Baseball

The Last Laugh
The butt of jokes a year ago, the Phillies are now a wild-card contender

The following tale was a popular one in Philadelphia last summer. A mother takes her three children to Veterans Stadium for a Phillies game, and the kids get lost. For an hour she frantically searches for them, and then she hears the P.A. announcer say, "Will the woman who lost three children please come to the security desk and pick up her kids. They're beating the Phillies 8-1."

It's an old joke, which is precisely what the Phillies had become when they won a total of four games in June '97. This season Philadelphia had a 49-46 record at week's end, which doesn't sound all that impressive until you consider that at this time last year the team was 38 games under .500. From that pathetic position the Phils have astounded the experts by putting together the seventh-best record in the majors since the '97 All-Star break.

After salvaging a split of a four-game series with the Mets by coming from behind to win 7-6 in 10 innings on Sunday, Philadelphia was only three games out of the National League wild-card spot. When Phillies manager Terry Francona is asked to explain his team's success in '98, he credits the front office's off-season decision to make the club younger and more athletic, pointing specifically to three new additions: outfielders Bob Abreu and Doug Glanville and shortstop Desi Relaford. Abreu, 24, is hitting .309, and Glanville, 27, has four hitting streaks of 14 or more games and ranks among the National League's top 10 in hits, runs and triples. The two are also tied for the league lead with 11 outfield assists. Relaford, 24, has played solid defense and become the most consistent number 8 hitter in the league, with a .279 average. "There haven't been many growing pains for them,' " Francona says. "All three have hit the ground running."

Naturally, the Phillies have also leaned heavily on the '97 National League Rookie of the Year, third baseman Scott Rolen, who through Sunday was batting .306 with 18 homers and 61 RBIs, and on staff ace Curt Schilling, who led the league in complete games (nine) and strikeouts (189). Veteran righthander Mark Leiter has also been invaluable, stepping into the breach to replace injured closer Ricky Bottalico and getting 20 saves in his absence.

The Phils don't dazzle anybody with team stats, ranking 13th in the league in home runs, eighth in runs and 12th in ERA, but the club has 29 comeback victories this season—third best in the majors—including a defining victory against the Pirates on June 16, when Philadelphia scored seven runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to win 8-7. "In recent years when we were behind in the late innings, we had guys asking, 'Where do you want to go to dinner?' " veteran outfielder Gregg Jefferies says. "This season we have stopped accepting defeat. Now we get mad after losses. Everybody has one goal, and that's to make the playoffs."

Well, not necessarily everybody. Francona and general manager Ed Wade sound like reluctant pursuers of the wild card. After all, the Phillies are probably over-achieving and over the long haul don't have enough talent to reach the postseason, so it isn't part of their long-term rebuilding plan to trade for immediate help this season. Says Wade, "If it's a situation where we would have to give up guys we think can help us in the future in order to acquire a player to put us over the hump this year, we're still not of a mind to do that."

The Phillies players aren't quite as patient "We're enjoying speeding up the evolutionary process," Schilling says. "We've gone from the Jurassic stage to 20th-century pennant race in one year."

Wade must decide before the July 31 trading deadline whether or not to unload veterans such as Leiter and Mark Portugal for prospects. The average age of the Phillies' every-day lineup is just 26.2 years old—only the Marlins and the Expos are younger—and thus the future in Philadelphia is brighter than anyone could have imagined just one year ago. "Last June we were the laughingstock of baseball," Jefferies says. "But now a mention of the Phillies isn't followed by a punch line. No matter what happens the rest of the year, that's a big step for us."

Struggling Closer
No Relief In Sight