Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about charges being withdrawn against a Rhode Island memorabilia shop owner and a woman who was contracted by Beckett to authenticate items involving Jason Kelce. The items turned out to be bogus, but neither defendant realized that:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/charges-withdrawn-against-ri-shop-owner-contractor-in-jason-kelce-autograph-fraud-case/
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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a huge stash of 1920s strip cards -- athletes, actors and politicians -- found while friends were cleaning out a New York barn. The cards were discovered inside a candy tin filled with marbles:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/cache-of-1920s-baseball-strip-cards-found-in-candy-tin-inside-new-york-barn/​

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Jorge Olazabal, who was the victim of a scam by a San Antonio sports card shop owner:

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/perfect-victim-san-antonio-collector-seeks-closure-in-case-involving-wembanyama-rookie-card/
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​Teams that lose a World Series are rarely remembered fondly.

But there have been a few. During my generation, the 1967 “Impossible Dream” Boston Red Sox come to mind. And for the generation before me, the 1950 “Whiz Kids” Philadelphia Phillies would fit into that category.
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The Phillies raced out to a big lead in the National League during 1950, then nearly blew the pennant with a late-season collapse. And while the exhausted Phillies would lose four straight to the New York Yankees in the World Series, the first three games were only decided by a run.

The Phillies, young and hungry, would be back to compete in subsequent seasons. Right?

Wrong.
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“Many baseball experts were surprised in 1950 by the team’s success and equally surprised by its subsequent lack of same,” author Dennis Snelling writes in his latest book. “How are dynasties made — and opportunities for them lost?”

Snelling traces the rise and fall of that squad in The Whiz Kids: How the 1950 Phillies Took the Pennant, Lost the World Series, and Changed Philadelphia Baseball Forever (University of Nebraska Press; $36.95; hardback, 328 pages). He also provides a primer in Philadelphia baseball, a history that dates to the 1820s and includes the 1865 “original” Athletics. The modern-day Athletics managed by Connie Mack would win nine American League pennants, five World Series titles and would finish in last place 17 times. The Phillies were not as lucky, winning only one N.L. pennant (in 1915) before the 1950 squad.

​This is Snelling’s first baseball book since his 2017 biography, Lefty O’Doul: Baseball’s Forgotten Ambassador. He is heavily invested in the 1950 Phillies, and even collected the Phillies players who were featured in the 1950 Bowman baseball card set.

Snelling’s prose is precise, and his notes at the end of the book are a delight. In one note, Snelling mentions that pitcher Tom Casagrande, who signed a $40,000 bonus with the Phils, was featured on a 1955 Topps baseball card but was one of three players in that set who would never see action in a major league game. The others were Louis Ortiz and Jack Parks. That inspired a story I wrote on May 27 for Sports Collectors Daily about the three players.

Another footnote referenced prospects who failed to enter the Phillies’ farm system in 1948. They included was pitcher and future Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda and future San Francisco Giants broadcaster Lon Simmons. More notes: Lee Riley, the father of NBA coaching legend Pat Riley, would later toil in the Phils’ minor league system, along with future actor-singer-game show host Bert Convy. Or, that seven players on the Philadelphia roster in 1950 would still be on the team in 1958.

Fascinating stuff.
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Snelling correctly asserts that the Phillies’ rise had an adverse effect on the Athletics, who were unable to compete and eventually moved to Kansas City in 1955. While it was true that the A’s had winning records in 1948 and 1949, they finished in last place in 1950 and drew only 309,805 fans. The Phillies, meanwhile, topped 1 million in attendance in 1946 and 1950 —leading the National League in ’50 — and drew 819,698 fans to Shibe Park in 1949.

