This 1964 Phillie knows how a historic collapse feels. Here’s how he says the 2022 team can avoid one.

Cookie Rojas' Phillies wasted a 6½-game lead with 12 to play. He says the key for this team is not to doubt itself as the pressure mounts.

Cookie Rojas (left) Johnny Callison, Dick Allen (then known as Richie) and Gene Mauch before the freefall in 1964.Read more

by Alex Coffey

Published Oct. 2, 2022, 9:20 a.m. ET

Cookie Rojas still remembers the moment he knew it was all over. It wasn’t when Reds third baseman Chico Ruiz stole home in the sixth inning of a scoreless game on Sept. 21, 1964. It was five games later, on Sept. 26.

The Phillies were playing the Braves. Reliever Bobby Shantz took the mound at Connie Mack Stadium in the eighth inning with a 4-3 lead. His team had lost five straight and seen its 6½-game lead with 12 games to play dwindle to 1½. But it seemed for a moment as if the bleeding was finally going to stop.

Instead, Shantz gave up singles to Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews. Frank Bolling reached on a fielder’s choice to load the bases. And Rico Carty hit a triple over center fielder Tony Gonzalez’s head to drive in all three runners.

Watching it all from left field in disbelief was Rojas, who was a utility man for the Phillies from 1963-69.

“A triple with the bases loaded,” he said on Saturday. “How many times does that happen? That was it.”

The Phillies had six more games to play, but they continued to spiral. They lost their next four games and their lead in the National League (MLB did not have divisions until 1969). A team that had spent 125 days in first place and sold 90,000 World Series tickets in the span of a few hours was not going to the postseason after losing 10 straight from Sept. 21-30. It was one of the worst collapses in baseball history.

When Rojas, who is now 84 and living in Florida, looks back it on all, he doesn’t see much of a reason for why it started. Manager Gene Mauch was using his two best pitchers, Jim Bunning and Chris Short, on short rest over those 10 games, but Bunning said the Phillies’ were short-staffed at the time, and Mauch had no choice.

In Rojas’ mind, it wasn’t even that the Phillies were playing poorly. It was that the unfathomable started to unfold.

“For example, a ground ball to third base,” he said. “The ball hits the ground and jumps over the third baseman’s head for a double. You know, things like that. A fly ball drops between two outfielders who were trying to call for the ball to fill up the bases. Carty’s triple with the bases loaded.

“You always have a bit of luck in this game. There’s no question about it. But we had a 6½-game lead. We were at ease. And in one week, we lost seven straight, and then three more at home. How many times do you think that’s going to happen? You know? And then St. Louis won eight in a row and Cincinnati won nine in a row. ... I mean, of everything that could happen.”

Unlike Rojas’ 1964 Phillies, the 2022 Phillies have not lost 10 straight games. But the situations are certainly comparable. On Sept. 15, FanGraphs gave the Phillies at a 96.1% chance of making the playoffs. Since then, they have lost 11 of their last 16 games. After a win in the nightcap of a doubleheader with the Nationals on Saturday and a loss by the Brewers, their chances improved from 57.7% to 77.9%.

And this is all happening within an expanded playoff pool, something the 1964 Phillies never had the luxury of playing with.

The 2022 Phillies are one game up on the Brewers for the third NL wild-card spot going into Sunday’s games. So, how can they ensure they don’t collapse? Rojas has a suggestion.

“You only have to worry about that game,” Rojas said. “Concentrate on this game and nothing else. Absolutely nothing. You don’t worry about the day after tomorrow. Don’t worry about the game after that. Just worry about the one in front of you. That’s it. Nothing else.

“That includes the past. Those other games they played are in the book. They are already done. They played already that game. Yeah. And they lost it. Just be proud of being there and move on.”

The Phillies preach what Rojas is saying, but practicing it is another story. Rojas said the death knell would be if the Phillies succumb to pressure. They are shouldering a 10-year postseason drought, which is now the longest active streak in baseball after the Mariners got in for the first time in 21 years on Friday. Rojas believes if they let that burden them, it will say more about their mental fortitude than the situation itself.

“Pressure is a person that doesn’t have confidence in himself,” he said. “Pressure is when you go to college, and you get a diploma, and you’re a surgeon, but when you get to that room to start operating, they give you a knife, and you say, ‘What I do now?’ You know everything there is to know about surgery. Go ahead and show me you know how to do it.

“That’s what pressure is. But if you don’t have pressure, if you have confidence, you say, ‘Don’t worry, give me that knife, cut here, put the stitches in. All right, guys, see you tomorrow. Done.’ When you start doubting yourself, then you get in trouble.”

The Phillies have four games left in the regular season. Now, they’ll try to make sure that they don’t end up on the wrong side of history — a side that Rojas is all too familiar with.