Frank Thomas' bad break may have cost '64 Phillies the pennant

Books, magazines, and newspapers are filled with stories about the 1964 Phillies' late-season collapse, and the general consensus is that manager Gene Mauch blew the pennant by overusing star pitchers Jim Bunning and Chris Short down the stretch.

Fifty years later, many of the '64 Phillies disagree with that theory, pointing to an injury suffered by slugging first baseman Frank Thomas as the trigger to the 10-game tailspin, one that erased a 61/2-game lead in the National League.

Thomas, no relation to the Hall of Fame Chicago White Sox slugger who has the same name, broke his thumb diving into second base against the Dodgers.

"His season," said Bobby Wine, a shortstop on that team, "went down the drain."

So did the Phillies' season.

When Thomas was acquired from the Mets in early August, he went on a hitting tear. In his first 34 games with the Phils, he hit seven homers and knocked in 26 runs. The Phils' first-place lead was 11/2 games when they added Thomas, and it ballooned to 61/2 games by the time he broke his thumb on Sept. 8.

"He became the offense we were missing," Wine said of Thomas' presence in the lineup. "He gave us a spark and that little extra pop."

But the injury virtually wiped out his season. Against a doctor's orders, Thomas returned to the lineup Sept. 25 - during the middle of the collapse - but he wasn't himself. He went 2 for 13 with no RBIs during the losing streak.

"We weren't the same team" without Thomas, Wine said.

"If I don't break my thumb, we win the pennant. Simple as that," Thomas said from his home in Pittsburgh on Saturday. "Even Mauch said that at the 25th anniversary."

Thomas said he slid under the tag of Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills - "I was safe, but they called me out," he claimed - and jammed his right thumb on a pin under the base.

When he got back to the Warwick Hotel that night, Thomas said, "I asked them to bring a big lard bucket filled with ice to my room," he said. "I had my thumb in it all night and it was still puffed up when I woke up."

Thomas went to the hospital, and X-rays showed a fracture.

"I said, 'Doc, why don't you just come to the park before each game and give me a shot of Novocaine in the thumb so I have some feeling in it?' " recalled Thomas, who will join several '64 Phillies at a sports card and memorabilia show Sunday at the Valley Forge Casino Resort. "But he wouldn't do it; he put a cast on it."

Thomas' injury was the "principal reason" the Phillies lost 10 straight, said Johnny Briggs, who was a 20-year-old rookie outfielder on that team.

"Everything he hit knocked in a run," Briggs said.

Most of the players from the '64 Phillies are in their 70s and 80s now. Most are retired, and they remember how their overachieving, defensively sound team captivated the city that summer before the fold-up.

"We played great for most of the season," said Rick Wise, who was 18 when he famously recorded his first major-league victory in 1964, winning the nightcap of a doubleheader after Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game in the opener. "Mauch had us playing fundamental baseball. He had us bunting in the first and second inning, trying to get a lead. We played hard and we played right."

The Phillies were in first place for 134 days that season; the champion St. Louis Cardinals held first place for six days.

"There were weird things that happened in the losing streak," Wise said from his home in Oregon. "Like a ball that was going to be a double play hits a rock and goes over [second baseman] Tony Taylor's head."

"When the saints turn their backs on you," said Ruben Amaro Sr., another shortstop on that '64 team, "there's nothing you can do."

Amaro said "it still hurts" to talk about the season that came crashing down. For others, the pain has dimmed.

"For me, being a rookie, I look at that season as an opportunity of a lifetime to have a chance to go to the World Series in your first year," said Briggs, who spent 12 seasons in the majors and also played for Milwaukee and Minnesota. "That was as close as I ever came."

For those who didn't live through what is permanently etched in the minds of baby boomers, here is a shortened version of what the players - and fans - endured during that a 10-game swoon that stretched from Sept. 21 to Sept. 30:

Cincinnati's Chico Ruiz stole home to give the Reds a 1-0 win at chilly Connie Mack Stadium on Sept. 21. The losing streak was underway, and Ruiz's name would live in Phillies infamy.

Teams can go decades before losing a game on a steal of home. Amazingly, it happened to the Phils twice in three games. Two nights before Ruiz stole home - with two outs and future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson at the plate - Willie Davis stole home in the 16th inning, lifting the host Dodgers to a 4-3 victory.

The Reds swept the three-game series from the Phils, who blew a 3-2, seventh-inning lead Sept. 23 as Vada Pinson's three-run homer keyed a 6-4 Cincinnati win.

Despite game-tying two-run, two-out homers by Johnny Callison in the eighth inning and Richie Allen (an inside-the-parker) in the 10th, the Phils fell to visiting Milwaukee, 7-5, in 12 innings. The losing streak was at five, and the Reds swept a doubleheader that day to cut the Phillies' lead to 11/2 games.

The Phils took a 4-0 lead into the fifth, and 4-3 lead into the ninth. No matter. Rico Carty's three-run, ninth-inning triple off reliever Bobby Shantz reduced the Phils' lead to a half-game over the Reds and 11/2 games over the surging Cardinals.

Callison blasted three homers, but Milwaukee rocked future Hall of Famer Jim Bunning for seven runs in three innings as the Braves coasted to a 14-8 win. That concluded the Phils' 0-7 homestand - the worst in franchise history - and helped drop them into second place.

Chris Short, making his fourth start in 11 days, lost in St. Louis, 5-1, on Sept. 28. Two games later, Bunning, starting on just two days' rest for the third time in the skid, suffered an 8-5 loss to the Cards. It was the Phils' 10th straight defeat.

Partly because of supposed injuries to Ray Culp and Dennis Bennett, Mauch used his aces, Bunning and Short, a combined five times on two days' rest during the 10-game collapse. They started six of the 10 games.

"People say we lost because he used Bunning and Short too much. I don't buy it, because at the core of the games we lost [in the late-season skid], we had a chance to win four or five of those games - and just didn't do it," said Amaro, a Houston Astros scout who is the father of the Phillies' general manager.

Wise, who retired from baseball after coaching for an independent team in Lancaster in 2008, had just turned 19 when the Phils went on their losing streak. Mauch didn't trust him to start any of those late-season games.

"They could have used me for fodder, at least to give Bunning or Short another day's rest," Wise said. "I had all the confidence in myself to perform, but did Mauch want me to pitch in games of that magnitude?"

Wise knew the answer, just as he did a half-century ago.