Bryce Harper and Phillies have finally extinguished the ghost of Chico Ruiz

By Tony Zonca — MikeDragoSports.com senior contributor

To the rest of Major League Baseball in 1964, Chico Ruiz was an obscure outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds.

To the Philadelphia Phillies he became a harbinger of doom.

It was Sept. 21 of that year.  The first-place Phillies held a commanding 6 1/2-game lead with 12 to play.

The organization had printed World Series tickets, the concessionaires were stocking up for the postseason, and the public relations office was pushing Richie Allen for Rookie of the Year.

All was well among Phillies Phandom.

Four years earlier, manager Eddie Sawyer quit after one game.  One lousy game!  “I’m 49 years old,” Sawyer explained, “and I want to live to be 50.”

He was succeeded by Gene Mauch, at 34 the youngest manager in the league.  In 1961 the Phillies lost 107 games, including a then-record 23 straight.

So in 1964 excitement reigned over Connie Mack Stadium.

That fateful night the Phillies and Reds were locked in a scoreless tie for five innings.  Then Ruiz, who had singled off right-hander Art Mahaffey and was standing on third with two out, began dancing down the line.

Future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson was at the plate.  Baseball wisdom suggested walking Robinson with first base open.  But the cocky Mahaffey convinced Mauch that he had owned Robinson all season, and they decided to go after one of the most feared hitters in the game.

With everybody in the Reds dugout screaming “no Chico, no!” Ruiz broke for home, surprising Mahaffey, who had a slow delivery.  The pitch sailed low and wide to the righty-hitting Robinson, offering catcher Clay Dalrymple no chance to make a swipe tag.

Safe!  And that’s the way it ended 1-0.

“That’s when we started to crumble,” Dalrymple said. The Reds took the next two 9-2 and 6-4.

The Milwaukee Braves moved in.  With Joe Torre wielding a hot bat, the Braves swept the suddenly reeling Phillies in four games.

With Hall of Famer Jim Bunning making his fourth start in 11 games, the Braves romped 14-8 in the finale despite three home runs by Johnny Callison, the hero of that season’s All-Star Game.

The Phillies opened a three-game series in St. Louis against the second-place Cardinals.  With lefty Chris Short, also making his fourth start in 11 games, and another Hall of Famer Bob Gibson on the mound for the surging Cardinals, the Phillies fell 5-1.

Mauch used six pitchers, but the Phillies lost the next night 4-2.  Bunning didn’t get out of the third inning in the clincher and the Cardinals won 8-5 behind former Phillie Curt Simmons, who took a no-hitter into the seventh inning.  (Simmons finished his career with a 16-2 lifetime record against his former team.)

It was over, the first of many September Swoons to come for the organization.  They had turned an impending Broad St. parade into a funeral procession.

Ruiz, by the way, was a bit of a character.  He once told Reds management, “Bench me or trade me,” and had tackled an opposing team’s mascot during a game.

He died in 1972 after a one-car crash in San Diego.  He was 33.

Mauch, dubbed The Little General by the press, took much of the blame for the collapse.  Mauch was famous for his clubhouse temper tantrums, once upsetting the table holding the postgame spread and sending barbecue sauce over the clothes of several players.

The irony of the collapse was that Mauch, who came off as though he had invented baseball, had done a masterful job of getting that 1964 bunch to such a lofty position.  In the end he panicked, overextending Bunning and Short.

To his defense, a flu-ridden Callison and Allen contributed no home runs and one RBI over the last six games.  Slugging first baseman Frank Thomas was done for the season with a broken thumb, starters Dennis Bennett and Ray Culp had arm woes and the bullpen was shot.

After it was over, Mauch said defiantly: “I’m not gonna blame myself.  I gave it my best shot; I did all I could, and nobody’s gonna pin this on me.”

Not so fast.

Callison:  “Mauch wanted to win it too soon, pitching Bunning and Short just about every other day.”

Dalrymple:  “What Gene lacked was any kind of personal warmth.  He didn’t relax you; he did the opposite.  It was like you played 162 games like the rest of the league, but under Mauch it was like 200 games.

“Mauch was the quietest I had ever seen him during that 10-game streak; he was absolutely quiet.”

Fast forward to September of 2022.  Another September Swoon loomed — six managers and two GMs had presided.  At one point over two weeks the Phillies, fighting for a wild card spot, owned the worst record in baseball.  Then Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola got hot, the bullpen came together, Bryce Harper led a rejuvenated offense and this overachieving group found itself in the World Series.

Until they ran into the pitching-rich Houston Astros, the Phillies brought uncommon joy and excitement to the Delaware Valley and beyond.  Fan noise at the Bank reached the level of an earthquake in motion.  Fans came together to deliriously celebrate.  They partied in the streets and in the neighborhood bars, and political party affiliation was cast aside.

After two years of the pandemic along with concerns about rising inflation, the Phillies’ October Surprise was the tonic they needed.

And now perhaps the ghost of Chico Ruiz has been banished for good.

Now if they can only get that damn Joe Carter off their backs.