MLB Classic: Wrigley Field unconfined – Phillies 23, Cubs 22

Much remembered: MLB classic 45-run game. Sometimes forgotten: the Phillies blowing a twelve-run lead. Never forgotten: The ill winds out of Wrigley Field.

Maybe May 17, 1979, does or doesn’t qualify as having the wildest game in baseball history. It certainly qualifies as one of them. Not to mention qualifying as one of the most powerful of MLB classic games of all time, with 45 runs between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs, the Phillies winning, 23-22.

*Watch the game in its entirety on the next page.

It’ll do when you need a baseball fix desperately during the coronavirus shutdown. And it actually had to go to extra innings to decide it.

You can thank the ill winds blowing out from the plate to the bleachers in large part. When the winds blow out of Wrigley Field like that, the Friendly Confines can become your best friend and your worst enemy in the same shaft.

“When we got up by twelve,” cracked Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa, “I figured we could win if we could hold them under two touchdowns and could block a couple of extra points.”

It proved a little tougher than that. Name the team that blew a twelve-run lead they’d taken after five innings? Why, the Phillies, who did just that before finally beating the Cubs in the Wrigley windsock.

MLB Classic: Wrigley Field Unconfined

Where the Oddities Began

And they didn’t end when Phillies starting pitcher Randy Lerch finished their first-inning carnage with a solo home run… only to get knocked out of the box in the bottom of the inning.

Pete Rose in his first Philadelphia season passed Mickey Mantle on the all-time list for runs scored by switch hitters when he came home on Schmidt’s first-inning loft onto the left-field catwalk. Phillies center fielder Garry Maddox was 4-for-4 with a single, two doubles, and a home run—but his second double forced him out of the game when he injured himself sliding into second.

Two ill-fated 1986 postseason performers-to-be played this game as Cubs teammates. First baseman Bill Buckner went 4-for-7 with seven RBIs… and the four steaks in the middle came when he smashed a grand slam to start the seven-run Cub fifth that started eradicating the Phillies’ twelve-run lead.

Relief pitcher Donnie Moore took over for starter Dennis Lamp in that crazy enough first and finished the Cubs coming back to 7-6 in the bottom of the inning with an RBI triple. He pitched a scoreless second but got pried for four runs in the top of the third. Then, he yielded to future (1984) American League Cy Young Award/Most Valuable Player winner  Willie Hernandez—who got pried for a run-scoring ground out and then Maddox’s three-run homer.

You wonder if Hernandez was either taking one for the team or in manager Herman Franks’s doghouse. He pitched two and two-thirds innings total and got strafed for two runs charged to Moore and eight runs on his own nickels.

Only two of the day’s eleven pitchers (six for the Cubs, five for the Phillies) surrendered no runs while they were on the mound despite being prospective target practice—Ray Burris for the Cubs (a scoreless inning and two-thirds) and Rawly Eastwick (scoreless ninth and tenth and, while he was at it, credit for the win).

Eastwick, once a bullpen capacitor for the former Big Red Machine, was also the only pitcher on the day to retire the side in order, doing it both innings he worked.

Name the one pitcher who got into the game and didn’t throw a pitch but did swing the bat? Nino Espinosa, Phillies, relief pitcher… who was sent out to pinch run for fifth-inning leadoff pinch hitter Greg Luzinski, the Phillies’ slugger still shaking off a leg injury. Espinosa ended up the tenth man to bat in the inning… and grounded out for the side.

“I was glad I pinch-run,” Espinosa would remember. “That meant I didn’t have to pitch.” Translation: He thinks he escaped with his life.

Phillies manager Danny Ozark decided to send former Mets relief star Tug McGraw out to the mound instead. Whoops. McGraw might be seen closing out the World Series in the Phillies’ favor the following season, but on this afternoon he was seen surrendering a bases-loaded walk, Buckner’s salami, and a three-run homer by Cub center fielder Jerry Martin… all in the fifth.

“I gave up seven runs in one-third of an inning,” McGraw said long after the fact. “It took me the rest of the year to get my ERA back into [three] digits.”

MLB Classic: Wrigley Field Unconfined

A Record-Breaking Game

Between them the Phillies and the Cubs collected 97 total bases (setting a record at the time), hit eleven home runs, and struck out only eleven times. “It was like, oh jeez, we’re going to extra innings too?” Phillies catcher Bob Boone, who went 3-for-4 with five RBI, would remember. “How many runs do we have to score? When you score seven runs in the first, you’re supposed to win the game.”

More from Call to the Pen

• Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
• Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

Wherever did he get that idea? In Wrigley Field or otherwise?

But was this so Cubs or what—they came back from twelve down to tie but couldn’t win. In 2001 the Oakland Athletics would come back from twelve down to beat the Cleveland Indians, and ten years later the Detroit Tigers would return from twelve down to beat the Chicago White Sox. So would the Indians revive from twelve down to beat the Seattle Mariners.

“Here,” Burris would remember, “was the uniqueness of that game: We (the Cubs) are going to hit in the bottom of the fifth, we were down 21-9. Now, when you think about that, for the next five innings, we only gave up 2 runs to the Phillies and we scored 13. That is amazing.”

That was also three years after the Phillies overcame an eleven-run deficit against the Cubs—on the day Schmidt became only the fourth man in major league history to hit four bombs in four straight plate appearances. And Schmidt hadn’t even begun that day’s mayhem until after the Cubs dropped a twelve-spot on Hall of Famer Steve Carlton.

It was also 57 years after the Cubs also allowed the Phillies 23. That time, however, the Phillies allowed the Cubs 26. It’s still the most runs by two teams in a single major league game ever.

“Ballplayers often will say that you never can get enough runs to win in this park, but they always say it sarcastically,” said Schmidt about the ill winds in tiny Wrigley Field. “After today, they can forget the sarcasm.”