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

Mike Schmidt and Dave Kingman’s Influence on This Game

You can thank Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt in just enough part for that. He’d hit a three-run homer in the top of the first, launching the Phillies to a seven-run inning, and he hadn’t hit anything else all day long until the top of the tenth—because the Cubs managed to walk him four times to follow, twice intentionally.

There went the plan to keep Schmidt from wrecking them. Anyone else on the Phillies, sure, but you’re not going to let that guy destroy you. Until you do. When your Hall of Fame relief pitcher Bruce Sutter feeds him something meaty enough on 3-2 to send to the back of the left-center-field bleachers with two out.

“I didn’t even turn around to look at it,” Sutter said after the game. “I knew exactly where it was going.”

“It was one of those things that you’re almost thinking the way Schmidt liked to hit in that ballpark, you’re almost better just walking him,” remembered Cubs catcher Barry Foote decades later. “But we got two strikes on him. We’re way ahead in the count and unfortunately, Bruce just hung a splitter up in the zone a little bit. The one thing about it, it wasn’t a cheap home run. It was going to go out whether the wind was blowing out or blowing in. It didn’t matter the way he hit that ball.”

Schmidt’s rip wasn’t exactly the kind of monster mash Cubs left fielder Dave Kingman hit three times in the MLB classic game. Every one of the three flew out of the yard completely and landed across the street. The first two looked like they’d be caught by rooftop fans before they landed just in front of the building. The third bounced off a front stoop two houses down.

En route his absolute career year, Kingman singlehandedly raised homeowners’ insurance rates that afternoon. But it isn’t how far you hit them, it’s when. The Cubs’ gritty comeback from twelve down after five forced the extras in the first place, and that’s when Schmidt hit what proved the money shot.

His first-inning blast gave him thirteen on the season to that point—with twelve of those coming on the road. That’s only where the oddities began.

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.”