Full Description
Before the 1950 World Series, the Philadelphia Phillies were infamous for a record-breaking lack of achievement that dated from their conception in 1883 through the 1940s. When twenty-eight-year-old Robert Carpenter Jr. took over in 1944, the Phillies had won only a single National League title in more than sixty years. For the next five years, Carpenter and the newly hired general manager, Herb Pennock, would overhaul the team's operations, building a farm system from scratch and spending a fortune on young talent to build a team that would gain immense popularity and finally bring a National League pennant in 1950.
Nicknamed the "Whiz Kids" because they had so many players under thirty, the team caught lightning in a bottle for one season. Although they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees, the team became legendary in Philadelphia and beyond. The Whiz Kids is about a team that shocked everyone by winning, and then shocked everyone by never winning again. It includes a cast of characters and unusual storylines: a first baseman targeted for murder by a woman he had never met; a young catcher from Nebraska, Richie Ashburn, who became a Hall of Fame center fielder and later voice of the team for nearly three decades; a left fielder who lived and played in the shadow of his legendary father, then inspired Ernest Hemingway with the most legendary swing of a bat in franchise history; and a thirty-three-year-old bespectacled relief pitcher who won the Most Valuable Player Award with an undertaker as his personal pitching coach. The team succeeded under the watchful eye of its young owner, whose father handed him the team, and a college professor manager, only to see it slowly crumble as the slowest in the National League to integrate.
The Whiz Kids recounts the history of a team that, though hand-built to be champions, fell short-yet remains legendary anyway.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. A Not Always Concise but Nonetheless Relatively Brief History of Philadelphia Baseball from Its Beginnings, with a Particular Emphasis on the Trials and Tribulations of the Philadelphia Phillies up to and through 1942
2. The First Whiz Kids
3. Signing Up 479 Wins in Four Months
4. Moving On without the Squire
5. I'm Unpredictable
6. I'm Glad to Be!
7. You Guys Look like You Want to Win the Pennant
8. Don't Say I Am Predicting a Pennant
9. The Fightin' Phils Fight Themselves in September
10. Sisler, Hemingway, and a Date with the Yankees
11. They'll Win the Pennant for the Next Six Years
12. Will They Want Their Second as Much as the First?
13. From Contender to Afterthought
14. I Gave It All I Had
15. Ghosts of Greatness Past
Notes
Bibliography
Index
