“Chico [censored] Ruiz beats us on a bonehead play of the year! Chico [censored] Ruiz steals home with Frank Robinson up! Can you believe it?” The Philadelphia Phillies manager was ranting and raving and taking the loss badly on September 21, 1964. His pitcher, Art Mahaffey, was locked in a scoreless duel with Cincinnati Reds pitcher John Tsitouris at Connie Mack Stadium in the top of the sixth inning. Reds third baseman Ruiz hit a one-out single to right field. The next batter, Vada Pinson, hit a shot off Mahaffey’s glove that deflected into right field. Pinson was thrown out trying to stretch the hit into a double, with Ruiz advancing to third base. With the Reds’ superstar Robinson in the batter’s box, Ruiz noticed that Mahaffey was winding up without checking him. Ruiz broke for home on the 0-1 pitch. Mahaffey was so surprised, his pitch went high and outside, past his lunging catcher. Ruiz’s steal of home was the only run of the game. Two nights before, the Phillies lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers when the Dodgers’ Willie Davis stole home in the 16th inning.
The Phillies’ manager’s tirade was not unusual. Gene Mauch took losses hard. He especially hated losing to the Chico Ruizes of the world. There were similar tantrums when the Phillies were beaten by “Tim [censored] McCarver” and Joe Morgan, “who looks like a Little Leaguer.” Not that Mauch was a superstar or cut an imposing figure during his playing days.
Beginnings
Mauch was a five-foot-ten, 165-pound reserve infielder who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (1944, 1948), Pittsburgh Pirates (1947), Chicago Cubs (1948-49), Boston Braves (1950-51), St. Louis Cardinals (1952), and Boston Red Sox (1956-57). For his major league career, he hit .239/.333/.312 and never appeared in more than 72 games in any season. His main function as a player was as a “bench jockey,” mercilessly riding players on the other team from the dugout in the hopes of distracting them. He was involved in a couple of high-profile trades, first during the 1947 season, when he was one of five players Brooklyn traded to Pittsburgh for Al Gionfriddo, and after that season, when he returned to the Dodgers as a throw-in in a deal where the key pieces were Billy Cox and Preacher Roe going to Brooklyn and Dixie Walker coming to Pittsburgh.
Mauch was managing the minor league Minneapolis Millers in the Red Sox system in 1960 when Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer resigned after losing on Opening Day. Phillies general manager John Quinn wanted Mauch to replace Sawyer. Mauch and the Millers were in Homestead, Florida, to play the Cardinals’ affiliate there. In the dinky motel where the Millers were staying, the telephone on their floor was located in the restroom, above a commode. Quinn called the motel, looking for Mauch. Mauch accepted the Phillies gig while sitting on the can.
His managerial career took him from the Phillies (1960-68) to the Montreal Expos (1969-75), Minnesota Twins (1976-80), and California Angels (1981-82, 1985-87). Mauch had a reputation as a smart manager, perhaps too smart, often guilty of overmanaging. He treated every game like Game 7 of the World Series and took losses hard. As a result, his players were often tight. He kept up the bench jockeying he’s perfected as a player, but it motivated as many opponents as it distracted. With this story, we’ll focus on three epic collapses when he was so close to a trip to the World Series that he could taste the champagne.
The 1964 Phillies
When Mauch took the Phillies job, they had pitching and little else. “I always figured if you had pitching, you had a pretty good chance,” he told Dick Kaegel of The Kansas City Star in 1995. “Well, what I didn’t know was they had the Dalton Gang – wild and crazy. All they wanted to do was, ‘Let’s get to the ballpark and get all that other stuff over with, so we can go out and have some fun.’”
Eventually, the Phillies discarded the drinkers and skirt-chasers, and the improvement was instant and remarkable. They went from 47-107 in 1961 to 81-80 in 1962, 87-75 in 1963, and on September 20, 1964, they were 90-60, in first place in the National League by 6.5 games with only 12 games remaining in the season. The Cardinals and Reds were tied for second place. A computer at the Franklin Institute gave the Phillies a 95 percent chance of winning the NL pennant and predicted that they’d meet the New York Yankees in the World Series. Then came the “Chico Ruiz” game.
The losses began to mount. The Reds won the next two games over Philadelphia by scores of 9-2 and 6-4. The Phillies’ lead had dwindled to 3.5 games. The Milwaukee Braves were next. On the 24th, they opened a four-game series at Connie Mack by defeating the Phillies and their ace Jim Bunning, 5-3, dropping Bunning’s record to 18-6. Despite having lost four in a row, Mauch insisted he wasn’t panicking. “If we had just won four in a row, and were on top by three games, they’d be saying not a soul in the world could catch us,” he told United Press International. He had a point, but on the other hand, panicking was exactly what he was doing. For the next night’s game, he started Chris Short, at 17-8, his No. 2 starter, on two days’ rest, something he did frequently with Bunning and Short down the stretch.
