Showdown for the Swooners

By B.J. Phillips

The Royals and the Phils ruin their reputations as fall guys

For the Philadelphia Phillies and the Kansas City Royals, the World Series has long been a mirage, an oasis of October glory shimmering just out of reach. Three times in the past four seasons, both teams won division titles, only to be turned out into the desert by their cross-league rivals in the pennant playoffs.

For three straight years Kansas City waged war with the New York Yankees, trading bone-jarring slides, brush-back pitches and dramatic home runs. The Royals-Yankees match quickly became one of baseball's fiercest showdowns, but it was always the New Yorkers who went to the World Series. The Phillies were even more conspicuous failures in the stretch. In 1964 they set an unenviable standard for September swoons, blowing a big lead by winning only four games in the season's final 2 1/2 weeks. The last time the Phillies won a pennant, in 1950, they were wiped out by the Yankees in the World Series in four straight games. Never in their 98 years of baseball had they been world champions.

But this season, both teams just about ruined their reputations for failure. Kansas City bounded to a runaway lead (20 games on Sept. 1) in the American League West, then dispatched the hated Yankees in three straight games to become the first expansion team to win the American League title. Philadelphia, meanwhile, battled for survival under the twin burdens of an arduous pennant race in the National League East and the most bluntspoken, dictatorial boss since George Patton.

Assured of a top front-office job when he leaves the dugout, Rookie Manager Dallas Green pointedly informed his players that they had better get fired up because he could not be fired. Green delivered a full-throated locker-room harangue in early August that blistered paint and pride behind the locked clubhouse door. A number of Phillies muttered mutinously, but they won games in September for a change, finally clinching the division title with one game left in the season. After five tortuous playoff games, four of them extra-inning struggles of exquisite suspense, the Phillies extinguished the Houston Astros' hopes for their first National League pennant.

Thus the two finalists came to the World Series--the first to be played entirely on artificial turf--in markedly different frames of mind. The Royals sailed in rested and relaxed, all hands happy and familiar with the rhythm of winning. The Phillies were weary but battlewise, mean-eyed survivors of a difficult voyage under a demanding captain.

Symbolic of their separate seasons were the opening-game pitchers. The Royals sent in 20-game winner Dennis Leonard, fresh from a victory in the opening game against the Yankees. The Phillies could muster just a single unexhausted arm after the catfight with Houston, Rookie Bob Walk, 23. When the Royals jumped off to a four-run lead, courtesy of two home runs, they seemed ready to roll. But Philadelphia, helped by a three-run homer from Bake McBride, answered with a five-run burst its next time at bat and took the first game 7-6. For

Walk, the first rookie to start a World Series opener since 1952, it was a little boy's fantasy come true: "This time last year I was pumping gas. Now I'm a World Series winner. It's the American dream. I'll take it."

The Phillies, who had last won a World Series game in 1915, when Babe Ruth was a pitcher and occasional pinch hitter for the victorious Boston Red Sox, suddenly started to change their opinions of Manager Green. First Baseman Pete Rose reflected on the change in a team he had once routinely cuffed as a Cincinnati Red: "They just never had any discipline around here, and he brought some. Dallas talks loud and he likes to chew people out. He's done a hell of a job, and he should be named manager of the year."

Green also brought to the Phillies the Earl Weaver philosophy of playing every man on the roster. Philadelphia had traditionally played a stand-pat lineup, but Green used pinch hitters freely and was not loath to make late-inning defensive changes in his oversupply of high-priced stars.

His approach paid off in the second game. Utility Outfielder Del Unser, who was .316 as a pinch hitter during the regular season, drove in the first run of an eighth-inning rally that--together with Mike Schmidt's game-winning double--erased a 4-2 Kansas City lead. The Phillies won 6-4.

The Royals returned to Kansas City like long-suffering exiles. They had clinched the American League pennant in the enemy's ballpark and watched leads disappear in the first two World Series games before deafeningly partisan Philadelphia fans. Largely a home-grown lot nurtured in the Royals' farm system, they were glad to be back among friends. Said Catcher Darrell Porter: "We haven't heard a single cheer for anything we've done for a week. It will be good to get back to our park and our fans."

Hot-hitting Third Baseman George Brett (.390 for the season), who had undergone minor surgery for hemorrhoids on the off-day between games, started the homecoming with a towering first-inning home run. But the Phillies tied the game their next turn at bat. Twice again the Royals scratched out a one-run lead; twice again Philadelphia responded in kind. For only the 40th time in 453 World Series games, play went into extra innings. With a full house of noisy fans on their feet for the duration of the tenth inning, the Royals pushed across the winning run at last. With two men on base, Philadelphia Relief Pitcher Tug McGraw walked Brett, preferring to pitch to First Baseman Willie Aikens. Bad move. Aikens, who earlier had become the second player in history to hit two home runs in his first World

Series game, mashed a line drive to the left-field wall. Explained Aikens: "I said to myself, 'Willie, you're tired and you're ready for this game to be over. Why don't you get a hit so you can go home?' And I did." Final score: 4-3.

Kansas City continued to thrive the following day, walloping Philadelphia's starting pitcher, Larry Christenson, for four runs in the first inning. Christenson faced five batters and gave up a single, a double, a triple and a home run--to Aikens--before heading for the showers. Aikens got another home run the following inning for good measure, and the Royals tied the Series at two games apiece with a 5-3 victory.

But it was a pitch from Philadelphia Reliever Dickie Noles in the fourth inning that truly ignited the Royals. Noles whistled a fastball past George Brett's chin. No sooner had Brett hit the dirt than Kansas City Manager Jim Frey hit the ceiling. After a long dialogue that was notable for its lack of Socratic highmindedness, the umpires placed both pitchers on warning: any inside pitch would be considered a beanball and would result in ejection from the game. Hostilities ceased, but not the hostility. The fans and the Phillies' bench faced off after a cup was thrown at First Baseman Pete Rose. Brett, who had spent most of the brouhaha laughing in the on-deck circle, explained his reaction: "I was laughing because I was happy he didn't hit me, and besides, it was funny to see Jim Frey jumping around out there." Frey, however, was still not amused. Said he: "When a ball is fired at a guy's head, I call that throwing at the hitter. I've seen two or three guys nearly get killed with brush-back pitches and I don't believe in it."

So the World Series went on, no longer a friendly contest. Merely an exciting one.

-- By B.J. Phillips. Reported by Peter Ainslie/ Kansas City and Philadelphia

With reporting by Peter Ainslie

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