"Like a Big Infection"

The world has gone to pot. There was a time when the very least that a baseball fan could count on was that New York -- or Brooklyn, anyway --would win the National League pennant, and the Philadelphia Phillies would wind up shoveling coal in the cellar. The Polo Grounds is a gutted steel skeleton now; Ebbets Field is apartment houses. And last week the Phillies were leading the league.

It was only by a few percentage points to be sure: Phils .605, San Francisco Giants .600. And strange things do happen in the spring. But the 1964 Phillies are no fluke. Unlike the fence-busting Giants (10 home runs), the Phillies get their runs in sprinkles on singles, rely on sound defense, tight pitching, plus the old-fashioned virtue of team spirit. The urge to win, says Manager Gene Mauch, is "like a big infection," and last week the Phils were breaking out all over. They shut out Pittsburgh 2-0, dropped a protested game to the Pirates, 6-5, and bounced back to edge the Houston Colts, 7-6. By week's end the suspicion was beginning to dawn on Manager Mauch that the infection just might be incurable. "You know," he said, "we could even win this pennant."

Try Suicide. Historians smile at the thought. In 81 years, the Phils have won only two pennants (in 1915 and 1950), and Mauch may be the only manager in history who took a demotion from the minors to the major leagues. A tense, cold-eyed baseball strategist who took the Minneapolis Millers to two straight Junior World Series, he got the Philadelphia job in 1960 when Eddie Sawyer quit after the first game, explaining, "I'm 49 years old and I want to live to be 50." The Phils welcomed their new manager the way they knew best: by finishing dead last. The next year was even worse. The Phils were last again, and set a modern major league record by losing 23 games in a row. "No matter what we tried, it didn't work," says Mauch. "The only thing that I didn't try was suicide." In 1962, the Phils climbed all the way up to seventh, and awed sportswriters voted Mauch Manager of the Year. But Mauch and General Manager John Quinn refused to rest on those laurels. They were too busy rebuilding the team's dilapidated farm system and hunting for promising young players. "The secret of a good trade," Mauch says, "is not to try to fool anybody. They know the score as well as you do." Sometimes even better. Occasionally, a deal went sour: Pitcher Curt Simmons got his unconditional release in 1960, has beaten the Phillies 13 times since.

No Use Arguing. But most paid off handsomely. To plug a hole at second base, Quinn hired Tony Taylor away from the Chicago Cubs; all he did was bat .281 last year and spark the Phillies to fourth place. Quinn pried Pitcher Jim Bunning away from the Detroit Tigers; by last week Bunning had already won five games. All three of the Phillies' starting outfielders came by way of trades. The farm system did the rest, producing Pitchers Art Mahaffey (3-2 this year) and Dennis Bennett (5-3), acrobatic Shortstop Bobby Wine, and the brightest new star of all, Third Baseman Richie Allen, a 22-year-old slugger who has nine homers to his credit so far this year.

No mollycoddler, Manager Mauch always has a train ticket ready for a slacker. Starting pitchers know that it is no use arguing when he wants a replacement from the bullpen. He simply marches to the mound and holds out his hand for the ball. His hair-trigger temper is legendary; he has been suspended three times for jawing with umpires, and wise players stay out of his way on a losing afternoon. One day last year, infuriated by a narrow loss to Houston, he stalked into the clubhouse, found the Phillies feasting gaily on a buffet of barbecued spareribs--and flipped the whole table upside down. But that was last year. "Gene's pretty strict," grins Outfielder Callison. "But lately he seems to be easier to get along with."

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