A CITIZEN'S BLOG

Buoyed by the success of the 1950 campaign, most people assumed the youthful Phillies were a dynasty in the making. It didn’t happen. The Phillies got off to a sloppy start in 1951 and finished a whopping twenty-three and a half games behind the triumphant New York Giants. After defeating the Giants 4-0 on August 11, 1951, the Phillies, who were in third place and a game behind the Giants and fourteen games behind the Dodgers, would go 15-29 for the rest of the season while the Giants would win 39 of 48 games (an astonishing .830 winning percentage) and close a thirteen game deficit with the Dodgers. The Phillies finished fifth.

The problem the 1951 Phillies had was that they slipped badly on defense. They fell to fourth in DER. They were still the best pitching team in the National League, once more leading the league in Fielding Independent Pitching, at 3.73, which was much better than team ERA of 3.81 (good for just fourth in the NL). Still, the slip in fielding cost the Phillies dearly. After out-performing their Pythagorean win-loss record by four games in 1950, the Phillies fell behind by four games in '51. Their sterling 30-16 record in one-run games tumbled to 24-29 in 1951.

1951 FIP:
1. Phillies: 3.73
2. Braves: 3.75
3. Reds: 3.77
4. Giants: 3.94
5. Dodgers: 3.99
6. Cardinals: 4.00
7. Cubs: 4.07
8. Pirates: 4.40

As in 1950, the ’51 Giants were again the best fielding team in the league, a fact that masked their average pitching. The Phillies couldn’t generate enough offense to off-set the slip in fielding, finishing a paltry sixth of eight teams in runs scored. The team sputtered to a sub-.500 finish as the season culminated in the dramatic moment when Bobby Thomson smashed Ralph Branca’s fastball over the Polo Grounds fence for a 5-4 Giants victory and the NL pennant. Memories of the Phillies dramatic victory the previous season faded as baseball mourned the retirement of Joe DiMaggio and the Giants basked in the glow of their incredible triumph. According to Bill James: “I have always suspected that had it not been for the unbelievable end to the 1951 National League race, this wonderful race, this classic game and this remarkable play might be even more famous than they are. Bobby Thomson, in a sense, blew Richie Ashburn out of the water before the 1950 race had time to settle into myth.” (Bill James Historical Abstract.)

The rest of the decade would be dominated by the City of New York, which had a team in the World Series each year until 1959. Bobby Thomson’s triumph was followed by the Yankees continuing their dominance in the American League while the Dodgers and Giants possessed a stranglehold on the NL that would last until both teams fled New York for California in 1957. The Dodgers and Giants controlled the NL pennant every year from 1951 to 1956. The glow of the Phillies triumph in 1950 faded quickly as the sports media focused in on the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees. Bobby Thomson’s home run, the Giants dramatic late-season comeback, the dominance of the Dodgers thereafter and their eventual triumph in the 1955 World Series pushed memories of the Wiz Kids to the periphery. The talented young team never jelled and never really competed for the pennant for the rest of the decade. The 1952 team again had the best pitching staff in the majors, a fact almost entirely to the credit of Robin Roberts, who went 28-7 that season. But again, the team slipped defensively and couldn’t generate enough offense to make another run. They finished two games under their Pythagorean win-loss record and staggered to a fourth place finish at 87-67, nine and a half games behind the Dodgers. Eddie Sawyer was gone as manager before the season was out and the team remained mired in fourth or fifth place until 1958.

The biggest blow to the Wiz Kids place in history was that they didn’t play in New York, the media capital of the world. Had the Wiz Kids played at the Polo Grounds instead of Shibe Park, they would probably been remembered more fondly in history and Richie Ashburn wouldn’t have had to wait until 1995 to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The reverence the media has always had for the Giants, Dodgers and Yankees choked the Wiz Kids out.

The biggest reason why the Wiz Kids didn’t return to the World Series again in the 1950s was fairly simple: the management was racist. Herb Pennock, the team’s brilliant General Manager from 1943 to 1948, was largely responsible for assembling the Wiz Kids through his shrewd decision-making. Pennock built a tremendous farm system and stocked it with players like Roberts, Simmons, Ashburn, Ennis, etc. He was a smart man with a savvy eye for talent. The Wiz Kids were largely his creation, and he deserves a lot of credit for that.

