How the Phillies conquered a history of failure to capture the 1980 NLCS over the Astros

Invert the ground-shaking jubilation triggered by Bryce Harper’s home run on Sunday and you’ll have some idea of the despondency Phillies fans and players felt late on the afternoon of Oct. 11, 1980.

That day, a second straight extra-inning victory by the Houston Astros, by 1-0 in 11 innings, had put the Phils in a familiar spot, on the brink of losing their fourth National League Championship Series in five years. Houston led the best-of-five series, two games to one, and, like Game 3, its final two games would be in the Astrodome.

“Afterward I’m sitting on the bus feeling sorry for myself,” recalled Chris Wheeler, the longtime Phillies broadcaster. “All I could think was, ‘Not again. Why can’t we get to the World Series? Now it will be another offseason of making excuses. Maybe they’ll even break up the team.’

“Out of nowhere I feel this really hard slap on my shoulder. I look up and it’s Vuke [Phils backup third baseman John Vukovich] with that menacing look unique to him. ‘Get your … head up. We’re going to win this series.’”

Vukovich’s optimism was unwarranted. After all, the Phillies had an unmatched history of postseason horrors. In 97 years, the franchise had yet to capture a World Series, hadn’t even been to one in 30 years. There were Philadelphians collecting Social Security who, until the team’s victory in Game 1 of this NLCS, had never seen them win a postseason game at home. And the massive wound inflicted by 1964′s epic collapse was still so painfully raw that in that morning’s Inquirer a letter writer felt compelled to defend manager Gene Mauch’s late-season moves 16 years earlier.

The Phillies in October, Inquirer columnist Frank Dolson wrote, “had lost in almost every way imaginable … and in some ways that were almost unimaginable.” Twice in the 1915 Series, the Red Sox beat them in extra innings. Thirty-five years later, they were finally back in a World Series only to lose both home games, 1-0, and 2-1, to the Yankees. In the ninth inning of Game 3 in the ‘77 NLCS, they were up by two runs with two outs and no one on base and still managed to lose. In the ‘78 NLCS’s deciding game, a dropped fly ball eliminated them.

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But while it seemed unlikely following Game 3, 1980 would be different. A century’s worth of bad karma would soon lift as suddenly as a morning haze. The Phillies would win those next two games in Houston, two games as extraordinary as any in postseason history, and two nights after Wheeler despaired for them, to become National League champions. They followed that by winning an anticlimactic, six-game World Series title over Kansas City.

“After those last two games in Houston, we knew the script was in,” said Phillies catcher Bob Boone. “We knew we’d had to go through a lot to get there. But after winning those games, we knew what the ending was going to be.”

Now, 42 years later, the Phillies and Astros are matched again in the postseason. And if the 2022 World Series produces anything like Games 4 and 5 of the 1980 NLCS, Harper’s dramatic home run might soon be a mere footnote in the city’s baseball history.

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Game 4 of the ‘80 NLCS was routinely scoreless in the fourth inning when the Phillies put their first two runners on base. Garry Maddox hit a soft liner back at Vern Ruhle. Home plate umpire Doug Harvey initially ruled that the Houston pitcher had trapped the ball. But fellow umps Ed Vargo and Bob Engle convinced him it was a clean catch. Since the confused baserunners had been caught off base, it was also a triple play.

Phils manager Dallas Green went ballistic. In the stands, Phils owner Ruly Carpenter bear-hugged GM Paul Owens to keep him from charging the field. The ensuing argument lasted 20 minutes and featured a consultation with Chub Feeney at the NL president’s box. It was finally ruled a double play, a decision that pleased no one. Both the Astros and Phillies filed protests.

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“I was at second base,” retired umpire Jerry Crawford remembered. “Doug or Eddie Vargo had a better shot at it. I was the low man on the totem pole, so I just kept calling guys out. … After the game was over, Chub came into our dressing room to confer about the protest. He asked for a rule book and none of us had one. He was irate. He screamed, ‘I got 130 years of experience in this room and no rule book?’”

There would be more that Saturday afternoon. A Houston run was erased when umps ruled the baserunner left third base early on an apparent sacrifice fly. Phillies left fielder Lonnie Smith committed two errors on one play and still threw out the baserunner. The Phils would lose another trapped-ball argument in the eighth when, ending a 17-inning scoreless stretch, they rallied for three runs and a 3-2 lead. Tug McGraw would blow a save in the ninth and send a third straight game to extra innings.

Philadelphia finally won in the 10th when, after Greg Luzinski’s pinch-hit double, Pete Rose, left forearm cocked high, steamrolled Astros catcher Bruce Bochy.

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“There has never been a game to compare to that one,” McGraw said, much too prematurely it turned out.

On Wednesday, MLB TV replayed Game 5 of that 1980 NLCS. But when its pitching matchup was announced 42 years ago, no one could have imagined it would become a classic. The Phils started a rookie, Marty Bystrom; the Astros, Nolan Ryan.

