Don’t tell John Middleton the Phillies’ skid was common: It’s time ‘to start playing like it’s May or June’

John Middleton was studying at Harvard Business School, across the river from Fenway Park, when the Red Sox led the Yankees by seven games in the American League East on the first day of September 1978.

By the beginning of October, they were tied.

“The Yankees played very well,” Middleton recounted the other day, “but [they came back] largely because the Red Sox collapsed for a month.”

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Middleton thought of that epic race, right down to Bucky Dent’s famous homer over Boston’s Green Monster in a one-game tiebreaker, while watching the Phillies recently. It isn’t that he’s fatalistic — or worse, pessimistic. It’s just, well, why doesn’t the 69-year-old fan-in-chief/owner of his hometown team describe his emotions over the last five weeks?

“I can’t recall a Phillies team that was as good as our team was through July 11 struggling the way this team has struggled beginning July 12,” Middleton said. “The first week was bad. But that happens. The second week was worse. But that happens. By the time it got to the third and fourth week, it was like, ‘OK. Stop.’”

In case you’ve been away for the summer: The Phillies were 61-32 after a three-game sweep of the Dodgers on July 11. They’re 12-19 since, including an 8-18 trough that marked their worst 26-game span in six years and prompted a team meeting before batting practice Wednesday. Four wins in five ensuing games, albeit against the noncontending Marlins and Nationals but fueled by dominant starting pitching, suggest they’re snapping out of it. Finally.

Middleton doesn’t self-identify as a “baseball man.” He ran his family’s tobacco company before selling it for nearly $3 billion in 2007. But he spends time around seasoned baseball people, many of whom dined at his home Sunday to cap the Phillies’ annual Alumni Weekend. He asks questions and values their opinions. He leans on the wisdom of Hall of Fame general manager Pat Gillick. There isn’t anyone in the sport whom he trusts more than Dave Dombrowski, the Phillies’ president of baseball operations.

But Middleton also listens to sports-talk radio and shares many of the callers’ sensibilities. He’s passionate, with the hyper-competitiveness of a former collegiate wrestler. Asked before a recent night game how he was doing, he said, “Check with me at about 9:30.” Upon hearing in 2015 that newly hired club president Andy MacPhail once ripped a phone off the wall over his team’s poor play, Middleton figured he found a kindred spirit.

“I think I’ll sit with you,” he told MacPhail. “You sound kind of like me.”

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So, no, Middleton didn’t brush off 18 losses in 26 games as a downturn that well-respected baseball people tell him is common in a long season. And he took little comfort in hearing that the Rangers survived a 7-17 spell last summer before winning the World Series.

He isn’t wired that way, not when he was a kid listening to games on the radio during family vacations down the Shore and certainly not now that he’s pumping nearly $260 million (as calculated for the luxury tax) into a club-record payroll.

Middleton’s take on the Phillies’ 8-18 spell: “It’s a significant issue.”

“I don’t think you can just sit there and say, ‘Oh, well, this has happened and therefore we’ll turn it around.’ I don’t think you can be that passive,” he continued. “I think you have to be pushing — and pushing people to rethink what they’ve been doing. That’s coaches and that’s players. Everybody has to step back and say, ‘What are we doing wrong? Why is a team that was winning at a .700 clip for 3½ months now playing at a .325 clip for the last five weeks?’”

Middleton seems satisfied with the response. He concedes that he gets overly emotional, so he resists meddling. While he stews over losses (don’t get him going on David Bell’s error and Billy Wagner’s blown save against the Astros in a September game 19 years ago), he defers to cooler heads to do something about it.

“You have to understand your limitations, your strengths and your weaknesses,” he said. “Let other people who can do those jobs better than you can do, do the job. It’s also a reason why I’m very careful about not being around the players and the coaches too much.”

Dombrowski acquired a righty-hitting outfielder (Austin Hays) and a late-inning reliever (Carlos Estévez) — and didn’t give up a top prospect — at a trade deadline that lacked difference-making players. Manager Rob Thomson has maintained his usual even keel. Coaches and players continue to work hard.

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And Middleton tries to stay sane by recalling something that Gillick told him after getting hired by the Phillies in December 2005. Over lunch in the executive dining room at Citizens Bank Park, Middleton asked what it takes to win a World Series.

“His answer,” Middleton said, “was luck. And I said, ‘I get luck in a lot of phases in my life. I don’t know exactly how you think luck plays in a World Series title.’ He said, ‘Well, John, good organizations consistently produce good teams that compete for and often get in the playoffs. But the difference between getting in the playoffs and winning the World Series is luck. Because to win the World Series, you have to have 25 healthy guys who are playing well at precisely the right moment in time. The moments when all the stars align … you have to get the breaks.’

“You can look at almost every season and there is a team that, if the season stopped in July and they had the World Series, a different team would win the World Series than the team that ultimately won it.”

In 1978, that was the Red Sox on the first day in September. Forty-six years later, maybe it was the Phillies until the 11th day in July. By the end of October, it could be the Phillies again.

“You never know,” Middleton said, “so you have to strike while the iron’s hot. And it’s hot right now. The players and the coaching staff have to understand that. They have to go after it hard. That’s why it’s time to shake off the cobwebs and start playing like it’s May or June.

“The Rangers and Diamondbacks had time to recover [last year] and got hot. Hopefully, we will, too. But you can’t just assume that’s going to happen. You have to make it happen.”