Game 25 – Wednesday Night, May 2nd in Atlanta
Record – 12-13, 4th Place, 3 1/2 games behind the Nationals
One Sentence Summary: For the first time all season, the bats did their job while the pitching fell apart, and the Phillies lost a thriller in Atlanta in extras, 15-13.
What It Means: It means shock. Roy Halladay was handed a six-run lead and the Phillies scored 13 runs . . . but they still lost. This is one of those games you seriously hope the team quickly rebounds from and puts behind them.
What Went Wrong: Halladay didn’t make it out of the sixth inning. In the fifth, with the Phils up 6-0, Halladay allowed the Braves to tie up the game on five singles and a crushing grand slam from Brian McCann. Halladay surrendered two more runs in the sixth and his night was done. When it was all over, Halladay’s perfect record of 107-0 when given at least a four-run lead was history.
The offense kept pounding away and the bullpen had a 12-8 lead heading into the bottom of the eighth. But the bullpen duo of Jose Contreras and Michael Schwimer allowed five runs to score (four earned), handing the lead back to the Braves again. The Phils would tie it up in the ninth, but Chipper Jones’ walk-off, two-run home run in the 11th off Brian Sanches gave the Braves the win.
Carlos Ruiz had seven RBIs in the loss, with two doubles and a huge three-run home run. It was the first time a Phillies catcher has ever had seven RBIs in a game since the stat starting being tracked in 1920. Chooch would have had the featured card in this post, if not for the implosions from Halladay and the bullpen.
Featured Card: This was the first game the Phillies had scored 13 runs and lost since August 3, 1969. In that heart-breaking loss, Tony Taylor drove in five runs with two homers, Johnny Callison had a four-hit night and Deron Johnson joined the party with five hits. The Reds scored 10 runs in the fifth with most of the damage coming off reliever Turk Farrell. Farrell recorded only one out while allowing six runs on six hits. This is Farrell's hatless offering from the 1969 Topps set. Sorry again, Chooch.
2 comments:
This is an odd card even for 1969 Topps. In this set they didn't think twice about recycling pictures from all the way back to 1960...they couldn't have used a picture of Farrell from his first Phils go-around?
Farrell came back to the Phils in May 1967, so Topps had several years to come up with a late-'60s shot of Farrell in Phillies gear. Instead, we get another hatless mug shot.
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