The 1964 Phillies still wonder what could have been 60 years after a collapse cost them the pennant

Jack Baldschun, a former reliever known for his screwball who pitched in more games than any other pitcher on the star-crossed 1964 Phillies, died June 6, 2023, in Green Bay, Wis., after a lengthy battle with leukemia. He was 86.

Art Mahaffey — Baldschun’s old roommate with the Phillies — noticed how little mention there was last year when his teammate died. No stories. No headlines. No fanfare. Baldschun, just like the screwball that has all but disappeared from the major leagues, seemed to fade away.

His passing caused Mahaffey to wonder how different it could have been had the 1964 Phillies been remembered for something other than blowing the pennant.

The summer was magical: Jim Bunning was perfect on Father’s Day, Johnny Callison hit a game-winning homer in the All-Star Game when the event truly was the Midsummer Classic, and Dick Allen mesmerized with a 42-ounce bat. But the season can be summed up by 6½ games with 12 to play. No pennant. No World Series. And little remembrance when an important player dies.

“It’s sad to see them die without much recognition or anything,” said the 86-year-old Mahaffey, one of the 10 living members of the ‘64 team. “Had they been in the World Series, it would’ve said, ‘Jack Baldschun from the World Series.’”

The Phillies sold World Series tickets that September and then couldn’t stop losing after Chico Ruiz stole home at Connie Mack Stadium with Mahaffey on the mound. They lost 10 straight, missed the World Series by a game, scarred a generation of fans, and narrowly missed out on their chance to spend the rest of their lives with championship rings.

“I started two opening days, I made three All-Star teams, I struck out 17 batters in a nine-inning game, and I won 19 games,” Mahaffey said. “But to not have been in the World Series. Just imagine if we would’ve been in the World Series. Today, they would still be honoring that. Win or lose, they would be saying, ‘The ‘64 guys are here.’ Imagine that. That would’ve been unbelievable. It wasn’t to be.”

Mr. Baldschun grew up in Ohio and spent four seasons in Cincinnati’s farm system, where his career seemed to stall. He needed a new pitch and finally found the screwball. The sports editor of his hometown newspaper alerted him that he had been selected by the Phillies in the Rule 5 draft. He was ecstatic. It was a fresh start and his new club would give him the chance to make the team the following spring.

John Middleton was sitting in the third-base grandstand 60 years ago at Connie Mack Stadium when he nudged his father, after noticing that the Cincinnati runner looked ready to steal home.

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“My father looks at me and says, ‘John, Frank Robinson is at the plate. There’s one out. There is no chance this guy is stealing home,’” said Middleton, now the team’s managing partner.

Mahaffey, on the mound in the sixth inning, agreed.

“Robinson is right-handed,” Mahaffey said. “If Chico steals home and Robinson swings, he could hit him in the head and kill him. This would be like Ted Williams hitting and some rookie stealing home. People can say whatever they want and people say to me, ‘How did you not know he was going to try and steal home?’ Would that even enter your mind? Why would he?”

The Phillies lost that game, 1-0, but still led the National League by 5½ games with 11 to play. The front-page story in the next morning’s Inquirer read, “There’s no real cause for alarm as of yet.”

Little did anyone know that the collapse was underway.

In a Sept. 25 home game vs. the Milwaukee Braves, Callison tied the score with a two-run homer in the eighth and Allen tied it in the 10th on an inside-the-park homer. But the Phils lost, 7-5, in the 12th.

A day later, Phillies manager Gene Mauch allowed the left-handed Bobby Shantz — the 1952 American League MVP from Pottstown High — to face Milwaukee’s right-handed Rico Carty with a one-run lead in the ninth inning. Carty hit a three-run triple, giving the Phillies another loss as St. Louis finally passed them in the standings. For nearly two weeks, the Phillies just kept finding new ways to lose.

“Mauch had his meetings,” Mahaffey said of the often fiery manager. “And it was like each day we couldn’t believe that we lost another game.”

Mr. Baldschun debuted with the Phillies in April 1961, breaking in with a club that lost 107 games and suffered a record 23-game losing streak. He led the majors as a rookie in games pitched and appeared in more than 60 games in each of his five seasons with the Phillies. Mr. Baldschun was Gene Mauch’s top late-inning reliever in 1964 until he stumbled in September, just before the Phillies lost 10 straight and the pennant slipped away. He earned the save in the team’s second-to-last game of the season, but it was too late for the Phillies to rally.

Clay Dalrymple was behind home plate when Mahaffey, startled that Ruiz broke from third, uncorked a wild pitch. The baseball bounced to the backstop, allowing Ruiz to slide in safely. Surely, Dalrymple remembers it.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

How about the mood in the clubhouse as the pennant slipped away?

“I don’t recall what it was like,” Dalrymple said.

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Dalrymple, 87, recalls his early days with the Phillies and how Robin Roberts requested that he catch him. He remembers rooming with Callison, winning two pennants as a reserve with Baltimore, and being teammates with Brooks Robinson. The memories of his 12 years in the majors remain fresh all these years later. But it’s as if he found a way to erase September 1964.

“Oh, I don’t recall,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you.”

Mauch told the team’s public relations department in the 1990s to stop giving his number to reporters. He was through talking about 1964. For many players, the swoon became too painful to revisit. They tried to leave it behind.

“It would’ve been the greatest thing since peanut butter,” said John Briggs, a rookie in 1964. “I was 20 years old. I was laughing and giggly. We’re winning. We had a good chance to win the World Series in my first year and it was all peaches and cream. It’s always going to be in me. People always ask, ‘How did you lose 10 games in a row?’ I ask myself that. I don’t know, but I know we did it.”

