Some very important and wonderful things happened to John Rossi in 1964.
He completed his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, which helped secure a promotion at the college where he was teaching, and he met his wife, Frances.
Those events almost helped him recover from one of Philadelphia’s greatest sports tragedies: the collapse of the 1964 Phillies.
The team was in first place by 6.5 games with only 12 games left in the season. World Series tickets were printed and sent to season ticket holders. Then the unthinkable happened: the team lost 10 straight games, and the pennant. (Some people kept the World Series tickets as a rueful reminder.)
About 40 years later, Rossi tried to make sense of what happened by writing “The 1964 Phillies: The Story of Baseball’s Most Memorable Collapse.”
Last year, the book’s publisher asked Rossi for a second edition, which will be available this month or March. “I think [the publisher] saw the popularity of the Phillies and decided to capitalize on it,” he said. “This year is the 60th anniversary of the collapse.”
The publishers also know Philadelphia fans love to suffer their losses more than rejoice in the few championships they’ve won.
Rossi said the trauma of ’64 created “Negadelphia,” which is generally defined as Philly sports fans’ inclination to expect the worst from their teams. Despite championship wins for the Phils in ‘08 and the Eagles in Super Bowl LII, the spirit of negadelphia remains.
“I don’t remember that negative attitude about Philadelphia sports before ’64,” Rossi said. “Other city sports teams did not have the broad following of Phillies baseball. Even the Eagles winning was minor compared to a baseball championship. Same for basketball.”
“Any fan who lived through that season and the collapse will never forget it. As soon as I mention I wrote a book about 64 to older fans, they begin reminiscing about it. What games they saw, who were their favorite players, which games of the collapse they remember,” said Rossi.
“It’s safe to say 1964 left a scar that has outlasted most of the fans who experienced it first-hand,” said retired WIP morning show host Angelo Cataldi. “It is still present in the minds of every true Philadelphia sports fan, whether they were here for it or not.”
“More than once, I even sensed a tiny bit of pride over it. The attitude seems to be: ‘Well, if we’re going to suffer a calamity, it may as well be the worst calamity in sports history.’ If we can’t be the best, Philly fans have often preferred to be the worst. The worst crime a sports team can commit in Philly is mediocrity,” said Cataldi.
After the Eagles’ red hot 10-1 start last fall, negadelphia returned as the Birds lost six of their final seven games of the season before getting bounced in the opening round of the playoffs. Football fans and sportscasters bemoaned the Eagles collapse and compared it to (and even believing it exceeded) the 1964 Phillies.
But for Rossi, what happened to that squad is the granddaddy of failures: “That one stands alone. There is no comparison that is apt to 1964,” he said.
Cataldi said the 2023 Eagles demise was very reminiscent of the Phillies collapse 60 years ago. “Again, all I could think of was 1964 as the final games unraveled. I did a bunch of interviews in the final weeks of the season, referencing many times the best example I could think of, the 1964 Phillies.”
“From my first day in Philly in 1983 — 19 years after the epic collapse — it was a point of reference for every bad loss any Philly sports team experienced,” he said.
It started with one loss
The beginning of the end for the 1964 Phillies was a 1-0 loss to the Cincinnati Reds when Chico Ruiz stole home — with Frank Robinson at the plate.
“The steal of home by Chico Ruiz was mentioned every single year I was on the air in Philadelphia (1990-2023), often more times than would seem logical,” said Cataldi. “The best example was when Joe Jurevicius of Tampa ruined the last Eagles game at Veterans Stadium by running free for a 72-yard gain that symbolized the Eagles’ futility that day. Jurevicius became Chico Ruiz. So did many of our other athletes who failed in the big moments brought back memories of Ruiz.”
Writing the book, says Rossi, was “definitely was an act of catharsis. I had been talking about the collapse ever since it happened, partly because that team meant so much to me. It was a favorite of mine because they played the kind of inside baseball I liked and I really admired the manager, Gene Mauch.”
“I got side tracked [finishing the Ph.D. thesis] because the season was so exciting,” he said. “Nothing like that had happened since 1950 when the Phillies beat the great Brooklyn Dodgers team on the final day of the season to win the pennant, but then lost the World Series to the New York Yankees in four games,” he said.
The Phillies almost cost Rossi professionally. He was a full-time “instructor” at what was then La Salle College (now university). “I was trying to finish the dissertation because if I did before January I would get a raise and be promoted to assistant professor [and that] meant the school was interested in keeping you around,” he said.
“I just couldn’t concentrate and lost two weeks of writing. When I started back to work I was still haunted by ‘How could that have happened?’ I really didn’t get back on the thesis for about a month,” said Rossi. “I just made the deadline by a couple of days.”
Rossi went on to teach baseball history (of course) at La Salle and authored four books on baseball.
Fittingly, Rossi remembers when he met his wife by recalling a baseball game played that day.
“I met Frances at a wedding reception on August 28 [when] the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Joe Gibbon beat Jim Bunning 4-2,” said Rossi. “I used to tease her by asking when we met and when she dawdled I would spring the date and game information on her. She said I remembered more about the Phillies collapse than our first dates, which by the way, isn’t true. As soon as I met her I knew I wouldn’t let her get away. We were married January 22, 1966 and lived happily ever after.”
Rossi dedicated the first edition of the book to his daughter and son-in-law who had recently married. He dedicated the second edition to his wife, who died last year. The dedication reads, “To Frances Quinn Rossi. Fifty Six Years wasn’t enough.”
But for Rossi, after 60 years and seeing the Phillies win its first World Series in 1980 and a second in 2008, does that September swoon still hurt?
“Hell, yeah!” he says.
