Have the Phillies had a playoff loss worse than Monday’s? Maybe, in the 1977 ‘Black Friday’ collapse.

As so many Phillies fans who have endured far beyond their quotas of frustrations through the years, for Larry Shenk, what he witnessed Monday night was particularly painful.

The Phillies squandered a 4-0 lead and eventually lost a game that ended with an almost unimaginable sequence turning into an unprecedented double-play.

Yet, said Shenk, who for decades was the Phillies’ media-relations mogul, “I’ve seen worse.”

If he had to choose the worst, he would vote for the “Black Friday” collapse of Oct. 7, 1977, when the Phillies somehow watched a two-run lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers evaporate with two outs in the ninth inning. The Phils would be eliminated in the league championship series the next day.

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That vote was no trivial matter for a man who had lived through the Phillies’ horrific 1964 collapse, when they lost out on a chance to play in the World Series by blowing a 6½ game lead with 12 to play. That disaster unfolded over a 10-game losing streak that began on Sept. 24.

What happened on Oct. 7, 1977, was compressed into one nightmarish sequence.

“It really was a Black Friday,” Larry Bowa, the Phillies shortstop who was at the center of a pivotal play, said Wednesday. “That one stayed with me for a long time.”

With 63,719 fans screaming their lungs out at Veterans Stadium, the Phillies were up 5-3 and one out away from their first-ever post season win at home and taking a 2-1 lead in the best of five series. Dodgers veteran Vic Davalillo was called on to pinch hit for catcher Steve Yeager and reached first on a drag bunt.

Another pinch hitter, Manny Mota, then hit a deep fly to left that Greg Luzinski couldn’t corral, and his errant relay throw allowed Davalillo to score. Phillies manager Danny Ozark had decided against deploying defensive replacement Jerry Martin to left field, which he usually did. Martin likely would have caught the ball.

The next batter, Davey Lopes, hit a bullet to third that bounced off third baseman Mike Schmidt’s glove, ricocheted Bowa, who n one motion bare-handed the ball and fired to first. First baseman Richie Hebner was sure the game was over. The first-base umpire, Bruce Froemming, didn’t agree. Hebner went ballistic.

Hebner and other Phillies were certain Lopes was out. To this day, Shenk and Bowa agree. Bowa said if baseball had replay reviews back then, the Phillies win. “I don’t like bragging about plays,” Bowa said, but he believes if the Phillies got the call, it would have been one of more-memorable plays in the postseason annals.

He believes that since Lopes was so fast, Froemming unconsciously assumed that Lopes couldn’t possibly have been thrown out on a play like that. Replays were inconclusive.

Bowa, who played for 16 years and then was a coach and manager for five different teams, including the Phillies, said that over the years he would often see Froemming, when his team traveled to play the Brewers in Milwaukee, the retired umpire’s hometown.

“Every time I saw him, I said, ‘Bruce, you’re a great umpire,’” but on Oct. 7, 1977, “you missed it.’” Froemming would respond, “‘Bowa I didn’t miss it.’” Bowa, in turn, would say, “You’ll go to your grave thinking you didn’t, and I’m going to my grave knowing you did.”

With Lopes on first, Phillies reliever Gene Garber threw away a pickoff attempt, moving Lopes to second. He then scored when shortstop Bill Russell squirted a single under Garber’s legs into centerfield.

Ballgame.

Was that worse than Monday’s ending, when Braves’ centerfielder Michael Harris II made a sensational catch, and baserunner Bryce Harper was doubled off first — the only time a postseason game had ended in such a fashion?

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Shenk says yes, and so does Phillies beat writer Scott Lauber, who detailed the 1977 game in his book Big 50: Philadelphia Phillies, and a 2020 Inquirer podcast. It is still the reigning champ, says Lauber. He points out that this series is far from over, and that if the Phils win, Monday will have been a footnote.

In 1977, “Black Friday” was followed by a bleak sequel. On Oct. 8, 1977, the Phillies were eliminated when they lost a dismal game in a steady rain that the league insisted on playing.

Bowa said that in part the loss might have been the result of “a hangover” from Friday, but he said the field was all but unplayable, the Vet’s artificial surface feeling like “marbles on a bathtub.”

National League President Chub Feeney watched that deciding game stoically from the stands.

Shenk said he saw Feeney after the game and said, “‘I got a problem. I can’t turn off the shower.’ He didn’t laugh very much.”

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