The game on the 25th was a back-breaker, and it stuck with Mauch so much that he chose to discuss this game for a “The Game I’ll Never Forget” feature in the October 1971 issue of Baseball Digest. The Braves led, 3-1, in the bottom of the eighth inning when, with two outs, Philly’s Dick Allen singled, and Johnny Callison tied the game with a two-run homer off new pitcher Billy Hoeft. The game went to the 10th inning, when the game seemed lost after the Braves’ Joe Torre hit a two-run home run into the left field upper deck off Bobby Locke. But in the bottom of the inning, Cookie Rojas singled off Bob Sadowski with one out, and after Tony Gonzalez struck out, Allen came up again. As Mauch described to George Vass for the Baseball Digest feature, “Well, he hit that ball – you know how high that wall was in right center in Philly [50 feet] – and the ball hit the center field fence and bounced away from the Braves’ outfielders. It rolled around out there, and after Rojas scored, Allen came all the way around for an inside-the-park homer to tie the game, 5-5. It was a great effort, and ironic that we lost the game on a bloop hit.” Make that two hits, a walk, and an error in the 12th inning, giving Milwaukee a 7-5 win.
On the 26th, Philadelphia took an early 4-0 lead against the Braves. Phillies reliever Bobby Shantz was protecting a 4-3 lead in the top of the ninth when he gave up singles to Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews. Frank Bolling reached based on an error, and Rico Carty cleared the bases with a triple, making 6-4 winners of the Braves. Now the Phillies had lost six in a row, and their lead had shrunk to a half-game. The Phillies fell out of first place the next night with what UPI called “one of their saddest performances.” The Braves roughed up five Phillies pitchers, including Bunning pitching on two days’ rest, for 22 hits en route to a 14-8 victory. The Phillies would never regain first place. Next, it was on to St. Louis, where their losing streak reached 10. On the final day, a hot Cardinals team seized the NL pennant. When it was all over, Mauch told reporters, “I wish I had done as well as the players. They did a great job. That’s all I have to say.”
Mauch was being honest when he said he hadn’t done as well as the players. Despite being in the driver’s seat, in September, he pitched Bunning and Short on two days’ rest three times each. Philly lost five of those six games. Short pitched well on such short rest, no pun intended. He had a 2.49 ERA and 1.016 WHIP in those three games, but the Phillies lost two of them. Bunning, on the other hand, posted a 15.20 ERA and 2.720 WHIP with two days’ rest. Reflecting years later for author David Halberstam in October 1964, Bunning said, “Hindsight dictates that we should have been rested and then pitched. That’s obvious to everyone now. But the emotions of the moment dictated that we try for it, that we go out there and pitch on two days of rest. To say no, to refuse the ball and say you could not pitch on short rest, was to go against every impulse superior athletes have.”
The Next Stops
The 1964 season was the Phillies’ high point under Mauch. They steadily declined, and in 1968, they fired Mauch after a 27-27 start during which he was at odds with Allen. In 1969, he was hired as the first manager of the expansionist Expos, an unsuccessful but lovable team with cool uniforms and players with colorful monikers like Boots Day, Coco Laboy, and Rusty Staub. Mauch remained there through the 1975 season. Then, it was on to Minnesota, where he had no success for five seasons, but famously employed seven consecutive pinch-hitters on August 6, 1979. None of the seven came through with hits, and the Twins lost to the Seattle Mariners, 7-4, on that evening.
The 1982 Angels
The next stop on Mauch’s managerial carousel was Anaheim, beginning with the strike-interrupted 1981 season. In 1982, he led the Angels to a 93-69 record, which was good enough for first place in the American League West Division, stamping their ticket to a five-game AL Championship Series berth against the East Division champion Milwaukee Brewers. Those Brewers got off to a 23-24 start, after which their manager, Buck Rodgers, with whom several star players had issues, was fired. He was replaced by Harvey Kuenn. As a player, Kuenn had won the AL batting title for the Detroit Tigers in 1959, after which he was famously traded to Cleveland for the home run champion, Rocky Colavito. Ironically, when Mauch took the Expos job in 1969, he offered a coaching job to Kuenn, who rejected it. Kuenn, who was in poor health and had a leg amputated in 1980, was given an interim manager tag, under the assumption that he wouldn’t want the job full-time. The Brewers got hot, and Kuenn kept the job. Milwaukee was 72-43 under Kuenn for the rest of the season. The strong lineup thrived under Kuenn and became known as “Harvey’s Wallbangers.” As a manager, Kuenn was the antithesis of the proactive Mauch. Kuenn’s style of managing could best be described as “not at all.” He described it thusly: “I just like to sit back and watch my team hit.”
When the Angels took the first two games of the series in Anaheim, it looked like Mauch was finally on his way to the World Series. However, when the scene shifted to Milwaukee, the Brewers won three in a row to take the series, and Mauch’s managing in Game 5 was called into question. In that game, the Angels took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the seventh inning with right-handed reliever Luis Sanchez beginning his second inning of work. Sanchez gave up singles to Charlie Moore and Jim Gantner, and with two outs, walked Robin Yount to load the bases. Next up was the dangerous left-handed hitter Cecil Cooper, who hit .313/.342/.528, 32 HR, 121 RBI, and a 142 OPS+ during the regular season. In the Angels’ bullpen, lefty Andy Hassler was warming up. Mauch stuck with Sanchez. Cooper singled to left field, driving in two runs. Only then did Mauch go to Hassler, who held the Brewers hitless for the rest of the game. The 4-3 Milwaukee lead held up. The Brewers were going to the World Series. Mauch was going home again.
