Philadelphia Baseball History

For Phillies fans, it's easy to get cynical. The team is off to a 1-4 start. The offense is anemic. The bullpen can't keep a lead. After less than a week, it's looking like everyone who picked the Phils to finish 30th out of 30 teams was right on target.  Of course, it's a long season. There are 157 games left to be played. Teams have ups and downs throughout the season. And if there is any encouraging news in this first week, it's the staring pitching.  Hellickson, Nola and Eickhoff all had solid outings. Velasquez announced his presence with authority blanking the reigning NL Champions with 9 strike outs.  Even with Morton's rocky start, Phillies starting pitching is sixth in in ERA (2.93), fourth in opponents' batting average (.194) and third in WHIP (.98).  Two of the staring pitchers, Hellickson and Velasquez, have a zero ERA.  Offensively, Franco is hitting .286 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Howard has 2 home runs. With 359 career home runs, Howard just ...

(Photo by Yong Kim, philly.com) It's only spring.  (The Phillies are 10-3-2 in Spring Training games.) These games don't count.  (They are ties with Toronto in the Grapefruit League and Arizona in the Cactus League for most wins.) You have to temper your expectations.  (Maikel Franco is hitting .346 with 4 home runs and 10 RBIs.) This is a young pitching staff, and you can't expect much.  (Vince Velasquez has a monster fastball and has struck out 9 in 9 innings of work.  In 8 innings, Brett Oberholtzer is yet to give up a run, and has a WHIP of 1.13.) We can't expect them to score runs.  (The Phillies are second only to Arizona in runs scored in Spring Training, with 89.) Teams don't play their best players in Spring Training.  (Adam Morton blanked the presumptive Yankees starting line-up yesterday in 4 innings of work.) And everyone who is anyone is picking the Phillies to come in dead last for the foreseeable future.  (Did I ment...

I have to admit, personally I feel disappointed. Last year, in late September, I sat in the nosebleed section of Nationals Park with my daughter and a group of her friends when the Phillies came to DC. I remember distinctly when Arron Altherr hit a line drive to centerfield with the bases loaded and Michael Taylor misplayed it.  Altherr turned on the speed and almost ran over Jared Eickhoff on the base pads. The result was an inside the park grand-slam home run. I have been a fan ever since. Altherr was likely to make the major-league roster as a starting outfielder this year. In a spring training game, he dove to try to catch a fly ball and landed awkwardly on his left wrist. Now he needs surgery to repair a torn tendon in the wrist, and will mess 4 to 6 months in recovery. I feel bad for Altherr. I pray that this is nothing more than a minor setback in what hopes to be a fine major league career. I was certainly looking forward to see how he would handle a full ...

Even the casual Phillies fan knows about Mike Schmidt’s accomplishments.   In his 18 year career, he hit 548 home runs, knocked in 1,595 RBIs, and had 2,234 hits.   Up until 2014, Schmidt was the all-time Phillies hit leader, when Jimmy Rollins passed him.   He was an eleven time all-star, with a home run in the 1981 hit fest that took place in Cleveland.   Three times Schmidt earned the NL MVP award, and ten times he won the gold glove award for his defensive prowess at third base.   He was the MVP of the first Phillies World Championship in 1980, and elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1994.   In fact, many Phillies fans remember fondly the 1994 induction ceremony, when both Schmidt and Phillies favorite Richie Ashburn were inducted together. But Schmidt has one more amazing accomplishment.   He spent his entire 18 year career with one team, the Philadelphia Phillies.   To put into perspective how rare this is,...

Original thinking is not necessarily the hallmark of sports reporting these days.   It’s more like a pack mentality.   Here we are at the beginning of Spring Training.   No games have been played, and the roster has not been set.   Indeed, for the Phillies, this is a year of major transitions.   Yet, before anyone truly knows who is going to be on the major league club, all of the major outlets are simply assuming that the Phils will be as bad, if not worse, than last year. Quite frankly, I find this nothing more than lazy reporting.   Certainly, the theme for the Phillies this year is that of change; long awaited change.   Thankfully, the new guard has chosen to build through youth.   What this means is that the major league roster will be full of players with a limited track record from which to judge.   For those who make a living off of prognostication, the Phillies present a particularly difficult problem, that of uncertainty. ...

While searing the Internet and browsing through social media to find topics to highlight during African-American History Month, I came across a tweet claiming that the Philadelphia Dolly Vardens, a team of all African-American women, became the first professional baseball team in 1867, a full two years before the formation of the Cincinnati Red Stockings.   Intrigued, but also skeptical, I wanted to find out more about the Dolly Vardens. The first thing I noticed is that the statement that the Dolly Vardens were the first professional baseball team, or the first team to be paid to play baseball, is repeated on numerous websites, tweets, and Instagram posts without any citation or reference to an original source.   One Facebook page, entitled “The Dolly Varden Project,” even posts a photo of an all-female African-American team claiming it to be of the Dolly Vardens.   Further research, however, reveals the photo to be of a team organized by a YMCA in the 1920s. ...

    “Big Bertha” was the nickname given to large German artillery guns used during the First World War.   It was also the nickname given to a 6’ 4” tall, 240 pound navy veteran hailing from Tyler, Texas named Louis Napoleon Santop. Gifted with explosive power both behind the plate and at the plate, Santop was the premiere catcher and power hitter in African-American baseball in the pre- and early negro league era. In pre-game warm-ups, Santop entertained the crowd with an exhibition of his arm strength, throwing a baseball over the centerfield fence, and then randomly throwing to each of the bases, all while in the crouched position behind the plate. At the plate, Santop hit massive line-drives in the dead ball era.   It has been said that he could call his shots long before Babe Ruth did it in the 1932 World Series, and even hit one home run about 500 feet. At age twenty, Santop made-up half of the “kid battery” of the 1910 Philadelphia Giants,...