​​One reason for the Phillies surge was that owner Robert Carpenter Jr. bought the team in 1944 and opened his wallet, acquiring talent and also investing heavily in minor league franchises. Meanwhile, general manager Herb Pennock put together the pieces of the team that would win the N.L. pennant in 1950. Pennock died in January 1948 and did not see the fruits of his work, but his efforts made the Phillies the best game in town.
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In 1950, the Phillies had a righty-lefty pitching tandem of future Hall of Famer Robin Roberts (20-11) and Curt Simmons (17-8), and a bespectacled reliever named Jim Konstanty who won 16 games, saved 22 others, won league MVP honors and was the surprise starter in Game 1 of the World Series.

nother player bound for Cooperstown, Richie Ashburn, would excel in center field and later was a Phillies broadcaster for more than three decades. The team was managed by Eddie Sawyer, whose low-key manner worked in 1950 but would prove to be ineffective over the next few seasons.

Everything worked for the Phillies in 1950, and Snelling does a precise job tracing the rise of the team. The Phillies were cruising after a red-hot August and appeared to be a shoo-in for the pennant. They held a 7½-game lead against the Boston Braves on Sept. 19 and led Brooklyn by nine. But Philadelphia went into a swoon, winning only three of their next 12 games while the Dodgers won 14 of 17.

There were several factors. Dick Sisler had suffered a wrist injury; Bill Nicholson was lost to the team because of diabetes; pitcher Bubba Church was injured by line drive hit by Ted Kluszewski; and Simmons was lost for the stretch run when he was called into military service.

​Still, Philadelphia led Brooklyn by one game heading into the regular-season finale on Oct. 1, 1950, at Ebbets Field. Roberts, who would be starting his third game in five days, had lost his last four decisions but pitched a complete game in the final game to help the Phillies avoid a playoff.
The game turned on one key play in the bottom of the ninth inning.

“You could sum up the season in one sentence,” Brooklyn traveling secretary Harold Parrott told United Press. “We were short one fly ball.”

Parrott was referring to Cal Abrams, the potential winning run who was thrown out when Ashburn fired a one-hop strike to the plate after Duke Snider’s single. What is lost in the fog of time is that Brooklyn still had runners at second and third with one out. So Roberts walked Jackie Robinson intentionally, then got Carl Furillo to pop out and Gil Hodges to fly out to Del Ennis. The right fielder struggled to catch the ball but secured it, sending the game to extra innings.

Dodgers manager Burt Shotton was incredulous that Ashburn was playing so shallow, but Snelling gives the reason in another great footnote.

In an interview with the Society for American Baseball Research, Abrams claimed that Roberts missed a sign for a pickoff at second base and Ashburn rushed toward second to back up a throw that never came. When Snider singled, Ashburn was in a great position to throw, a detail that third base coach Milt Stock overlooked. Abrams was easily thrown out at the plate.

“With the game on the line, Ashburn made the throw of his life,” Snelling writes. “Stock, who had been a third baseman for the 1915 Phillies, had made a decision that played a role in his former team heading to the Fall Classic a second time.”
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The Phillies won their first pennant in 35 years when Sisler hit a three-run homer in the top of the 10th inning to secure a 4-1 victory. His father, Hall of Fame first baseman George Sisler, was a scout for the Dodgers.

Roberts pitched a complete game to become the first Phillies pitcher to win 20 games since Grover Cleveland Alexander went 30-13  in 1917.

“It was a circus, New Year’s Eve and V-J Day all wrapped into one,” The Associated Press noted in its game summary the next day.

Here is how iconic sportswriter Red Smith led his postgame column: “The tallest, steepest, swiftest, dizziest, dare-devil, death-defying dive ever undertaken by a baseball team came off with a rich and fruity climax when the Phillies toppled headlong into the World Series.”
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Snelling had plenty of information and research to compress a Cinderella season into a smooth, readable format. So it is always interesting to understand the process and mindset an author has when writing a book. During a YouTube interview with the Philly SABR chapter, Snelling said he followed several guidelines before submitting a draft to a potential publisher, noting that “the first draft is just typing. Editing is writing.”

Fact-checking copy, ensuring that the prose is smooth with the proper flow and structure and checking for grammatical errors are also key elements. Snelling said he even read his draft aloud to himself.

