Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Fall of the 1977 Phillies How a Baseball Team's Collapse Sank a City's Spirit by Mitchell Nathan Mitchell Nathanson. Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original explores the life of a man who won all of 62 games but who changed professional sports in ways 300- game winners never could. From Ball Four to broadcasting, Jim Bouton radicalized everything he touched. But at a price. Sports/Biography. Dick Allen is considered by some to be the best baseball player not in the Hall of Fame and by others to be the game’s most destructive and divisive force--ever. God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen unveils the strange and maddening career of a man who fulfilled and frustrated expectations all at once. Sports/Cultural History. Challenging the myths of America’s national pastime. Examining one city’s century-long tortured relationship with its baseball team and, ultimately, itself. Careers -- Law and the Workplace. Welcome. Mitch Nathanson is a Professor of Law at Villanova University and the author of numerous books and articles on baseball, the law and society. He is a two-time winner of the McFarland-SABR Award, which is presented in recognition of the best historical or biographical baseball articles of the year. His biography of the mercurial Phillies slugger Dick Allen: "God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen," was a finalist for the 2017 Seymour Medal, which honors the best works of baseball biography or history of the year. His new book, BOUTON: The Life of a Baseball Original," explores the life of a man who won all of 62 games but who changed professional sports in ways 300-game winners never could. To which Jim Bouton's Seattle Pilot teammate, Jim Gosger, would most likely say, "Yeah surrre." Quick Links. Why do we celebrate athletes? How do we view them when their athleticism fades? And what does it all mean? In this podcast I discuss male vulnerability, Bouton's groundbreaking book, and the criticism that trailed it, most notably by esteemed sportswriter Roger Kahn, who had a different understanding of what it meant for a man to be vulnerable. Some love for my Dick Allen biography, included in the Tribune's recommended reading list to help Chicago sports fans get their sports fix during the 2020 pandemic. My take on Mighty Casey in the era of social media, bat flips, and games that seemingly never end. Published in The Washington Post on October 1, 2019. Jim Bouton's Dreams Were His Greatest Gift My New York Daily News piece on the on the enduring allure of Jim Bouton. Everybody focuses on the last line of "Ball Four" when attempting to crack that code, but in working on his biography these past few years I've come to understand that it's the first line of the book that holds the key to the castle: "I'm 30-years-old and I have these dreams." My New York Daily News op-ed on how to reduce game times from over three hours to less than ten seconds. Click here to view my documentary "webisode" on the birth of baseball in Philadelphia. narrated by Phillies legend Jimmy Rollins. Mitchell Nathanson. Dick Allen is considered by some to be the best baseball player not in the Hall of Fame and by others to be the game’s most destructive and divisive force--ever. God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen unveils the strange and maddening career of a man who fulfilled and frustrated expectations all at once. Sports/Cultural History. Challenging the myths of America’s national pastime. Examining one city’s century-long tortured relationship with its baseball team and, ultimately, itself. Careers -- Law and the Workplace. The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team's Collapse Sank a City's Spirit. Too often, the Philadelphia sports fan has been dismissed as a lout, a boorish dolt immune to reason, his vocabulary whittled down to a singular “boo.” This is particularly true when it comes to Phillies fans, who, to those whose memories reach beyond the team’s recent run of unprecedented good will can recall, are more likely to turn on their team than any other in the city. Although the Eagles, Sixers and Flyers may hear it from the rafters when they’re not going well, only the Phils will hear it when they are. The strained relationship between the city and the Phillies, however, has deep historical and sociological roots; roots that directly correlate with the city’s self image. The Fall of the 1977 Phillies explores these roots by providing a social history of Philadelphia through the lens of its professional baseball teams – first, the beloved Athletics and later, the (until very recently) despised Phillies. It traces the roots of the city’s inferiority complex back to its origins in the early 19th century and examines how, over time, the city’s loss of national stature in the political, financial and intellectual arenas (much of this at the hands of jealous New Yorkers) eventually changed the character of the city altogether. For where once optimism and progressive thought abounded (it was, after all, the New World home to the colonial age of Enlightenment), negativity and cynicism soon became the city’s calling card – hostile traits that eventually found in the floundering Phillies a perpetual whipping boy. This book likewise charts the gradual lifting of the city’s collective spirit starting in the 1950’s, when a collection of political “Young Turks” led by future mayors Joe Clark, Richardson Dilworth and city planner Ed Bacon overturned the corrupt local Republican machine and set Philadelphia on a course of reform and renewal that by the 1960’s and ‘70’s would be hailed nationwide as one of the few successes amid the failure of urban renewal in virtually every other major American city – most notably New York. As a result, Philadelphia shed its inferiority complex and truly embraced the revived Phillies – who, as a result of the building boom, finally escaped deteriorating and depressing Connie Mack stadium, relocated in palatial, pristine Veterans Stadium and hence became the face of a city reborn -- for the first time. These good feelings swelled during the 1970’s and reached their peak during the