1961 Phillies understand what the 2024 White Sox were going through: Sliders

Few people grasped the misery of the Chicago White Sox quite like Art Mahaffey, the best player on the only team in modern history to lose more games in a row. And when the White Sox finally snapped their 21-game losing streak Tuesday night in Oakland, Mahaffey’s spirits soared.

“The White Sox are on a roll!” he said by phone Wednesday morning, from his home in Allentown, Pa. “That’s good for them. What they went through, what we went through, it’s really hard. It’s great that they won.”

Mahaffey, 86, was the Philadelphia Phillies’ top winner in 1961, the summer they stumbled to 23 consecutive losses. He tied for the National League in losses that season, with 19, but also won 11 games — including two shutouts just after the streak ended.

“It’s hard to imagine losing that many games, having the manager screaming at you,” Mahaffey said. “It was dead in the clubhouse. There wasn’t any fun or yelling. It wasn’t pleasant at all; it was hard to believe. Then all of a sudden we win a game and I pitch two shutouts in a row. How does that happen?

“The White Sox were terrible at the beginning of this season, and they must just have stayed terrible. It’s changed now for some teams in the last half of the season — except for the White Sox, it hasn’t changed.”

Another pitcher from those Phillies, 95-year-old Don Ferrarese, used that same word — terrible — to describe the 1961 team. Its final record was 47-107, still the worst for the Phillies since World War II.

“We weren’t worth a (damn),” Ferrarese said. “It was a horrible team. We couldn’t hit and we couldn’t pitch. I led the team in earned run average at 3-something, and everybody else was 4 or more. And batting-wise, I don’t know what the team average was, but I know they couldn’t hit. Pancho Herrera was our cleanup guy, and I think I could hit better than he could. It was a terrible deal.”

The Phillies had the National League’s worst ERA, at 5.14, and lowest batting average, at .243. The White Sox, at 28-89, likewise had the American League’s worst ERA (4.83) and average (.216) at the beginning of play Thursday.

Both were teams in transition with a first-time manager in his second season. With Chicago, it was Pedro Grifol, who was fired on Thursday. With Philadelphia, it was Gene Mauch, then just 35 years old. He would manage for four teams until age 61, and the losing streak foretold a career of heartbreak.

Mauch is 10th on the career list for games managed, with nearly 4,000. But everyone else in the top 15 won at least three pennants. Mauch never did, foiled by wrenching collapses with the Angels at the end and the Phillies at the start.

As losing streaks go, the record-setter of 1961 was a footnote compared to the catastrophe of 1964. That year, the Phillies led the NL by six and a half games with 12 to play, only to lose 10 straight and fumble the pennant to St. Louis. That streak started with Mahaffey on the mound.

“I lost the first game, 1-0, when that guy stole home with Frank Robinson hitting,” Mahaffey said, referring to the Reds’ Chico Ruiz, a Voldemort figure (he who shall not be named) for a generation of Phillies fans.

“And everybody says, ‘Oh, didn’t you think he was gonna steal home?’ With the league’s leading hitter (at the plate)? And right-handed, so he’s gonna swing the bat and hit him in the head? (Fred) Hutchinson, the manager, said that if Ruiz hadn’t scored, he would have never played him again. He would have shipped him right out of the big leagues. Robinson, he wants to drive the run in, he’s up there to hit, and this guy comes in — it was just a shock. He did something shocking that you didn’t know was gonna happen. But we didn’t score any runs, either.”

In 1961, Ferrarese touched off the streak with help from a Mauch move that backfired. On July 29 at Connie Mack Stadium, with one out in the first inning against the Giants, Mauch ordered Ferrarese to intentionally walk Willie Mays to load the bases and set up a double play. Instead, Orlando Cepeda belted a grand slam.

Ferrarese struck Mays out the next time he faced him that night, and blanked the Giants for six innings after the grand slam. After the game, a 4-3 loss, he took solace in his performance but still fumed over the walk.

“Bob Lemon’s my pitching coach, so he comes over to my cubicle and goes, ‘Hey, Meat’ — he called everybody ‘Meat’ — ‘Mauch wants to talk to you,’” Ferrarese said. “I go, ‘Aw (damn), he’s probably gonna send me to the minor leagues.’ So he closes the door and they pour a shot of booze and laugh like a son of a bitch. I was mad at Mauch for second-guessing me, but he says, ‘If you could pitch like that all the time, you’d win the Cy Young Award!’

