Looking back at the Phillies' 23-22 win over the Cubs
Rain delays helped ignite my interest in baseball history.
The pain of waiting for the game to resume was eased by watching highlights from past games. As a boy growing up in Budlong Woods, I especially relished the highlight film of the 1959 World Series, which arrived a year before I did.
I had heard tales of the great Go-Go Sox teams, but with no video evidence, they seemed like the feats of mythological figures. That is, until I watched the series footage filmed by ex-Sox Manager Lew Fonseca and narrated by the great Vin Scully.
I had the chance to watch a sleeveless Ted Kluszewski, acquired late in the '59 campaign to boost the team's power, fulfill that promise by belting a homer into the seats. I could finally see the great Nelson Fox and even have the image burned into my brain of outfielder Al Smith presented with a beer shower while watching a ball sail into the bleachers at Old Comiskey.
Now, enduring a different, longer and deadlier kind of rain delay theater, with the season halted due to the pandemic, I find myself and my baseball fanatic friends filling the down time by watching classic baseball games.
On a night when the May 17, 1979, 23-22 game between the Cubs and the Phillies was re-aired, I received a text with a picture of pitcher Nino Espinosa and his big hair perched like a birthday cake crossing home plate. It turned out my friends Dan, a fellow scribe, and Sam, a college friend who lives down the alley from Wrigley Field, were watching the game and texting each other. I was otherwise occupied but followed the ensuing exchange about 1970s baseball hair. Not surprisingly, Oscar Gamble entered the conversation, followed by a text of his baseball card.
When the game originally aired, I was in the process of finishing high school on the North Shore. My best friend there was something of a hero to me - he could build his own telescope, bake a French silk pie to rival Bakers Square, read classic novels like "Siddhartha," walk on to the football team, play saxophone in a school band and act in a school play.
But he had a hero of his own. Dave Kingman. For him, 1979 was the year of King Kong, a moniker, I take it, that he hated. But the moniker was fitting, given his monstrous power, which translated into 48 homers that season.
I took some time last week to watch the game in full on YouTube. It's a legendary game - someone even wrote a book about it - that saw the Cubs climb back from a 21-9 deficit, thanks largely to a granny by Bill Buckner in a seven-run fifth, and almost steal a win. In fact, the Cubs, while behind, never seemed out of it.
Dennis Lamp, looking like he was showing up for Funny Nose and Glasses Day, was starting. Coincidentally, as we learned from announcer Jack Brickhouse, starting for the White Sox against Oakland that day would be Ken Kravec, who would hurl the Sox to a series sweep with a 5-1 victory. Lamp and Kravec would eventually be traded for each other, and Lamp would help the Sox win the Western Division in 1983. His future Sox teammate Greg Luzinski would pinch-hit for the Phils that day and draw a walk.
Lamp was one of five present and future outstanding relievers the Cubs pitched that day, including the ill-fated Donnie Moore, Bruce Sutter, Bill Caudill and Willie Hernandez, most of them attaining success once they exited the North Side.
Kingman's awesome power was on display with a trio of four-baggers, including two mammoth shots onto Waveland Avenue that nearly scaled a rooftop, and one that hit the front porch of a house and narrowed the Phillies lead to 21-19.
His shaky fielding was also evident, with a throwing error from his field.
The crowd of more than 14,000, several not wearing shirts, could be heard chanting "We want a hit" and "We want an out" and booing Pete Rose when he stepped into the batter's box.
Throughout the game, you could hear Brickhouse's repeated cries of "Woo boy!" But what I didn't remember was how critical, even acerbic, this legendary homer could get. After the score mounted to 15-6, he said the seven runs didn't appear big enough to be safe for Philadelphia, so they went out and got eight more. He also took Moore to task for walking the pitcher and ridiculed Hernandez for landing flat on his face during one swing.
At one point, DePaul basketball Coach Ray Meyer, who threw the ceremonial first pitches, entered the booth. Brickhouse complimented him for being the only pitcher who didn't get bombed.
By the eighth, though, Brickhouse, whose call was punctuated with typing from the press box in the background, recovered his optimism and asked if it wouldn't be something if the Cubs didn't have to bat in the ninth. He also noted that the Cubs beat the Phillies 26-23 in 1922.
Barry Foote, no slouch in the big hair department, tied the game. But ultimately it was Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt who decided the game with his second home run of the game off Sutter in the 10th, right after he had been fooled on a split-finger pitch to fill the count. By that time, Kingman had run out of heroics, striking out in the bottom frame.
This most outlandish of one-run, extra-inning games took four hours to play, not unusual today, especially with replays. Misplayed ground balls, misplayed fly balls, a bunch of intentional walks, a pitcher pinch-running and batting in the same inning and a wind that drove outfielders crazy amounted to a wild and wacky contest.
Records were set or matched, among them most total bases in a game - 97, and most homers in a game for two teams - 11.
The Phillies, who would capture the World Series the following year, actually nearly doubled the team's previous day's run total, having beaten the Cubs 13-0 with Steve Carlton besting Rick Reuschel.
With the stay-at-home order continuing, so will rain delay theater. I have the DVR set for replays of the 2005 Sox campaign, as well as classic games on the MLB Network. As we socially distance from the 2020 baseball season, rain delay theater still satisfies.
• Got an idea for Steve? Reach him at szalusky@dailyherald.com