Friday, October 2, 2015

TURN BACK THE CLOCK 1950: 20TH ANNIVERSARY WHIZ KIDS TAKE THE PENNANT!

Today we embark on a new thread which I hope you'll all find as interesting as I do: a "Turn Back The Clock" series (as in 1977) for every set of the 1970's.
For the very first entry I give you the 20th anniversary of the Philadelphia Phillies, aka the "Whiz Kids", who took everyone by surprise and took the National League pennant in 1950.
Take a look:


I'll be running this thread chronologically with the 20th anniversaries first, that is, events from the 1950's, then on to the 10th anniversaries of baseball events from 1960 through 1969. So each year will get both 20th and 10th anniversary milestones by the time this is all done.
Anyway, led by star players like Richie Ashburn, Robin Roberts and eventual National League Most Valuable Player Jim Konstanty, the young team (who averaged only 26.4 years of age) were steamrolling their way to the pennant before allowing the Brooklyn Dodgers to make it all the way back in September because of a rough patch, forcing a "winner-take-all" final game of the season.
With two stars starting in Robin Roberts for the Phillies and Don Newcombe for the Dodgers, it was Dick Sisler who would end up being the hero, hitting a game-winning, and pennant-winning, three-run home run in the top of the 10th inning to set the stage for a Phillies/New York Yankees World Series.
Besides the aforementioned stars above, the Phillies also had Del Ennies, who led the team in all three triple crown stats that year, Willie Jones and Eddie Waitkus who both scored over 100 runs and Curt Simmons who contributed with his 17 wins.
But it was Konstanty who put together a year for the ages, as he came out of the bullpen and set National League records for saves with 22 and relief wins with 16, posting a 16-7 record with a 2.66 ERA over 74 games and 152 innings of work.
Sadly the young team could not keep up the winning ways of 1950, never seeing another postseason until the 1976 when guys like Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski were suiting up in the city of "Brotherly Love".