“Anyhow, that started the losing streak.”

That was the last of the laughs for a while. Just before the streak, the Phillies had fallen to Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. During it, they would lose to two more future Hall of Famers — Bob Gibson and Warren Spahn — and standouts of the era like Lew Burdette, Harvey Haddix and Joey Jay.

“Our guys weren’t superstars, just put it that way,” said Mahaffey, the Phillies’ lone All-Star that season. “I mean, they could pitch, but look, we faced Koufax, Drysdale, Gibson, Marichal, everybody, and then our pitchers would go out and give up runs. It wasn’t easy — it was hard, it was really hard. And it was sad, it was really sad.”

Mahaffey still rues a home run pitch to Milwaukee’s Joe Adcock in loss No. 20 on Aug. 17. Ordered by Mauch to drill Adcock (“It’ll cost you if you don’t,” he said Mauch told him) Mahaffey threw one under the slugger’s chin, only for Adcock to bail out, swing wildly — and somehow drive the ball over the fence.

The Phillies lost that game in extra innings, but finally snapped the streak when John Buzhardt vanquished the Braves, 7-4, to cap an 11-game road trip. On the flight to Philadelphia, pitcher Frank Sullivan announced a plan for the airport homecoming.

“They are selling rocks for $1.50 a pail,” Sullivan declared, as reported in the next day’s Philadelphia Daily News. “Leave the plane at five-minute intervals. That way, they can’t get us all with one burst.”

The hardened Philly fans showed mercy to their boys, some 500 loyalists greeting the team in the rain, at 1 a.m., with confetti and signs and a band. The Phillies would go 18-20 the rest of the way, and then reel off a new streak of six winning seasons in a row, a first for the franchise.

As for Mahaffey, his fortunes turned just as quickly. After his 19 losses in 1961, he earned 19 victories in 1962. But he still can’t quite fathom how that ’61 summer stayed so fallow for so long — even longer than the worst weeks of the woeful White Sox.

“Each day you thought it wouldn’t happen again,” Mahaffey said, “and each day, it happened again.”

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When no-hit lightning strikes twice

Baseball’s first two perfect games happened five days apart in 1880. The next one didn’t come around for 24 years. That’s the thing about no-hitters and perfect games — they come with absolutely no warning, which makes them precious to witness.

Consider the case of Todd Greene, a pro scout for the Arizona Diamondbacks. As a player for the Angels in 1999, he took part in a no-hitter by the Twins’ Eric Milton. Ten years later, as a Rays coach, he was there for a perfect game by the White Sox’s Mark Buehrle. Then 15 years passed — and he doubled his no-hit tally in a nine-day span.

On July 25, Greene was in Washington scouting the Nationals and the Padres before the trading deadline. San Diego’s Dylan Cease threw a no-hitter. On Aug. 2, Greene was in Cincinnati to cover the Reds and Giants for offseason possibilities. San Francisco’s Blake Snell threw a no-hitter.

One scouting trip, two memories to treasure.

“First of all, I’m a baseball fan and I love the game,” Greene said. “Otherwise, I would want the Giants to lose, just because they’re in our division. But when you’ve got a chance to see somebody throw a no-hitter, it’s always pretty cool.”

Many organizations have cut back significantly on in-person scouting, focusing more on data that’s been mined from video. The Diamondbacks are analytically savvy, but also employ numerous former players in scouting roles. Down in the NLCS last October, they masterfully implemented scouting suggestions on how to pitch to the Phillies, rallying to win four of the last five games and take the pennant.

“I love the competition of being a scout and being right about players, putting them in the right lanes,” Greene said. “I’m in the opinion business and the support business. I give my opinion and when somebody makes a decision, I support whatever they decide. That’s the cool part of it.”

Here’s what he saw in the no-hitters:

Snell: “Snell dominated the glove side of the plate, whether it was in to the righties or away to the lefties. And then his curveball was coming off the same plane. I’ve seen him really good in the past, but I texted one of our other scouts in the fifth inning and said, ‘I’ve never seen Snell this good.’”