summer of 1977, when Philadelphia seemingly thrived while New York teetered, occasionally in the dark, on the brink of bankruptcy. On the field, the Phillies put together what many believe to be the best team in their history, their 1980 and 2008 world championship teams included. By the start of the 1977 League Championship Series against the Dodgers, it seemed clear to everyone that this Phillies team, much like the city of Philadelphia, bore no resemblance to its inglorious past. The events that unfolded both in the stands and on the field at the Vet during the afternoon of what has become known in Philadelphia simply as Black Friday (October 7, 1977) would change how Philadelphians viewed the Phillies and ultimately themselves for the better part of the next three decades. After Black Friday (considered by some to be the worst single moment in Phillies history, eclipsing even their infamous 1964 collapse), Philadelphians would question whether things really were as different with both their team and their city as they were led to believe. By the game’s disastrous end, it would become clear that these Phillies had much in common with the bumbling teams that preceded them and soon, as events would unfold in the city that cast the reforms of the Young Turks in a darker, harsher light, the Phils would once again become the face of a city awash in doubt and self loathing. The Fall of the 1977 Phillies uses this game to form the structure of a book that puts the city’s relationship with the Phillies into a larger, societal context as it attempts to figure out just why it is that Philadelphia seems to find itself so distasteful. 1977 Philadelphia Phillies. The 1977 Philadelphia Phillies were the first edition of the team since 1950 that finished with the best regular-season record in the National League. It was also Philadelphia's second straight 100-victory season. Though the 1980 and 1983 editions of the team would go further, one would have to consider 1977 the acme of this Philadelphia "success cycle." The team was substantially the same as the 1976 division champs. Free agency had cost them second baseman Dave Cash and first baseman Dick Allen, but netted them third baseman Richie Hebner from the Pittsburgh Pirates. With Mike Schmidt anchored at the hot corner, Hebner took Allen's job at first base. Ted Sizemore became the starter at second. Young Randy Lerch arrived from the AAA Oklahoma City 89ers to join the Phillies' starting rotation. That rotation lost the first four games of the season; the Phillies didn't climb above .500 till mid-May. The mid-June acquisition of Bake McBride from the St. Louis Cardinals added a strong bat to the lineup, but the team had hitting to spare, led by outstanding seasons from Schmidt and Greg Luzinski. (Schmidt would finish the season with the lowest batting average among Phillies' regulars, a crisp .274.) The team's inconsistency in the early going was largely a matter of pitching; the bullpen was strong but overworked, because only the phenomenal Steve Carlton among the starters gave the Phillies a solid chance to win. On June 25th, the Phillies were in fourth place and the Chicago Cubs were running away with the division, 8 1/2 games ahead of Philadelphia. The next day, veteran Jim Kaat and reliever Gene Garber combined to shut out the Cardinals, 2-0, as the Phillies began an 11-1 run, gaining 5 1/2 games on the Cubs. At the end of July, the Phillies were still two games back. They dropped their first game in August but then reeled off 13 straight wins, including a four-game sweep of the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Young starter Larry Christenson was especially hot during this streak. They paused to lose 13-0 to the Montreal Expos on August 17th and then won six more in a row. By that point the Cubs had wilted and Philadelphia had opened up a considerable lead on the second-place Pirates. Christenson beat Chicago on September 27th to clinch the division title for the Phillies. With the Big Red Machine just a memory, the Phillies saw a clear path to the pennant through the relatively weak Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS. The Phillies captured Game One in Los Angeles, 7-5. Veteran Jim Lonborg was pounded in Game 2, but the Phillies headed home with a split in the series. In Game 3, Garry Maddox drove in Hebner and scored on an error to give the Phillies a 5-3 lead - and that was their high-water mark. In the top of the 9th, as Phillies fans sat stunned, Dodger pinch-hitter Vic Davalillo nosed a weak two-out drag [bunt]] for an infield hit. The great pinch-hitter Manny Mota followed with a drive to left that Luzinski, who was inexplicably still in the game despite usually giving way to the much better fielder Jerry Martin whenever the Phillies had a late lead, could not catch. Two errors and a single off the body of Mike Schmidt later, the Phillies trailed 6-5, and went quietly in the bottom of the 9th. In the Game 4, Carlton was simply outpitched by Tommy John, and what was perhaps the best Phillies team ever had to settle for a mere division flag. Schmidt, Maddox, and Kaat won Gold Gloves. Luzinski finished second in the National League with a career-high 130 RBI. Carlton led the league in wins with 23 and claimed his second Cy Young Award. Bouton The Life of a Baseball Original Mitchell Nathanson University of Nebraska Press/May, 2020. From the day he first stepped into the Yankee clubhouse, Jim Bouton (1939–2019) was the sports world’s deceptive revolutionary. Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by management, his passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or his efforts to convince the United States to boycott the 1968 Olympics, Bouton confronted the conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society. Bouton defied tremendous odds to make the majors, won two games for the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, and staged an improbable comeback with the Braves as a thirty-nine-year-old. But it was his fateful 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and his resulting insider’s account, Ball Four, that did nothing less than reintroduce America to its national pastime in a lasting, profound way. In Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, Mitchell Nathanson gives readers a look at Bouton’s remarkable life. He tells the unlikely story of how Bouton’s Ball Four, perhaps the greatest baseball book of all time, came into being, how it was received, and how it forever changed the way we view not only sports books but professional sports as a whole. Based on wide-ranging interviews Nathanson conducted with Bouton, family, friends, and others, he provides an intimate, inside account of Bouton’s life. Nathanson provides insight as to why Bouton saw the world the way he did, why he was so different than the thousands of players who came before him, and how, in the cliquey, cold, bottom‑line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once. Mitchell Nathanson is a professor of law in the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at the Villanova University School of Law. He is the author of God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen, A People’s History of Baseball, and The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team’s Collapse Sank a City’s Spirit. Mitchell J. Nathanson. Mitch Nathanson, Professor of Law and professor in the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at the Villanova University School of Law, focuses in his scholarship on the intersection of sports, law and society and has known how to read for as long as he can remember. He has written numerous articles examining the interplay between, most notably, baseball and American culture and has never been eligible for the Man Booker Prize. His article, "The Irrelevance of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption: A Historical Review," won the 2006 McFarland-SABR Award which is presented in recognition of the best historical or biographical baseball articles of the year and was not shortlisted for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. His 2008 book, The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team’s Collapse Sank a City’s Spirit, is a social history of 20th century Philadelphia as told through the relationship between the city and its baseball teams – the Athletics and the Phillies. It was not considered for the National Book Award. In 2009 he was the co-producer and writer of "Base Ball: The Philadelphia Game," a documentary "webisode" on the 19th century development of the game within the city that is part of a larger documentary project, "Philadelphia: The Great Experiment," currently in production and to which he is a contributing scholar. He believes it should have at least been nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 80th Academy Awards or, at a minimum, an Independent Spirit Award, which he doesn't consider to be such a big deal anyway. In addition, he was a scholarly advisor to the 2011 HBO production, "The Curious Case of Curt Flood," which, to his knowledge, was not viewed by either President Barack Obama or Salmon Rushdie. In the United States, he has lectured at, among other venues, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and since 2011 has been a Guest Professor in the International Sports Law Program at the Instituto Superior de Derecho y Economia in Madrid, Spain. He has also eaten numerous times at Denny's. In addition to his most recent book, A People’s History of Baseball, he is co-author of Understanding Baseball: A Textbook (McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers), neither of which resulted in his being awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. His article "Who Exempted Baseball, Anyway: The Curious Development of the Antitrust Exemption that Never Was," was published in the Winter, 2013 edition of the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law and won the 2013 McFarland- SABR Award. He thought it should have at least won, as well, one of the minor Pen American Literary Awards that nobody cares about. His next book, "God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen," will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in the spring of 2016. Currently, he has a slight headache and has just realized that he forgot to charge his phone last night. He would like to be considered for a National Humanities Medal. Works. God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen. When the Philadelphia Phillies signed Dick Allen in 1960, fans of the franchise envisioned bearing witness to feats never before accomplished by a Phillies player. A half-century later, they’re still trying to make sense of what they saw. Carrying to the plate baseball’s heaviest and loudest bat as well as the burden of being the club’s first African American superstar, Allen found both hits and controversy with ease and regularity as he established himself as the premier individualist in a game that prided itself on conformity. As one of his managers observed, “I believe God Almighty Hisself would have trouble handling Richie Allen.” A brutal pregame fight with teammate Frank Thomas, a dogged determination to be compensated on par with the game’s elite, an insistence on living life on his own terms and not management’s: what did it all mean? Journalists and fans alike took sides with ferocity, and they take sides still. Despite talent that earned him Rookie of the Year and MVP honors as well as a reputation as one of his era’s most feared power hitters, many remember Allen as one of the game’s most destructive and divisive forces, while supporters insist that he is the best player not in the Hall of Fame. God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen explains why. Mitchell Nathanson presents Allen’s life against the backdrop of organized baseball’s continuing desegregation process. Drawing out the larger generational and economic shifts in the game, he shows how Allen’s career exposed not only the racial double standard that had become entrenched in the wake of the game’s integration a generation earlier but also the forces that were bent on preserving the status quo. In the process, God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen unveils the strange and maddening career of a man who somehow managed to fulfill and frustrate expectations all at once.