With Nolan Ryan on the mound and a three-run lead, Houston needed six more outs to win the National League pennant. Philadelphia needed something less grand than a home run to begin its comeback. It needed a ground ball to go somewhere other than a fielder’s glove.
In the eighth inning of the deciding game of the 1980 National League Championship Series, Bob Boone hit a ball that appeared capable of becoming a double play. Ryan reached for it. The ball struck his glove and changed course, leaving Boone and Larry Bowa safe. It was not the hit that put the Phillies ahead. It did not even score a run. But in a game that had offered Philadelphia fewer and fewer openings, it preserved two runners and gave the next batter a chance.
Original illustration for The Grounder That Kept the Phillies’ 1980 Pennant Hopes Alive
The Phillies would score five times that inning. Those runs are often folded into the story of a comeback against Ryan, and with reason: he was the pitcher Philadelphia had to face when the inning began. But the rally did not belong to one confrontation, or even one Houston pitcher. Ryan left before it was over. A bunt, a bases-loaded walk, a pinch-hitter, a pinch-runner and two Astros relievers all figured in a lead Philadelphia would hold for only half an inning. The pennant itself waited until the 10th.
That is what makes Game 5 more revealing than a simple tale of an ace finally beaten. The Phillies found an opening against Ryan, used nearly every kind of contribution available to them, watched Houston answer, and then had to win the game again.
On October 12, 1980, 44,802 people were at the Astrodome for the finale. Houston had reached the NLCS after a division tiebreaker and had taken a two-games-to-one lead over Philadelphia. The Phillies won Game 4 in 10 innings to force this last meeting. The final four games of the series would all go to extra innings, a measure of how little either club had been able to settle.
Houston’s presence in the pennant race was all the more notable because it was playing without J.R. Richard, who had suffered a stroke earlier in the season. Ryan, the club’s prominent free-agent addition, started the deciding game. Philadelphia opened with rookie Marty Bystrom, a late-season call-up whose postseason eligibility required a roster exception after Nino Espinosa was injured. The contrast in their circumstances was striking, though the game would pass through several pitchers before it was done.
For a time, the Phillies had the lead they needed. In the second inning, Boone singled home Manny Trillo and Garry Maddox to make it 2–1. Houston tied the game in the sixth, then scored three times in the seventh. By the time Philadelphia came up in the eighth, it trailed 5–2. Ryan had struck out eight through seven innings.
A three-run deficit is not insurmountable. Against Ryan, with a season reduced to its remaining outs, it was an unforgiving assignment. One clean double play in the eighth could have made it harder still.
Bowa led off with a looping single. Boone followed with the grounder that deflected off Ryan’s glove, putting two men aboard. The play mattered partly because it looked so ordinary at contact: the kind of ball an infield expects to turn into an out, perhaps two. Instead, Philadelphia kept the inning alive without having scored.
Greg Gross then bunted to load the bases. Pete Rose walked, forcing in Bowa and cutting the deficit to 5–3. That was the end of Ryan’s outing. He had begun the inning with a three-run lead and departed with the bases loaded, but Houston still led when he left. The next runs would come with other pitchers on the mound.
Joe Sambito entered, and pinch-hitter Keith Moreland hit into a fielder’s choice that scored Boone. Philadelphia was within one. Ramon Aviles came in to run for Moreland. Houston changed its infield and went to Ken Forsch, but the inning kept moving. Del Unser singled to tie the game. Trillo then tripled into the left-field corner, bringing home Aviles and Unser. The Phillies led 7–5.
Five runs, three Houston pitchers, and no single swing that explains the whole of it. Boone’s deflected grounder had kept two runners safe. Gross’s bunt increased the pressure. Rose’s walk brought in the first run and sent Ryan out. Moreland, Unser and Trillo supplied the scoring plays that followed. The Phillies’ bench was not a footnote to the comeback; it was part of how the comeback worked.
Trillo’s triple was the inning’s largest blow. It was also too early to serve as the game’s ending.
Houston scored twice in the bottom of the eighth against Tug McGraw, tying it 7–7. The Astros had not spent the series waiting to yield to Philadelphia’s story. Terry Puhl had four hits in Game 5 and batted .526 across the NLCS. Houston had built a late three-run advantage against a club trying to reach its first World Series since 1950, and when that advantage vanished, it immediately made the Phillies start over.
That response changes the meaning of Philadelphia’s eighth. Had the 7–5 lead held, the inning might be remembered as an uninterrupted march from Ryan’s glove to Trillo’s triple to the pennant. Instead, the rally secured something more limited and more essential: it kept the Phillies from losing in regulation. They had climbed out of the hole, but they had not yet crossed the field to celebrate.
The ninth passed without a run. In the 10th, Unser doubled. Trillo, whose triple had produced the brief eighth-inning lead, flied out and advanced him. Maddox then doubled Unser home, putting Philadelphia ahead 8–7.
This time there was no Houston reply. Dick Ruthven retired the Astros in order in the bottom of the inning. Maddox caught the final fly ball, and the Phillies had the pennant.
The two Philadelphia hits in the 10th give the finish a different shape from the eighth-inning rally. Unser had already delivered the single that tied the game against Forsch; now his double put the winning run in position. Trillo did not drive in a run this time, but his fly ball moved Unser along. Maddox, who had scored on Boone’s early single, supplied the hit that finally stood up. Their contributions were linked across innings, not confined to one burst of scoring.
It would be easy, from the final score, to smooth away those interruptions. Philadelphia won 8–7, so the five-run eighth becomes the turning point; Trillo’s triple becomes the image; Maddox’s double becomes the ending. All three belong in the account. None makes much sense without Houston’s part in it. Ryan was close to carrying a three-run lead through the late innings. His teammates retook the game’s momentum after he was gone. The Phillies had to answer a second time.
The series had asked that of them before. Philadelphia arrived at Game 5 only because it had recovered from a two-games-to-one deficit and won the previous game in extra innings. Houston, for its part, had come through a demanding route to the NLCS and stood six outs from its first pennant. What happened in the eighth was decisive in one respect—it made a Philadelphia victory possible—and inconclusive in another. It did not decide who would leave the Astrodome with the championship.
Ryan’s deflection is still the right place to look for the opening. Baseball games often turn on a ball that travels only a short distance and does not produce the expected out. Yet calling it the play risks overlooking everything the Phillies had to do after it. They did not score five runs off Ryan. They scored five in an inning that began against him, then continued to create runs after Houston changed pitchers. And even that was not enough until Unser, Trillo and Maddox combined for one more run two innings later.
The victory sent Philadelphia to its first World Series in 30 years. The Phillies went on to beat Kansas City in six games for the franchise’s first championship. Game 5 in Houston did not win that title for them; it earned them the chance to play for it.
The pennant turned when a likely out glanced off Ryan’s glove, but it was not awarded at that moment. It took an entire inning of different hands to build a lead, a Houston comeback to take that lead away, and a final Philadelphia run in the 10th to make the eighth matter.