New DVD set resurrects excitement of Phils’ championship season
By CLARK GROOME
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. And I do mean “thrilling.”
The time: October 21,1980. The place: Veterans Stadium. “The Phillies win the World Series.”
Remember?
That first and only Phillies World Series win, and the excruciating season leading up to it, are captured on a commemorative three-DVD set recently released by the Phillies. It’s a bargain at $24.99. Would also be a bargain at $25, or twice that.
The three DVD’s include two excellent retrospectives on the team and the season, a 30-minute piece called “The Team that Wouldn’t Die” and an hour-long retrospective, “Glory Days.”
Narrated by the legendary John Facenda, the shorter of the two is as good a history of this team as you’ll ever encounter. It wastes no time and captures it all: the doubts, the faltering play late in the summer, the resurrection in September and then that exhilarating if exhausting post season.
“Glory Days,” which features many of the same interviews and much of the same footage, tells that year’s story in the voices of those who made it. The narrator is Dallas Green, the manager who drove the not-always-willing team to forget their egos and their doubts and go out and win. That is, of course, exactly what they did.
Those two season summaries and some wonderful bonus material (note particularly the tribute to the late Paul Owens and Tug McGraw and try to keep a dry eye while watching the Tugger) make up the first DVD.
The second DVD is the complete local broadcast of the final game in the best-of-five League Championship Series against the Houston Astros. Universally considered the best LCS ever played, this was the nail biter to end all nail biters.
Four of the five games, a record, went into extra innings. The lead changed hands as often as Whitey Ashburn said “How about that.” It was a wonderful series, and the home team, finally, won.
The third DVD is NBC’s national telecast of the sixth game of the World Series. This was the time that the city had been waiting for seemingly forever. No team had won a championship since the Flyers won their second Stanley Cup in 1975. No Phillies team, although participants in the Fall Classic in 1915 and 1950, had ever won the Series. The town went mad.
All that was 25 years ago. The long baseball drought continues. Philly’s championship dry spell was only broken in 1983 when the ‘76ers won the NBA crown. While all of our teams have made it to the various big dances, none has won since that round ball triumph 22 years ago.
It isn’t, however, the dearth of championships that makes the ’80 Phils and this commemorative set so special. Led by the should-be Hall of Famer Pete Rose and inductees Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt, the team was constructed of a combination of veterans like Manny Trillo, Greg Luzinski and Gary Maddox and bright youngsters like Keith Moreland, Bob Walk and Marty Bystrom.
The DVDs also remind us of how great the game was. The TV broadcasts were simpler, the graphics almost non-existent, the announcers respectful. Talk about a dream team: Was there ever a better local broadcast team than Harry Kalas, Rich Ashburn and Andy Musser? Only Vin Scully working alone.
And what about the team’s driving force: Peter Edward Rose? Clearly an egomaniac with uncontrolled hormones, he still was the most important member of that team. If, as I believe, players should be sent to Cooperstown based on their ability on the field, Rose should have been there years ago. Others differ. This set of DVDs makes his case without ever so much as mentioning his off-the-field problems.
Enough. The 1980 Phillies were special. They are worth spending time with. These three DVDs will make for a nostalgic trip for many and will serve as eye-openers for those who didn’t have the thrill of living through this the first time.
One last important point: In the bonus material on the first DVD there is a section devoted to the 1980 Phillies’ 20th reunion. At that event the normally flawless Harry Kalas says, “After 97 years, the team that we honor brought this great city and you beautiful fans its first and only baseball world championship.”
As Whitey would say: “Oh, brother.” Harry got it wrong.
Any Philadelphia baseball fan who grew up rooting for the Philadelphia Athletics (who left town in 1954 for Kansas City and, later, Oakland) can tell you that those American League A’s won the World Series in 1910, 1911, 1913, 1929 and 1930.