The Phillies grabbed a 2-1 lead in the second when with two outs and runners at second and third, Astros manager Bill Virdon inexplicably let Ryan pitch to Boone with Bystrom on deck. The Phils catcher slapped a 99-mph fastball up the middle, scoring both runners.

“If a manager had done that in Philadelphia,” Carpenter said after the game, “he’d have to leave town.”

It was 2-2 in the seventh when Green stirred controversy of his own, summoning starter Larry Christenson instead of a warmed-up Ron Reed, an effective but volatile bullpen veteran.

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“Ron Reed couldn’t figure out why I was even up,” Christenson remembered. “When Dallas called for me, I thought he was going to explode.”

When Christenson surrendered three runs, the Phillies were six outs away from another fall failure. The 44,802 Astros fans, their team on the verge of its first World Series, rattled the Dome with their roars.

“I was with Larry Bowa at a golf tournament the other day,” said Wheeler. “We were talking about that noise. He was saying the crowds in Philadelphia last weekend were really loud, but nothing could match what they experienced in that enclosed Astrodome.”

Bowa started the Phillies eighth with a single. Boone followed with another shot up the middle. If Ryan had fielded it cleanly, it would have been a double play. Instead the ball caromed off the pitcher to third baseman Enos Cabell, whose hurried throw couldn’t get the sore-legged Boone.

Sensing something, Phillies players massed at the dugout railing.

“Everybody was there,” third base coach Lee Elia said. “It was like an explosion was ready to blow one way or the other. It was either going to be tremendous elation or a tremendous down.”

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Pinch-hitting, Greg Gross noticed how deep Cabell was playing and loaded the bases with a perfect drag bunt on the rock-hard AstroTurf.

Rose was next. The tension didn’t lessen his cockiness a notch.

“Pete was out there shouting, ‘You ain’t getting me out, Nollie,’” recalled Mike Schmidt. “Can you imagine doing that to Nolan Ryan?”

Rose was right, Ryan walked him to force in a run and make it 5-3. Virdon then brought in reliever Joe Sambito. The lefthander got Keith Moreland to ground out to second, but the fourth run scored.

Now Bob Forsch replaced Sambito, striking out Schmidt for the second out. All across Philadelphia, fans sensed the worst. Once again a big balloon of expectation was about to burst.

“Surely that was the crusher,” Dolson wrote of Schmidt’s strikeout, “the final blow that would bury this Phillies team with all those other Phillies teams.”

But as pinch-hitter Del Unser approached the plate, the demon that had haunted and tormented this franchise for so long was about to be slain.

That morning Unser, who had uncharacteristically struck out on some hittable pitches that postseason, asked hitting coach Billy DeMars for some extra BP. After 75 swings, he pronounced himself ready.

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He was correct, lacing a two-out single into center field to tie it. Manny Trillo followed with a triple, making it 7-5 and emptying the dugout. The emotional Elia was so excited when Trillo reached third that he bit the Phils second baseman on the arm.

“I knew it wouldn’t look right if I kissed him,” he explained.

Given this series’ history, no one expected the Astros to go quietly. Sure enough, they scored twice off McGraw to send a fourth straight NLCS game into extra innings. Dick Ruthven, whom Green had been saving for Game 1 of the World Series, came in to pitch the 10th and retired three straight.

In the top of the 11th, Unser led off with a double, moving to third on Trillo’s fly ball. That brought Maddox to the plate. The Phils center fielder was a notorious first-pitch fastball hunter. Inexplicably, that’s what reliever Frank LaCorte threw him.

Maddox ripped it into center field, inches from a lunging Terry Puhl’s glove. The Phils had a lead, 8-7, that this time, after another Ruthven 1-2-3 inning, would endure.

In the beer-soaked Phillies clubhouse, Wheeler felt a tap on his shoulder, It was Vukovich.

“I told you so,” he said.

Seconds after Maddox squeezed Cabell’s line drive to seal the victory, a dispatcher’s voice crackled to life on police radios throughout Philadelphia.

“Attention all cars. Stand by unless you have an emergency. The Philadelphia Phillies have just defeated the Houston Astros to win the National League pennant.”

If the cops hadn’t known by then, they soon would. Philadelphians, shock turned to elation, took to the streets. There were makeshift parades at Frankford and Cottman, Kensington and Allegheny, Broad and Shunk. At that last locale, a bus was overturned and its cash box rifled. A few blocks away, at Broad and Porter, wooden police barricades were set afire.

And as he joyfully watched those flames, Al Pisanelli, a 29-year-old Phillies fan from South Philadelphia, had a smile on his face and a thought in his head that he undoubtedly shared with Phillies fans everywhere.

“If I die tomorrow,” Pisanelli said, “I wouldn’t care.”