uppercut swinger, who becomes a major concern to opposing pitchers when he does get on base.

But when the calendar flips to October, Ortiz is no longer the only guy the Red Sox want at the plate in high-pressure situations. No room on the sacks for the Flyin' Hawaiian? Don't worry, he'll make room.

Congrats on all your success, Shane, and maybe someday, you will don the red and white pinstripes yet again. I would welcome that.