Will 2016 Phillies be new Whiz Kids?
At 86, with left-hip problems three replacement surgeries haven't fixed, Curt Simmons doesn't often leave his Limekiln residence. When he does, people seldom approach the former Phillies lefthander, once one of this area's most familiar names and faces.
At 86, with left-hip problems three replacement surgeries haven't fixed, Curt Simmons doesn't often leave his Limekiln residence.
When he does, people seldom approach the former Phillies lefthander, once one of this area's most familiar names and faces.
"Once in a while, some old guy will come up and say something about the Whiz Kids," said Simmons. "But not very often anymore. A lot of the fans who remember us have died or moved away."
Baseball might not have a clock, but time doesn't spare its heroes.
This spring, 66 years after their surprise 1950 National League pennant captivated fans here and elsewhere - including a 10-year-old Ohioan named Bobby Knight, who can still recite their starting lineup - the Whiz Kids have practically faded into history.
Baseball fame is ephemeral. A few attain it early and never shed it. Others find and lose it. Most never experience it at all. But for some, such as the Whiz Kids, fame lingers beyond any reasonable expiration date.
The 1950 Phillies enjoyed an extended shelf life thanks to the persistent popularity of players who came and stayed, such as Simmons, Robin Roberts, and Richie Ashburn, but also thanks to their mellifluous nickname.
"I've often wondered that if not for that moniker, would people remember them at all?" said C. Paul Rogers III, an SMU law professor and coauthor, with Roberts, of the 1996 book The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant. "Because, let's face it, they were a one-year wonder."
But they're fading away now, and that fadeout from Philadelphia's sports consciousness is made more interesting by its timing.
As one Phillies team exceptional for its youth exits the stage, another is about to walk on.
Will Mikael Franco, Aaron Nola, Odubel Hererra, and the rest of their mostly youthful teammates help the 2016 Phillies earn the kind of appeal and enduring fame the 1950 club won? Or will they be footnotes in another sad chapter in franchise history?
Whether this youthful talent is destined to be legendary or lamentable will be determined soon enough. And it's that mystery, said Rogers, that is part of the sport's appeal.
"There's an excitement about youngsters coming on the scene that's part of what attracts people to baseball," said Rogers, who became a Phillies fan while a child in Wyoming. "There's something about the 'what might be' that we love.
"I have Baseball Digests from the '50s, and each spring there was a cover with four top prospects on it. So many of them you never heard of again. Others become Hall of Famers. The Whiz Kids did make good, at least for one year."
Their youth and premature success endeared them to Philadelphia like no Phillies team before and few since. They set a franchise attendance record, attracted 500,000 written requests for 92,000 World Series tickets two days after they went on sale, and three months after being swept by the Yankees were paraded down Broad Street by the Mummers.
Before each of their home games, special "Whiz Kid Express" buses departed for Connie Mack Stadium from Camden and the 69th Street terminal in Upper Darby.
And thanks to the decades-long presence of Ashburn, their star centerfielder, in the Phillies broadcast booth, memories of that brief glory lived on, becoming part of our sports heritage.
"Old Whitey behind the mike so long kept us alive," said Putsy Caballero, 88, a Whiz Kids reserve who is living in his native New Orleans.
But while many fans here might still recall that team's collective name, few now likely could list more than a handful of its players.
"It's like the [1930s St. Louis Cardinals'] Gas House Gang," said Rogers. "Most people couldn't tell you who they were or anyone on the team. But it was such a great name."
Roberts died in 2010. Their Whiz Kids manager, "Boy Wonder" Eddie Sawyer, died in 1997. So did Ashburn.
Now only three Whiz Kids survive - Simmons, Caballero, and pitcher Bob Miller.
"The three of us," said Simmons, "and that's it. That's the end."
Filled with young post-war talent that new owner Bob Carpenter's money had helped find, the Phillies had by the late 1940s finally begun to emerge from their historic hole in the National League standings.
The young Phillies would finish third in 1949, with Ashburn's leadoff speed, a couple of promising arms in righty Roberts and lefty Simmons, and an offense that in one game at Cincinnati set a record with five home runs in an inning.
Optimism, absent from Philadelphia baseball for nearly two decades, was soaring as the 1950 season began. A new song that expressed that feeling, "The Fightin' Phils," debuted at the home opener.
Written by Elliot Lawrence and Bickley Reichner, the tune's lyrics included the following:
"The Fight, Fight, Fight-in' Phils!
"It's a tough, tough, tough team to beat.
"They're out to win, win ev-'ry day.
"Every victory is sweet.
"Watch 'em hit that ball a mile;
"Play a game that's packed with thrills.
"Get Pa to bring your mother, sister, and your brother.
"Come out to see the Fightin' Phils.
"The Fight, Fight, Fight-in Phils."
"We would harmonize in the showers," catcher Andy Seminick recalled in 2000. "We were wanted by a lot of talk shows."
They were appealing and, in a culture that was beginning to recognize its value, so was their youth. The Whiz Kids were the league's youngest team, with an average age of 26.4.
They would draw 1.2 million fans as they ran out to an early lead, survived a September slump, and clinched the pennant with a memorable final-game victory in Brooklyn.
Then, with the city's passions inflamed, they lost four straight to the Yankees in an anticlimactic World Series. Throughout the rest of the decade, the Phillies would never finish as high as third again.
Their success might have come too soon. Sawyer once said management had been planning to contend in 1951 or 1952, not in 1950.
"I remember Robin telling me that after the World Series, he was unhappy, of course, but he was buoyed by the fact that they'd be back next year. 'I didn't know,' he told me, 'there would never be a next year.' "
Simmons, meanwhile, unable to play golf for 10 years, is eager for the 2016 season to begin.
"Right now, besides that kid Franco at third, I hardly know who's on the team. But once the season starts, I'll be watching them. It might be fun. They're just kids."
Not Whiz Kids yet, just kids.
@philafitz