Former Phillies players were invited last month to Middleton’s home for dinner after attending the team’s alumni ceremony at Citizens Bank Park. The annual alumni weekend would have been the 60th anniversary of a magical season had 1964 finished the way they dreamed it would. Instead, the Cardinals honored their ‘64 world champions last month in St. Louis. And the 1964 Phillies were dinner guests in Bryn Mawr.

“You can really see with the ‘80 and ‘08 guys and how they’ve stayed in touch with each other,” Middleton said. “How the wives have even stayed in touch with each other. They get together, whether it’s this event or some other. They still enjoy talking to each other. They still enjoy reminiscing. They still enjoy talking about baseball in general and the current Phillies team in particular. You see that with the ‘08 guys.”

“The ‘64 guys don’t have that. They don’t have that bond, that glue that kind of holds them together. ‘We did something extraordinary at one point in our lives and we’re carrying that with us for the rest of our lives and it’ll even continue after our lives.’ Unfortunately, they’re missing a lot. And I think the fans are missing a lot.”

Mr. Baldschun’s affinity for the screwball often led to him falling behind in counts, causing Mauch to become irate. The manager’s neck would turn red and his veins would pop out, Mr. Baldschun once said. The pitcher was traded after the 1965 season to Baltimore, which traded him days later to Cincinnati as part of a three-player package to receive Frank Robinson. The pitcher spent two seasons with the Reds before finishing his career with the San Diego Padres, who joined the majors in 1969 as an expansion team.

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A post office truck delivered more than 60,000 World Series ticket orders to Connie Mack Stadium, where they were stashed in Connie Mack’s old office tower. The Phillies were to have a drawing in late September in which 20,000 fans would win the right to buy tickets — a pair of box seats were $24 — to the Fall Classic. A World Series in Philadelphia felt like such a given that the team didn’t ask fans to send return envelopes with their orders.

“I had $2,500 worth of World Series tickets,” Mahaffey said.

The Phillies returned the 60,000 orders in early October and sold the tickets — “the most beautiful World Series tickets ever printed,” an Inquirer article wrote that September — a month later for charity. It took the Phillies another 16 seasons, and a few more heartbreaks, until they could finally use World Series tickets. The mementos from 1964 were a reminder of how close they came.

“I have my four World Series tickets framed on my wall,” said Mike Tollin, a Hollywood producer and director who grew up in Havertown.

Tollin, like many other kids that summer, went to sleep listening to By Saam on his transistor radio. He didn’t miss an Allen swing, telling his mother that he would come to dinner when his favorite player was finished hitting. For a generation, the 1964 Phillies were a gateway into sports fandom. They hooked them in the summer and broke their hearts in the fall, reminding them to always be cautious when things seemed promising.

“All of us would be different because we wouldn’t carry around these silly scars from 60 years ago,” Tollin said. “Gene Mauch’s life would’ve been different. Bunning and [Chris] Short. Bunning and Short. Golly. What would have happened if they pitched Ray Culp and Dennis Bennet and Art Mahaffey? I think of how the collective consciousness changed in 2018 when the Eagles won the Super Bowl. So how would it have been if we had that pennant? I think very different. I think there’s a grief and a woe-is-me that may not have been so present if we didn’t suffer through that.”

Mr. Baldschun turned down a scouting job, moved his family to Wisconsin, and spent three years in construction before working for 25 years as a lumber salesman. He retired in 1998. Mr. Baldschun once said customers would suddenly become interested in his product after learning he used to be a big-league pitcher.

Mahaffey broke his hip earlier this year, so he had his wife, Janet, drive him last month to an autograph signing in Havertown. It had been nearly 60 years since he last threw a pitch and just a few months since his old roommate died without much attention. It would be hard to blame Mahaffey if he wondered how the crowd would be that day for him.

» READ MORE: What if the Phillies had been able to avoid the 1964 collapse by making a trade seven years earlier?

“We had a little more than 100 people come out,” said Carl Henderson, the owner of Carl’s Cards. “That 1964 team, as bad as it went down, they were still loved. There were so many guys on that team that people just got themselves attached to. He was great chatting with the fans about: ‘What would it have been like if we won?’ ”

The collapse was devastating — “I remember just being despondent,” Middleton said — but the 1964 Phillies carved out a place in the city’s sports conscience without being champions.

Kids cut their favorite players’ portrait from the Sunday Bulletin and then chased them down 20th Street for an autograph. They listened to Bunning’s perfect game on radio and watched Callison win the All-Star Game in the same stadium, with a Mets helmet and Billy Williams’ bat. They sat in the bleachers and scribbled the lineups from the Ballantine scoreboard into their scorecards.

The ending was brutal. But the ride was what had fans waiting for Mahaffey in Havertown. Sixty years later, the 1964 Phillies were remembered even when they felt forgotten.

Mr. Baldschun said in 1989 — the 25th anniversary of the 1964 collapse — that he couldn’t pinpoint any reason why the Phillies fell short except for “maybe the Lord just didn’t want us to win.” He is survived by his wife, Bonnie; daughter, Kim Baldschun Allouez; son, Brad (Julie) Baldschun; two grandsons, Alex (Abby) Baldschun, and Nick Baldschun; and five nieces, Jackie, Julie, Jennifer, Kim, and Pam. His first wife, Charlotte Baldschun, died in 2010. Mr. Baldschun is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Green Bay, Wis.