Yet, Herb Pennock was also a racist. In 1947 he telephoned Branch Rickey, the Dodgers wise G.M., and told him that the Dodgers couldn’t bring Jackie Robinson to Shibe Park for a game. Pennock told Rickey: “You just can’t bring the nigger here with the rest of the team. We’re not ready for that sort of thing in Philadelphia. If that boy is in uniform when Brooklyn takes the field, we will not play the game.” (Tales from The Phillis Dugout at 45.) Then Pennock had a member of the front office convince the Dodgers hotel to turn them away when they arrived to play.

Pennock’s racism embedded itself into the fabric of the team and colored the front office’s outlook for years. While players like Roy Campanella, a Philadelphia native, signed with the Dodgers, the Phillies refused to bring in black talent. After the Phillies turned him down for a tryout, young Hank Aaron signed with the Braves and went on to break the major league record for career home runs. It is no mere coincidence that the Dodgers, the Giants and the Braves, the three teams most open to signing African-American players in the 1950s, forged ahead and dominated the decade, winning the pennant each and every year from 1951 to 1959.

That was the reason why the Wiz Kids never prospered. Richie Ashburn, the most famous of the Wiz Kids, said as much when he remarked that the reason why they never repeated was because they were “all white”. It wasn’t until 1957 that the Phillies bothered to bring aboard a black player, and even then they only brought in a light-hitting utility infielder. The team’s racial issues would continue well into the next decade: Curt Flood triggered a battle over baseball’s reserve clause – and helped baseball's march towards free agency – by his flat refusal to accept a deal trading him from the Cardinals to the Phillies in 1969 because of the Phillies reputation for racism.

The Phillies played .500 baseball for the rest of the decade, finishing fourth or fifth each season, despite terrific performances from Del Ennis, Richie Ashburn, Curt Simmons and Robin Roberts. The core of the Wiz Kids stayed together, with the exception of Konstanty, who fell to 4-11 in 1951 and was dealt to the Yankees in 1954 before leaving baseball altogether in 1956. However, the team never was able to compete for the pennant again.

At the end of the decade the Phillies tumbled to eighth in 1958, a position they would occupy until the 1962 season when the expansion franchises – the Houston Colt .45’s and the New York Mets – would help the Phillies attain .500 status again. (The Phils 81-80 record in 1962 was largely built on the foundation of a 31-5 record against the Mets and Colt .45’s. Otherwise the team was 50-75 that season.) The Phillies improved in 1963 and nearly took the pennant in 1964, only to fall spectacularly short at the end, when the team blew a six game lead with twelve games remaining. The Phillies would take another turbulent decade to recover before the team’s golden era (1976-1983), when they won the NL East six times, played in two World Series and won the team’s only title in 1980. The team’s modern era has been a mixed bag, with some dramatic highs (the 1993 World Series, the team’s recent pennant runs) and many lows (aside from the ’93 team, no Phillies team had a winning record from 1987 to 2000 …)

And thus the history of the Wiz Kids comes to an end. I hope everyone enjoyed the series. It took me a long, long time to write and I suspect I'll never do something as complex and time-consuming as this again. Still it was fun and I hope you all liked it. Tomorrow, back to regularly scheduled programming. I am working up some thoughts on this season's wild, free-spending free agency season.

Previous Installments of the Wiz Kids:
Part XIV: The 1950 World Series.
Part XIII: How the National League was won.
Part XII: October 1, 1950.
Part XI: Richie Ashburn.
Part X: The Phillies Farm System.
Part IX: The second half of the 1950 season.
Part VIII: The Braves, Cardinals, Pirates, Cubs & Reds.
Part VII: The Giants and Dodgers.
Part VI: Curt Simmons.
Part V: Robin Roberts.
Part IV: The first half of the 1950 season.
Part III: Jim Konstanty.
Part II: Eddie Sawyer.
Part I: The Path to 1950.
Prolouge.