Whiz Kids cast a spell on Phillies fans that endures 60 years later

First in a series

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April 18, 1950. Opening Day at Shibe Park.

Down in Washington, at Griffith Stadium, President Harry Truman threw out two first balls, one righthanded and one lefthanded, before the Senators played the Philadelphia A's. Rain began to fall in the sixth inning, but Truman put on a coat and stayed until the final out was recorded.

Up in New York, at the Polo Grounds, Sam Jethroe became the first African-American to play for the Boston Braves. He had two hits, including a homer, against the Giants and went on to be voted National League Rookie of the Year.

Meanwhile, at the corner of 21st and Lehigh in North Philadelphia, the Phillies scored twice in the bottom of the first against the defending NL champion Brooklyn Dodgers, added three more runs in the second and another two in the third on the way to a 9-1 win.

Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson couldn't let it pass. Coming to the plate, he looked back at catcher Andy Seminick and, presumably with a hint of sarcasm, said, "You guys act like you're going to win the pennant."

Responded the block-solid catcher: "We might."

Now, that's not exactly a we're-the-team-to-beat proclamation. Still, at the time, it was pretty bold. The Phillies hadn't won anything since 1915. In an era when each league had eight teams, they had finished in the second division an astonishing 30 of 31 years before managing to climb to third place with a modest 81-73 record the previous season.

"One of the best cracks I ever heard," Robin Roberts said with a smile, telling the story last year during an interview near his Tampa home.

That team was known as the Whiz Kids, which might partially explain its enduring popularity on the 60th anniversary of that remarkable season. A catchy nickname never hurts. Hindsight also helps. It turned out to be the only Phils team to go to the World Series between 1915 and 1980. That certainly makes it stand out from that largely dreary portion of franchise history.

"There was great excitement," Roberts said. "I didn't realize it until I meet people now. I'll meet business guys, 65 years old. And their eyes light up when I talk about the '50 season. As a player in those days because of the lack of communication - we didn't have ESPN, didn't have any of that - we knew we had fans, but we didn't know we had so many and they were so interested. I meet them now and I think, 'My goodness, I didn't realize we had so many fans.' "

And Robinson wasn't the only one caught off guard by their emergence that year.

"When we came up in '48, we weren't supposed to be up in the top two or three until 5 years later," recalled reserve infielder Putsy Caballero. "But we hit our stride in 1950, a bunch of young boys they started calling Whiz Kids. We just had good seasons. One of those seasons where everybody's clicking and getting the right hit at the right time."

Only six players who spent significant time on the roster that season survive:

-- Roberts, 83, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1976.

-- Lefthander Curt Simmons, 80, who missed the World Series after his National Guard unit was activated late in the season, and who now owns and manages the Limekiln Golf Club in Ambler.

-- Caballero, 82, who lives in New Orleans. He lost his home, but not his sense of humor, in Hurricane Katrina.

-- Backup outfielder Jackie Mayo, 84, who still puts in full days at his real estate company in Boardman, Ohio.

-- Righthander Bob Miller, 83, who started out 8-0, then hurt his back and finished 11-6. He lives in Detroit.

-- Catcher Stan Lopata, 84, who lives in Mesa, Ariz.

Six decades might have blurred the details for some, but they all remember an exhilarating time when the world was fresh and anything seemed possible.

Despite the big win on Opening Day, it took a while for the Whiz Kids to come together. They lost five of their first seven games. They were 4 1/2 games out of first as late as June 14.

After that, though, they started putting it together. They went 20-8 in August. At the end of the month, with the team traveling from St. Louis to Boston, owner Bob Carpenter decided to fly the team between cities for the first time.

"Because we were in the pennant race, the owner said he'd fly us," Roberts said. "When we took a train from St. Louis to Boston, which we did once a year, it was 23 hours. So when we landed in Boston, it was really foggy. They had radar, I guess, but boy, it was foggy. When we were finally on the ground, the guys gave the pilot a standing ovation."

The Whiz Kids swept Boston at Braves Field, running their winning streak to five games. "It really looked like we were over the hump," Roberts said. Carpenter agreed to fly the team back to Philadelphia, where they were greeted at the airport by a crowd estimated at 30,000 on Sept. 2.

They promptly lost five straight, setting the tone for a nail-biting final month.

"Curt [Simmons] was as good a pitcher as there was in baseball," Roberts said. "I mean, he was dominating. He was 17-8 when they took him into the National Guard. The Phillies had talked him into going in so he wouldn't be drafted. And don't you know, they activated his unit? They wouldn't even let him finish out the season. There was a lot of publicity against athletes being treated differently. We [had a big lead] when they called him in. Three days later, Bubba [Church] gets hit in the eye with a line drive. [Cincinnati's Ted] Kluszewski hit it right there. And he's out for the season. And Bob Miller hurts his back.

"So here's a rotation that lost three guys inside of, it had to be, 10 days. Now we end up [without them] for the rest of the season, and we couldn't win for losing."

In addition, Seminick was playing with a badly sprained ankle and outfielder Bill Nicholson was lost to diabetes.

Still, they had a lead of 7 1/2 games with 11 to play on Sept. 20 . . . and still almost came up short. They lost eight of their next 10 to set up a climactic game against the Dodgers at Ebbets Field on Oct. 1. Win, and advance to the World Series against the Yankees. Lose and face a best-of-three playoff against Brooklyn.

"They started losing. They were losing all kinds of games," said Simmons, who by now had reported to boot camp in Indiana. "Monk Meyer used to holler, 'We're going to blow it!' "

Students of Phillies lore know how the story ends. Roberts started for the third time in 5 days on the last day of the regular season. With the score tied, 1-1, going into the bottom of the ninth, Brooklyn started a rally. Cal Abrams walked and Pee Wee Reese singled to put runners on first and second with nobody out.

Duke Snider singled to center with what could have been the game-winning hit, but Richie Ashburn threw out Abrams at the plate. Roberts worked out of the jam. Dick Sisler hit a three-run homer in the top of the 10th. Roberts finished off the Dodgers in the bottom of the inning to clinch the pennant and, in the process, became the Phillies' first 20-game winner since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1917.

And what had Roberts been thinking as he went to the mound to start the ninth? In "The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant," the definitive book on that season Roberts co-authored with C. Paul Rogers III, he admitted the offseason crossed his mind.

"When I trudged out to face Brooklyn in the bottom of the ninth, I knew that if the Dodgers scored we would very likely lose not only the ballgame but also the pennant," he wrote. "My wife Mary and I had planned on taking a vacation to Florida after the season with some of my World Series money, and I remember for a brief moment thinking, 'If we don't win this ballgame, we're not going to get to Florida.' "

He didn't realize it at the time, but a team whose memory would echo down the corridors of history also was born that day.

"We were dubbed the 'Whiz Kids' by the press because of our youth," he concluded. "But if we had not beaten the Dodgers that day, we would be remembered only for blowing the National League pennant."