Phillies Fall Classics VI: 1983 World Series Game One

The 1983 season was one of great change for a Philadelphia Phillies organization that had achieved tremendous success over the previous decade. 

The Phillies had won the 1980 World Series, four NL East division crowns, and earned a postseason berth in a 1981 campaign split by a work stoppage.

As longtime 1980 World Series-winning stars Mike Schmidt (33), Garry Maddox (32), Steve Carlton (38), Ron Reed (40), and Tug McGraw (38) aged, the team looked to both get younger and continue to contend against tough competition.

Among those already gone was slugger Greg Luzinski, sold to the Chicago White Sox in March of 1981. 

Long time shortstop Larry Bowa was traded to the Chicago Cubs in January of 1982 along with an infield prospect named Ryne Sandberg in exchange for shortstop Ivan DeJesus. 

A month later, Bake McBride was dealt away to the Cleveland Indians for reliever Sid Monge.

In December of 1982, popular 2nd baseman Manny Trillo was part of a five-player package sent to the Cleveland Indians for young outfielder Von Hayes. 

That same month, the club dealt a pair of good arms in Mike Krukow and Mark Davis as part of a package to the San Francisco Giants for veteran 2nd baseman Joe Morgan and reliever Al Holland.

Morgan was 39-years old, and was now reunited with his old Cincinnati buddy Pete Rose, now 42-years old and in his final season of a five-year contract with the Phillies. 

The ‘Big Red Machine’ Reunion would be completed when the Phillies signed Tony Perez as a free agent at the end of January 1983.

With the exception of the 24-year old Hayes, every Phillies positional starter was at least 30 years of age, as were three members of the season-opening starting pitching rotation, and the majority of the bullpen. 

The club was so long in the tooth that they were given the nickname the “Wheeze Kids”, a nod to the 1950 NL champs who had been so young that they had become the “Whiz Kids” in team lore.

Fightin' Phils Battle ALS

The Philadelphia Phillies bill their annual "Phillies Phestival" as a "fun-filled autograph and auction party for all ages", and this year's event will take place this evening at Citizens Bank Park on what is an open date in the Phils MLB schedule.

The goal of the Phestival is to raise funds to help battle the devastating, deadly, incurable neuromuscular condition of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) known in the colloquial as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

The latter designation comes from the New York Yankees legendary Hall of Fame 1st baseman Lou Gehrig, whose career and life were very publicly and tragically cut short by the disease back in 1941.

From June 1st, 1925 through April 20th, 1939, Gehrig appeared in a record 2,130 consecutive games, a record that would stand for more than five decades until broken by Cal Ripken Jr.

But during the 1938 season, Gehrig began to sense that something was wrong. By the start of the 1939 season, it was obvious to him and everyone else as his performance and physical condition began to seriously deteriorate. 

At the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, he was officially diagnosed with ALS on June 19th of that year, his 36th birthday.

ALCS: Royals over Orioles

On Sunday night, October 27th, 1985, Hall of Famer George Brett and the Kansas City Royals put an 11-0 beat down on the Saint Louis Cardinals to win Game 7 of the 1985 World Series.

The victory clinched the first and only World Series championship in the history of the Royals organization. It would also prove to be the last time the team would reach the MLB postseason until now.

The current incarnation of the team ended that postseason drought by clinching an American League Wildcard playoff berth on the final weekend of the regular season. Then they put on one of the wildest comebacks in history to win that Wildcard Game over the Oakland Athletics.

This past weekend, KC put the capper on an ALDS sweep of the West-champion Los Angeles Angels with an 8-3 thrashing. That victory advanced them to the ALCS beginning on Friday night, where their opponents will be the equally impressive Baltimore Orioles.

Happy Birthday to Our Cells

Wednesday, October 13th, 1983 was an off-day in the World Series between my Phillies and the Baltimore Orioles. The Phils' 'Wheeze Kids' lineup featuring a number of holdovers from the 1980 world championship team including Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Pete Rose, and Garry Maddox had battled the Orioles of Eddie Murray, Jim Palmer, and rookie shortstop Cal Ripken Jr to a 1-1 split in Baltimore, and headed back to Philly for three games at Veteran's Stadium. Newly appointed NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, just one month into his role on the Peacock networks lead desk, had a full plate to report on, including the previous month's accidental shoot-down by the Soviet Union of a Korean airliner which had killed all 269 on board, and the selection of the first-ever black woman, Vanessa Williams, as Miss America. One story that was not receiving the attention that it would go down in history as being deserving of was happening that day at Chicago's Soldier Field. On that morning Bob Barnett, the president of Ameritech, a mobile communications company, hoisted a 2 1/2 pound Motorola DynaTAX 8000X analog phone that cost approximately $4,000 and punched in a phone number which connected him to a man in Germany, the grandson of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell. In doing so, Barnett was placing the first-ever commercial cell phone call, launching an industry that has developed into a $150 billion dollar a year worldwide giant of a communications revolution. There were 20 customers of this new 'cell phone' service present at the Soldier Field first-call event, and Ameritech signed up 12,000 subscribers that first year who each shelled out $50 per month plus 40 cents per minute during 'peak' hours and 25 cents per minute during 'off-peak' hours. Those early cell phones were just over a foot long, and were so heavy that they received 'the brick' as a nickname. Today over 84% of Americans own cellphones, which have advanced to the lightweight models that fit easily into your pants pockets, and the usage is so standard that even 46% of American children between 8 and 12 years of age use them. This year my wife and I finally decided to take our household fully wireless, disconnecting our 'land-line' telephone and cutting off that $30+ dollar per month cost. We now operate fully off our cells, with the subsequent advantage of fewer 'crank', 'advertising', 'political', 'fax machine', and simply wrong number calls to annoy us. We are thus available by cell to any of our family, friends, and co-workers wherever we may be during the day, and only need remember to charge their batteries regularly. With basic cell phone costs dropping all the time, and with their now-digital services expanding constantly, it's hard to imagine why anyone would keep their home wired. So while I won't be baking a cake and lighting any candles, let me just say 'happy 25th birthday' or 'happy silver anniversary' to commercial cell phone usage, a service that has liberated us from wires and contributed greatly to the ease and efficiency of our lives in ways only the early marketers in the 1970's and '80's could could have imagined.