Addressing the postgame media, Mauch’s reasoning provided fodder for his many critics. “[Sanchez] was throwing strikes,” explained Mauch, “and I didn’t want to bring in a new pitcher with the bases filled.” Sanchez may have been throwing strikes, but he’d just walked Yount. There were indications that Mauch may not have trusted Hassler. Indeed, Hassler made only six appearances in the regular season’s final 32 days. Later, Mauch told writers he didn’t want Hassler in the game because “most of his pitches are balls in the dirt.” In fact, Hassler posted a 13.2 percent walk rate in 1982. But he also had a 2.78 ERA and held left-handed batters to a .152/.265/.212 slash. Mauch’s remarks angered Hassler, who said, “He isn’t going to hang the monkey on me. He’s the one who messed up. If he isn’t man enough to say it, I’ll say it for him.”
On October 22, Mauch resigned as Angels manager amid rumors that he was annoyed by criticism of how he handled the last three games of the LCS.
The 1986 Angels
Mauch was replaced by John McNamara, who managed the Angels in 1983 and 1984, after which he resigned. Mauch, who had been serving as the Angels’ director of player personnel since September 17, 1983, was rehired to replace him. “I never really wanted to leave baseball,” Mauch said, according to Associated Press. “The reasons were very personal, I’ve never discussed them, and I don’t think I ever will.” General manager Mike Port said the team needed “someone who possesses the qualities of stability, consistency, and is result-oriented. We feel Gene fills these needs.”
Mauch led the 1985 Angels to a second-place finish. In 1986, his Angels won the West Division with a 92-70 record. They were on their way to the ALCS again, which was now expanded to seven games. Their opponent was the Red Sox, winners of the East Division with a 95-66 mark. In a Hollywood-style twist that baseball seems to offer with stunning frequency, the Red Sox were managed by McNamara.
The ALCS was the unkindest cut of all for Mauch. His Angels were one strike away from advancing to the World Series, but again, they were done in by a questionable move by Mauch. The Angels took three of the first four games and were sitting pretty with Game 5 at home. They had their ace, right-handed Mike Witt, who was 18-10 with a 2.84 ERA, 1.082 WHIP, and 6.1 WAR during the regular season, on the mound. Witt began the ninth inning with a 5-2 lead. He gave up a single to Bill Buckner, struck out Jim Rice, and was touched up for a two-run homer by Don Baylor. He then retired Dwight Evans on a pop-up and had only to retire the left-handed-hitting Rich Gedman.
Then, wrote Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Bruce Keidan in a brilliant lead, “The California Angels were one out from the World Series when the devil whispered in Gene Mauch’s ear. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ the devil said darkly. ‘Manage something.’” Mauch strode to the mound and removed Witt in favor of left-hander Gary Lucas. The first pitch from Lucas hit Gedman. Now, Mauch came to the mound again and summoned righty Donnie Moore to pitch to the right-handed-batting Dave Henderson. The count ran to 2-2. With the Angels one strike away from a trip to the World Series, Henderson crushed a home run deep into left field to put Boston up, 6-5.
“What people don’t realize is that Henderson’s home run didn’t beat us,” Mauch told Kaegel. “That put us behind one run. In the bottom of the ninth, we scored one run and had the bases loaded with one out and Doug DeCinces hitting and Bobby Grich coming up next against Steve Crawford.” True, but Henderson may not have batted in the ninth if Witt had been left in the game and retired Gedman. After Crawford pitched out of the jam without allowing a run and the Red Sox won the game, 7-6, in 11 innings, all anybody could talk about was the move to Lucas. The Sox decisively won the next two games at Fenway Park, advancing to the World Series and crushing Mauch’s dream again.
After Game 5, Mauch defended bringing in Lucas to pitch to Gedman. “I’ve never had much luck relieving Mike Witt,” he confessed. “But I’ve never seen Rich Gedman do anything but strike out against Gary Lucas.” Mauch was right again, but Gedman had faced Lucas only two times before Game 5. In a bigger sample size, Gedman was 2-for-21 against Witt for his career in regular-season play. But in this game, Gedman had touched up Witt for a homer, a double, and a single. Even so, the consensus among baseball observers was that even if Gedman hit another homer, he still couldn’t beat you, so you stay with your ace.
Aftermath
Mauch retired from managing in spring training 1988 due to health reasons. He finished with a record of 1,902-2,037 and 54 ejections. That’s the most wins of any manager who never got to a World Series. That’s also the most wins of any eligible manager who’s not in the Hall of Fame. His peers highly regarded him as a strategist and competitor. When Mauch passed away in 2005, he left behind a complicated legacy, that’s for sure.
