The Oakland Athletics will face the Phillies on June 6, and it will be the first time that the A's have played in Philadelphia since the franchise left town after the 1954 season. The Phils will mark the occasion by bringing back some former players from the Athletics.
One guy has always been of particular interest to me. Pitcher Bobby Shantz actually began his career with the Philadelphia A's in 1949 and ended it with the 1964 Phillies. When he stopped playing, he stayed in the area and was a business associate of a friend of mine.
Casual fans know that the lefty, who stood 5 feet, 6 inches tall, won the American League MVP award by going 24-7 with a 2.48 earned-run average for the 1952 A's. He rebounded from arm problems a few years later and revived his career in New York, where he was a two-time all-star and went to three World Series with the Yankees.
Shantz became a relief pitcher primarily after the 1958 season, and the Phillies acquired him from the Chicago Cubs on Aug. 15, 1964, for the stretch run during that fateful campaign.
"I thought I had a real good chance to go to the World Series with the Phillies, but things just didn't work out," the pitcher said in a telephone interview.
Although the Phils had a 6-1/2-game lead with just 12 games left to play, 10 straight losses at that point left the team out of the 1964 fall classic.
Getting back to Shantz, what might not be commonly known is that he was living and working in Northeast Philadelphia before he began his professional baseball career.
"I was making a hundred dollars a week at the Disston sawmill on State Road in Tacony," Shantz began, "and I lived on Oakmont Street in Holmesburg."
Henry Disston & Sons was sold years ago, but some of the buildings that were part of the once-large complex still stand on State Road near Knorr Street.
"I had a chance to go away and play baseball, but I didn't want to quit my job," said Shantz. "It was a terrible job, but a hundred dollars was a lot of money in those days. My dad and my boss finally talked me into leaving."
Disston actually had a reputation as a pretty good place to work. What was so terrible about the job?
"It was the emery dust," Shantz explained. "It was some stuff that we put on a saw before it went through these two wheels, and that dust would come flying out in your face. We had to wear a mask, but we were still inhaling that stuff. That was one of the reasons that my boss told me that I should get out and play baseball."
The pitcher was playing baseball at the time. He just wasn't getting paid for it.
"(In 1947), I was playing in the Pen-Del League for the Holmesburg Ramblers," he recalled. "They used to play their games at Ditman and Decatur (streets). The first scout who came up to me was Jocko Collins of the Phillies.
"I was pitching against some team from Bridesburg named Polonia or something like that, and I beat them. I didn't even know that he was there. (Collins) told me that I had a big-league curve ball but I was too small."
The Phillies passed on him, but the A's didn't.
"That winter, (A's scout) Harry O'Donnell came to my house and asked if I wanted to play in the minor leagues," Shantz continued. "He said I would make three-hundred dollars a month, so I thought I'd take a shot at it.
"They sent me to Lincoln, Nebraska, for one season. I didn't even know where that was, but it was one of the best things that I ever did because I married a girl that I met out there, and we're still married after fifty-four years."
Shirley and Bobby Shantz live in retirement in Ambler.
Bobby appeared in 14 games for the Phillies, went 1-1 with a 2.25 ERA and retired after the 1964 season. He finished his 16-year career with a 119-99 record and a 3.38 ERA. In addition to an MVP award and three World Series rings, he collected eight Gold Glove awards.
He could have done much of that in a Phillies uniform had Collins been able to overlook the pitcher's size.
"I went to a banquet after the '52 season, and (Collins) was there," Shantz recalled. "He said to me, 'I never made too many mistakes, but you were one of them.'"
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