September Swoon: Richie Allen, the ’64 Phillies, and Racial Integration

by William C. Kashatus

Everything seemed to be going the Phillies’ way. Up by 6 1/2 games with just 12 left to play in the 1964 season, they appeared to have clinched their first pennant in more than a decade. Outfielder Johnny Callison narrowly missed being the National League MVP. Third baseman Richie Allen was Rookie of the Year. But the "Fightin’ Phils" didn’t make it to the postseason―they lost 10 straight and finished a game behind the St. Louis Cardinals. Besides engineering the greatest collapse of any team in major league baseball history, the ’64 Phillies had another, more important they were Philadelphia’s first truly integrated baseball team. In September Swoon William Kashatus tells the dramatic story―both on the field and off the field―of the Phillies’ bittersweet season of 1964. More than any other team in Philadelphia’s sports history, the ’64 Phillies saddled the city with a reputation for being a "loser." Even when victory seemed assured, Philadelphia found a way to lose. Unfortunately, the collapse, dubbed the "September swoon," was the beginning of a self-destructive skid in both team play and racial integration, for the very things that made the players unique threatened to tear the team apart. An antagonistic press and contentious fans blamed Richie Allen, the Phillies’ first black superstar, for the team’s losing ways, accusing him of dividing the team along racial lines. Allen manipulated the resulting controversy in the hopes that he would be traded, but in the process he managed to further fray already tenuous race relations. Based on personal interviews, player biographies, and newspaper accounts, September Swoon brings to life a season and a team that got so many Philadelphians, both black and white, to care deeply and passionately about the game at a turbulent period in the city’s―and our nation’s―history. The hometown fans reveled in their triumphs and cried in their defeat, because they saw in them a reflection of themselves. The ’64 Phillies not only won over the loyalties of a racially divided city, but gave Philadelphians a reason to dream―of a pennant, of a contender, and of a City of Brotherly Love.

Genres: Baseball

Hardcover

First published February 2, 2004

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book examines the events and surrounding circumstances of the infamous 1964 Phillies collapse, which until the 2007 Mets and 2011 Red Sox arguably surpassed them. But the book, like all good sports history books, isn't just about baseball or even the particular team. It is about the larger events going on in society, as the limits of Civil Rights driven integration was rearing its head nationwide, not just the American South. Often called "Up South" because of its informal racial politics in the 20th century, Philadelphia was a tinder box of racial tension as neighborhoods changed rapidly during the Great Migration and White Flight or defended neighborhoods of white working class people violently keeping out black neighbors. The baseball team, the Phillies, was the very last team in the National League to integrate, and even when it did, took until 1964 to bring up a true black superstar in the ultra talented Dick Allen.  Yet, they also subjected him to trauma by sending the young star to Arkansas in the early 1960s as the first black player in the state ever. Allen, who grew up in a relatively racially peaceful town in western Pennsylvania, was not ready for the kind of vicious treatment he received in Little Rock on one of the Phillies farm teams. It would stay with him as he made waves in his rookie season in 1964, Kashatus noted. 

The 1964 squad, led by manager Gene Mauch, put everything together to bring the sad-sack Phillies out of the muck it had been mired in by being so slow to integrate and bring in black talent. This team soared into first place of the National League (in one of the last few seasons that the World Series was played between the best team in the National League and the American League before playoffs were added) by August, when in the surrounding neighborhood, the Columbia Avenue Riots shook North Philly in response to a police brutality incident. Indeed, the Phillies had only a few weeks before, witnessed the ongoing Watts Riots aftermath when they were in LA to play the Dodgers. Now, they played in their neighborhood that had become a warzone, flooded with "Rizzo's Raiders", led by the Assistant Commissioner and brash Frank Rizzo. 

Still, Kashatus wrote, they seemed like they were a shoo-in to win the National League with a 6.5 game lead with 12 games to go by mid September. Instead, the Phillies collapsed into a 10 game losing streak by overmanagement, pitching Bunning and Short on short rest, and just plain bad luck, and missed the shot at the World Series. That incredible collapse seemed to destroy the young promising team, as Phillies fans both directed racial animosity to Allen, who played miserable yet stunning years for the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium before he finally got a trade out of town five years later. The stadium crumbled and the neighborhood turned into a constant warzone between police and local gangs which pushed mostly white fans away. The psychological blows from the situation took years to recover from, and seemingly when Kashatus published the book, in 2003, hadn't quite totally healed yet.

In the years since, the Phillies rose to another championship in 2008, but the memory of 1964 has eroded with a younger generation of sports fans. Generally speaking, usually only older fans have vivid memories of the turbulence and utter anger that collapse brought, coupled with the racial turbulence that rocked Philly in 1964 and beyond. 

This book is best coupled with "To Every Thing a Season" by Kuklick, on the history of Shibe/Connie Mack Stadium and the neighborhood of Swampoodle, and Mitchell Nathanson's "Fall of the 1977 Phillies", another brutal collapse 13 years later, to understand latter 20th century Philadelphia neighborhood social history and its connection with sports.

[James Roller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heartbreaking look into the magical season of the 1964 Phillies season, which ended in heartbreak. The focus of the book is the fractured relationship between the Phillies and it's first black superstar, Richie Allen. All the while, the book dives into the uneasy relationship between the team and it's fans, coming to terms with it's racist behaviors, as well as the city of Philadelphia and the Summer of '64.

[Cory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy and enjoyably depressing read for cynical Phillies fans. Good use of box scores and primary accounts of the terrible collapse which prevented the Phils from raising the '64 pennant. The focus on Dick Allen is particularly interesting, especially when considering the Civil Rights movement and associated social conflicts, which the author regards but does not dwell on. Overall, I would recommend it for Phils fans. Oh, and also for Mets fans, since it details a collapse not unlike the 2007 Mets.

[Jeff Loxterkamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great bookend to the story of Dick Allen's. Cover's the September collapse of the Philadelphia Phillie's 1964 Pennant Race. Basically the swoon occurred nevause of Manager Gene Mauch's decision to start the Phillies two best pitchers, Jim Bunning and Chris many times on only two days rest. Book also puts the season in context with the racial turmoil of Philadelpha at the time and its 'shameful past' as titled in the 1st chapter.

[Glen Russell Slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

I immensely enjoyed this book, which is very well-written. It's about the Philadelphia Phillies' famous self-destruction in September of 1964, in which they went from the top of the heap only to blow it. Gene Mauch never lived this down. A lot of the book is about Richie Allen, Philadelphia's racism, and lots of other aspects of Philadelphia and the Phillies. I would honestly have to say, however, that this book would not appeal to the non-baseball fan. I loved it.