Now and Then

Part 2 of a 4-part series on the 1993 Phillies

 

Fans my age and older well remember that whacky bunch of players that defied all expectations by winning the National League pennant and coming within two games of winning the World Series. That special group only lived to play baseball and have a good time, capturing the hearts and minds of a city well known for its blue-collar mentality.

As both the ’93- and ’08-era teams drift further and further into the past, I find myself feeling much more nostalgic about the ’93 team. The memories aren’t nearly as vivid because I was only 10 and didn’t understand the game as well as I would later, but that team taught me to love baseball. Plus, great events in life are more revered when they’re unexpected. That team literally came from out of nowhere and faded just as quickly. I will now share some observations I formed as a green kid, alongside changing opinions and different things I’ve noticed while watching this team again over the past few weeks.

When I was 10, I always deferred to the players who hit the most home runs, so it annoyed me when Milt Thompson and Jim Eisenreich were put in the lineup more than Pete Incaviglia and Wes Chamberlain. Of course, I understand now that the left-handed Thompson and Eisenreich were typically used against right-handed starting pitchers. They were also better outfielders. I love Incaviglia and his monster home runs as much now as I did then, but I can’t get enough of Eisenreich. The guy sprayed the ball all over the place, making it a nightmare for opposing teams to defend against him. He unassumingly went about his business, quietly becoming one of the Phillies’ best hitters of the 1990s, and who doesn’t love a good comeback story like his? When he was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome, he initially felt his baseball career was over, but after receiving the proper treatment, he fought his way back. I don’t think I knew what Tourette’s was before I learned about Eisenreich.

I’m also realizing that Eisenreich was one of the few hitters who didn’t prolong the game by trouncing well outside the batter’s box after every pitch. Instead, he would simply retreat a few steps to the back corner of the box while staring intently down the third-base line until the pitcher returned to the rubber. He was an all-around model of efficiency.

Moving onto other players, another habit I’ve noticed is that during every game, starting pitcher Curt Schilling was perched on the top step of the dugout and always the first to congratulate anyone who scored a run. That makes him appear like the ultimate teammate, but given everything else I’ve learned about Schilling in the years since, he was probably doing it just to look good in front of the camera. Schilling evolved into one of the best pitchers of his generation after leaving the Phillies in 2000, but his outspoken, ultra-right views that at best border on homophobia and xenophobia have turned him into a villain. The seeds of this persona were actually planted in 1993 when cameras caught Schilling with his head buried in a towel when closer Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams was on the mound. Schilling claimed it was a joke, and the fans and media accepted it as such, but Williams was not amused, and it drove a wedge between the two that has never been removed.

As the ’93 season came to a close, I was surprised that John Kruk only hit 14 home runs. I simply assumed that because he was a bigger guy, he was a home run hitter. Of course, I know now that bigger does not necessarily mean stronger, and Kruk was most known for his patience at the plate and hitting for a high average. If anything, he was the Phillies version of Tony Gwynn, Kruk’s former teammate when he was with Padres. The beer-drinking, mullet-wearing country boy from West Virginia often liked to play the fool for the media, but there were actually few in the game who studied it and understood it more than he did. Kruk did reach the 20-homer mark twice in his career, but by ’93, all that constant running on Astroturf began giving him chronic knee problems that would sadly result in his retirement two years later. And actually, if we’re to believe his claim that he rarely worked out, then it’s a miracle he played until he was 34.

Kruk was just one of dozens of miracles to happen for the Phillies in ’93. I’m loving the experience of this crazy team’s Cinderella season, where for six months, everything that could go right did go right. Consider the unbelievable fact that 1993 was the only year between 1986 and 2001 in which the Phillies posted a winning season, and they went all the way to the friggin’ World Series! I doubt we’ll see anything like it again. In my next post, I will delve into how that happened.