“Sometimes you catch things that way,” he said.

There was only one glitch in the facts that I could tell, and it is a common mistake. The last name of Gladys Goodding, the famed Ebbets Field organist, was spelled as “Gooding.”

The research is extensive. Snelling cites 29 books and 46 articles in his bibliography. He also used information from interviews with several players, including Sisler, Abrams and Ennis. Snelling also got his hands on the Phillies’ general ledger and accounts payable books from November 1949 to October 1952. Digging into newspaper databases to give contemporary context to his work is also insightful, particularly items from the Philadelphia dailies.

Snelling also recounts the bizarre story of first baseman Eddie Waitkus, who suffered a severe gunshot wound in June 1949 when 19-year-old Ruth Ann Steinhagen fired a rifle at the player in a Chicago hotel room. Steinhagen did not know Waitkus personally but had become obsessed with him for more than two years before the shooting. The player carried physical and emotional scars after “a momentary encounter with an irrational psychotic,” Snelling writes.

Waitkus had a solid season in 1950, batting .284 and playing every game at first base, but he was out of baseball by 1955. The incident was later captured in Bernard Malamud’s book (later adapted as a film), The Natural, although the author never explicitly said the Waitkus shooting was an inspiration for his sports novel.

Roberts would win 20 or more games six times during the 1950s, collecting 28 victories in 1952. He won 199 games during the decade — including 30 shutouts —  and had 237 complete games while pitching 3,011 2/3 innings. He also started four All-Star games. He finished his 19-season career with a 286-245 record, 45 shutouts and 305 complete games. He later coached at the college baseball level, guiding the University of South Florida from 1977 to 1985. Roberts would win Sun Belt Conference titles at the Tampa school in 1981 and ’82, and led the Bulls to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 1982. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1976.
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Ashburn played 15 seasons in the majors, 12 of them in Philadelphia. He would play for the Cubs in 1960-61 and finished his career as a member of the 1962 New York Mets. He gained induction to the Hall of Fame in 1995 by the Veterans Committee, and endeared himself to Philadelphia fans as a television commentator on Phillies broadcasts from 1963 until his death in 1997.

Simmons, the last surviving member of the Whiz Kids (he died on Dec. 13, 2022, at the age of 93), was on pace to have a better record than Roberts when he was drafted into the Army. He did not pitch down the stretch or in the World Series but still had 17 wins.

Simmons would never win 20 games, but his 18-9 record in 1964 helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the N.L. pennant — the Redbirds got into the postseason after another late-season Phillies collapse, but this time Philadelphia could not figure a way to reach the Fall Classic. Simmons would earn a World Series ring when St. Louis beat the Yankees in seven games.

So, why were the Phillies unable to sustain their success during the 1950s? Part of it had to do with the stellar seasons put together by the Dodgers (pennants in 1952, ’53, ’55 and ’56) and the New York Giants (pennants in 1951 and ’54). The other part was the team’s inability to tap one of the richest sources of baseball ability — the Negro Leagues.

“The Phillies were lucky that in 1944 they finally had an owner with sufficient capital — and patience — for the team to undertake a massive overhaul of the franchise and the way it went about developing talent,” Snelling writes. “But they lost too much money chasing maybes in the 1950s, while passing on a pipeline of talent from the Negro Leagues.

“In the 1940s Bob Carpenter and the Phillies gambled on amateur talent and won. In the 1950s they gambled and lost, at a time when the downside was much greater, with the game as a while entering a transition period that was less stable financially.”

The Phillies had foresight and captured lightning in a bottle in 1950 but were never able to duplicate that.

“People are writing about franchises that have tremendous success,” Snelling said in his interview with the Philly SABR chapter. “And this is one that kind of found a way to become successful, overcoming some odds, and made it, and then couldn’t hold it.”
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Yet the Whiz Kids remained winners, even when they lost.

“In a city where sports fandom takes on an almost religious caste, the players arguably became among its saints,” Snelling writes. “Even if some had a bit of sinner in them.”