Cease: “Same thing, just dominant command of his fastball and threw his breaking ball off of it. Cease can elevate whenever he wants to and then throws his curveball off the same plane. No really hard contact off either one of them. Balls weren’t hit very hard in either game. That just tells you how dominant they can be.”

Cease led the majors in walks in 2022 and Snell did so in 2023 — largely due to the exceptional movement of their pitches and the deep counts they generate by being so hard to hit. But they were efficient in their masterpieces, with three walks and a reasonable 114 pitches for both.

“The strike zone’s smaller than it’s ever been, too,” said Greene, speaking like a former catcher. “So if these guys both pitched these games 10 years ago, it probably would have been a perfect game.”

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GIMME FIVE

Five bits of ballpark wisdom

The name game with Bowden Francis

Bowden Francis is the only member of the Toronto Blue Jays who keeps a “Zen frog” statue on the top shelf of his locker, alongside a pink crystal and a Palo Santo incense stick. He’s also the only major leaguer in history who shares a name with a two-time national champion college football coach for the Florida State Seminoles.

It’s “Bowden” as in “BAO-din,” like Bobby Bowden, the College Football Hall of Famer who guided the Seminoles from 1976 through 2009. Francis was born after the first two decades of that run, in Tallahassee in April 1996. His full given name is Robert Bowden Francis.

“I never met him, but I’ve got (clips) of him talking to me through video before he passed,” Francis said of his namesake, who died at age 91 in 2021. “And I’ve got a couple of footballs autographed.”

Francis signed with the Milwaukee Brewers as a seventh-round draft choice in 2017, moving on to Toronto four years later in a trade for Rowdy Tellez. After posting a 1.70 ERA in 21 relief appearances over the last two seasons, Francis opened this season in the Blue Jays’ rotation. He hurt his forearm in late April and returned to the rotation July 29, beating Baltimore the day Toronto traded Yusei Kikuchi to Houston.

Francis discussed his distinctive name last Sunday at Yankee Stadium, before losing in an emergency, 10th-inning relief appearance. He started against the Orioles on Wednesday, allowing two runs in five innings with eight strikeouts, and is 5-3 with a 3.84 ERA in his career.

Almost a Seminole: “My dad grew up in Tallahassee, and he was a big fan. I think my parents were joking around about it, and it actually stuck. I went to a lot of their games, and it was always a dream to play there, but my grades weren’t where they needed to be, so I went to (Chipola) junior college about an hour away. I committed to Florida State post-juco, but the draft happened and I ended up going that route.”

His namesake’s legacy: “He was a hard-nosed coach who had players who would fight for him. I feel like he did an amazing job of holding the locker room and setting a standard, and guys loved him. He was good across the board to everybody. The whole balance of being a head coach is hard, having that love and then having that (edge) to get the boys going a little bit. It seemed like he did a good job of that.”

Dad went undercover for a closer look: “My dad snuck into the locker room for a meeting once. That was probably like 25 years ago. He acted like he was the media (relations) guy, so he got to be there for one of the speeches. He got kicked out pretty quick, but he got to see like half of the meeting.”

An idol, now a peer: “It’s funny watching Luke Weaver pitch, because he was my favorite guy to watch growing up. (Weaver, now a Yankees reliever, was a first-round pick by St. Louis in 2014, when Francis was 18.) I liked his style on the mound, his whole thing. He’s actually my dad’s neighbor now, and we throw together in the offseason sometimes.”

A lapsed fan wants back in: “I know their pitching coach really well; I actually grew up playing travel ball for him. As far as football, that coach (Mike Norvell) has been good for the past few years. I need to get back into it and follow them more. I’ve just been so focused on this. But when I get back to Florida in the offseason, maybe I can catch a few games.”

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OFF THE GRID

A historical detour from the Immaculate Grid

Miguel Olivo, Royals/Rockies

Backup catchers are a cheat code for the Immaculate Grid. Every team needs one, and the reliable veterans tend to bounce around on short-term contracts. Miguel Olivo, for example, played for seven teams from 2002 to 2014. When the Grid asked for a player with Rockies and Royals experience last Sunday, Olivo qualified.

