The Dirty Inning

The Phillies had a slight problem in early August 1894: The Philadelphia Baseball Grounds had caught fire, causing $100,000 in damage. If the Phillies had any frustrations about the loss, they took them out on the Louisville Colonels on August 18. Justin and Trev go back over a century to talk about the 29-4 drubbing the Phillies hung on their opponent in a time apparently before the unwritten rules had been not written.

Until Dave Dombrowski was hired, it was starting to seem like nobody wanted to work for the Phillies, unlike in 1920, when the Phillies struggled to find a candidate who was willing and available.

The end of the preseason. Your whole season ahead of you. This is going to be your year. You can feel it in your bones. Unfortunately, the one in your knee just exploded for no reason. On this episode, join us as we journey back to 1925, a time when Philadelphia still had two baseball teams, and they began each year by playing each other in a game with typically few consequences for the rest of the season.

The bad news? The Phillies horrendous 1928 season came to an end, largely due to a single a miscarriage of a play. The good news? Almost absolutely no one was watching. Justin and Trev commemorate the close of the Phillies' 2019 season by telling the twisted tale of the 1928 regular season finale, and reflect on the bittersweet nature of another year gone by.

We all know now that the last time a World Series was played in Washington, D.C., it was 1933. But if we zip back a few months before that, and up a few miles to Philadelphia, we can find another historic baseball moment: Two consecutive Phillies losses with an 18-1 score. Yes, both of them.

Ah, to be young, and also the team president of a professional sports franchise. That was William D. Cox, who was only 33 when he took over the team in the winter of 1943. Several months later, when baseball justice came for him, he was dealt with swiftly and abruptly, in exactly the way rule-breakers of today... are not.

It's springtime in 1954. The youths of Philadelphia are teaming up to commit felonies. The fumes of coal gas fills the air. And the local ball team is in Florida, losing two games simultaneously. Join Justin and Trev for a Phillies preseason story about a pair of Grapefruit League meltdowns involving a pitcher who didn't pitch and a kind-hearted manager turning heel at a time when everybody on the Dodgers was named "Don."

What's better than a single, isolated dirty inning? Two stacked on top of each other, course! Everyone stop booing me. Stop that right now. Come back to 1962 with Justin and Trev as they discuss the top AND bottom of the first inning at Connie Mack Stadium, on a night when the Phillies and Cardinals would both have their worst frame of the evening shortly after the first pitch.

Come late April 1966 in Chicago, the grain elevators were aflame, proms were preparing the young folk to step into adult life, and the Cubs were a reliably beatable squad. Gene Mauch and his Phillies came to town, and while Mauch mentioned they hadn't suffered a real bad loss at Wrigley for some time and were about due, his team came out and walloped the baby bears so hard, they completely checked out for the next day's game.

It's 1967. An invasion of filthy youths in Philadelphia and a secret germ warfare program is revealed at Penn! Also, the Phillies, or whatever.