Olivo was mostly a starter for Kansas City in 2009, when he hit a career-high 23 homers and caught 31 of Zack Greinke’s 33 starts. That was Greinke’s Cy Young season, with a major league-best 2.16 ERA, and while Greinke rarely said much in public, he made a point to praise Olivo in his acceptance speech at the baseball writers’ dinner in New York.

In 2010, without Olivo, Greinke’s ERA rose by two full runs. He recovered to have a standout career, of course, and in 2021, The Athletic’s Rustin Dodd and Jayson Jenks collected a trove of stories from his catchers. And as long as we’re remembering Olivo, this anecdote, from John Buck, deserves a retelling:

“I had been catching him for a while. This was right at the end. And it happened to be the year he was having his Cy Young year (2009). In the middle of that, he said, ‘John, I know I’m throwing good, but I’m starting to second-guess myself. I don’t want you to catch me anymore.’ I was just kind of like, ‘What?’ I was young, too. My ego was hurt. And then he goes, ‘I just think you’re too smart. You just make me out-think what I’m calling. You have too many good reasons, and sometimes I just want to throw it. And with Miguel Olivo, I just don’t get that.’ We’re both sitting there, and Olivo is like, ‘OK, so I’m dumb?’ And Zack goes, ‘Yeah, but I like throwing to you.’ Olivo and I were like, ‘How do we both want to punch him, but we both get it and appreciate his honesty?’”

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CLASSIC CLIP

August 11, 1994

The final big swing of the 1994 season: Ken Griffey Jr.’s grand slam off Ron Darling

Thirty years ago Sunday marked the end of the 1994 baseball season. The players went on strike Aug. 11 after the final West Coast game, a Randy Johnson masterpiece for the Seattle Mariners in Oakland. The owners — intent on breaking the union by imposing a salary cap — canceled the World Series a month later.

Ron Darling, the losing pitcher for the Athletics that night, had started the last game of a season once before, with the Mets in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series. In this start, a very different ending loomed: a long-term industry shutdown.

“Going into the game, I knew there was a possibility,” Darling said. “But there was also a positivity where you just think, ‘They can’t be this stupid to do this.’”

They were, alas, making 1994 the only season since 1904 without a champion. The strike even bled into 1995, when 29 owners (all but Baltimore’s Peter Angelos) staged a farcical spring training with replacement players. It took an injunction by future Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor — then a federal judge in the Southern District of New York — to restore the previous economic system and bring the real players back to work.

A lot of familiar names never returned. All of these former All-Stars, and more, played the final game of their careers within two weeks of the strike date: Jack Morris, Goose Gossage, Kent Hrbek, Bo Jackson, Dave Henderson, Teddy Higuera, Harold Reynolds and Lonnie Smith.

Darling played out his contract through 1995, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was tied for the AL lead in games started when the strike hit, but was finished at age 34, a year and four days after that grim 1994 finale.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but my love and hunger and thirst and appreciation for baseball ended on that night,” Darling said. “When I came back in ’95, I did not have the same feeling that I did in ’94 or prior, that baseball was the most important thing in my life and I loved it with a hunger that I thought no one else did. I was probably in the best shape of my life physically, and the worst shape of my life mentally, as far as the game was concerned.

“If you told me that the game ended and never was played again, I wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about it — and I never thought I would be in that place. The combination of the steroid period and that period, it just knocked people like me out of the game. Not that I probably didn’t deserve to be knocked out, but it would have been nice to go out on my own terms.”

In time, Darling rekindled his love of the game, which he displays nearly every night as a broadcaster for the Mets on SNY, and nationally for TBS. And all these years later, he can laugh about that final start before the strike, and the grand slam Ken Griffey Jr. swatted off his hanging splitter in an 8-1 Mariners victory.

As the strike stretched on and on, Darling said, networks invariably used that highlight to illustrate what fans were missing.

“Because we were out for so long, I remember going to Hawaii for an extended period of time, and by then I thought it was pretty funny,” Darling said. “People either wanted to see baseball or they hated baseball players, but whatever their thoughts were, they were always reminded that Ken Griffey was great — and that whoever threw that pitch, he wasn’t so great.”

(Top photo of Andrew Benintendi and Luis Robert Jr.: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)