Phillies 1921: Rookie Goldie Rapp's Record Setting Hitting Streak

In 1948, the Phillies Richie Ashburn tied the modern baseball (since 1900) rookie record for hitting streaks with hits in 23 straight games. While Ashburn went on to a Hall of Fame career from there, the man whose record he tied, also a Phillie, has been lost to obscurity. His name was Joseph Aloysius "Goldie" Rapp, a switch-hitting third baseman who set the record in 1921. Not only did Rapp hit in 23 straight that year, but he hit safely in the first 23 games in which he appeared in a Phillies uniform.

By the time Goldie Rapp got to the Phillies, he had spent seven years in the minor leagues, served 18 months in the Army during World War 1, led the American Association in hitting with a .335 average, and been traded by the New York Giants to the Phillies along with Lee King and Lance Richbourg for Johnny Rawlings and Casey Stengel. Goldie got his colorful nickname because of a gold front tooth he sported, the result of a tooth lost to a childhood slip on the ice.

Legendary Giants manager John McGraw had purchased Rapp from the St. Paul Saints after Rapp's league leading year in 1920. Coming out of spring training, McGraw made Rapp the starting third baseman for the pennant contending Giants. Rapp hit only .215 in 58 games, however, and the impatient McGraw moved him to the Phillies on July 1. The Phillies were in need of defensive help on the infield. The incumbent, Russ Wrightstone, was a good hitter but a defensive liability. Phillies manager "Wild Bill" Donovan hoped Rapp would be a defensive upgrade. When Rapp arrived, Wrightstone moved to left field.

Rapp played his first game for the Phillies on July 7. Batting leadoff, he singled in his first Phillies at bat off the St. Louis Cardinals future Hall of Famer Jesse Haines. He walked and scored a run in the third on a Wrightstone two RBI single. The Phillies lost the game 15-2, allowing 14 runs in the last four innings. The next day the Phillies turned the tables on the Cards, winning 9-4. Rapp had three hits, including an RBI double, and scored two runs.

The hits kept coming for Goldie Rapp and they often came in bunches. During the streak, he had 11 multi-hit games. In one four game stretch from July 21-24, he rapped out nine hits in 17 at bats. His batting average during the streak was .381. Among his 37 hits were six doubles and one home run. The home run led off the game against the Chicago Cubs at Cubs Park (now Wrigley Field) on July 26, in a game the Phillies won, 6-2. The homer was one of only two that Rapp hit in his major league career.

Former Phillies great Grover Cleveland Alexander, now with the Cubs, shut the Phillies out, 10-0, on six hits in the first game of a doubleheader on July 20. Rapp, however, kept his streak alive with a sixth inning single off Old Pete. On July 30, Rapp finished off his streak in style with five hits, including a double and triple, in a doubleheader against the Cubs in Chicago. The streak ended the next day as Rapp went 0-for-4 with a walk against Elmer Ponder and the Cubs.

One week after the streak ended, Rapp was in the hospital with an inflamed appendix. He elected not to have surgery and returned to the team on August 14. But whatever magic Rapp had captured in his first month with the Phillies was gone. Whether it was the appendix or some other cause, Rapp hit just .183 the rest of the season. He had only two multi-hit games from August 1 to October 1. 

Rapp was the regular third baseman for the Phillies in 1922, a year they went 37-96-1 and finished in seventh place. He was on the shelf for several weeks in May after he broke two ribs and sprained an ankle and wrist diving into the dugout after a foul ball. Rapp was hitting just .218 by the end of August but finished with a flourish to get his average up to .253 by the end of the season. 

In 1923, new Phillies manager, and former shortstop Art Fletcher named Rapp the team captain. Fletcher was no doubt impressed by the hustling, chatterbox style that Rapp displayed. By July, however, with the Phillies record at 12-30, Fletcher decided to shake up the team. Among several changes, Goldie Rapp was released. His contract was sold to the Fort Worth club in the Texas League. Rapp played in the minor leagues for six more years, but never made it back to the majors. In his late 40s, he served in the Naval Reserves during World War 2 as a Chief Ship Fitter.

Goldie Rapp still holds a share of the National League rookie record for hitting streaks in the modern era. Both Ashburn and Alvin Dark of the Boston Braves had twenty-three game streaks in 1948. Mike Vail of the 1975 New York Mets also matched the record. The American League rookie hitting streak record is 26, set by the Chicago White Sox outfielder Guy Curtright in 1943. The all-time record is 27, set by Jimmy Williams of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1899. Amazingly, Williams also had a 26-game streak that same year.

Goldie Rapp and his gold tooth

Ed Roebuck: Unsung Hero of 1964 Phillies

If the Phillies had only managed to hold on to the 6 1/2 game lead they held in the National League pennant race on September 20, 1964, so many things might have been different. Maybe that talented team would have gone on to win more pennants. Maybe Dick Allen would have stayed in Philadelphia as a hero rather than as the fan target he became. Maybe Johnny Callison would have fulfilled all of his great promise. Maybe Gene Mauch would have learned to relax and trust his young players more. Maybe some of the tarnish of that "city of losers" tag would have been washed away. Maybe. But also, maybe Ed Roebuck, a largely forgotten figure on the 1964 team, would have been remembered as the major contributor to the teams succuss that he most certainly was.

The 32-year-old Roebuck was acquired by the Phillies on May 21 to shore up a mostly inexperienced bullpen. Roebuck was the quintessential late inning reliever. His out pitch was a sinker ball that forced hitters to hit the ball on the ground. "What I want to do is get two outs with one pitch," Roebuck told the Philadelphia Inquirer's Frank Dolson. "If they get five straight hits off me through the infield, I can't complain. The next pitch, I may get the double play." 

Roebuck had pitched for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers for eight seasons and had generally pitched very well when his arm was sound. He missed all of 1959 and most of 1961 with arm miseries. He also had plenty of experience in pennant races. He was a major contributor to the Dodgers 1955 and 1956 pennant winners and appeared in two World Series.

Roebuck forced a trade to the Washington Senators in 1963 because he did not get along with Dodgers' manager Walter Alston, whom he called "inept," and because his good friend Gil Hodges was managing the Senators. One year later, at the urging of manager Mauch, Phillies general manager John Quinn purchased Roebuck from the Senators. Mauch had gotten to see Roebuck pitch when he managed him in a California All-Star game over the winter. Roebuck was pleased with the deal. He did not care for the high strike zone then prevalent in the American League. His heavy sinker was often called a ball by American League umpires.

In Philadelphia, Roebuck teamed with Jack Baldschun to form nearly the whole of the 1964 Phillies bullpen. Baldschun worked in 71 games, while Roebuck worked in 60. The other members of the Phillies bullpen were the teenaged rookie Rick Wise and the largely ineffective John Boozer and Dallas Green. None of those three worked in more than 25 games.

Roebuck hit the ground running for the Phillies. He held the opposition scoreless in his first 15 appearances over 17 innings, racking up seven saves in the process. On May 14, Roebuck entered a game at Connie Mack Stadium against the St. Louis Cardinals in the top of the eighth with no one out, two men on, and a 3-1 count on the batter. The Phillies were clinging to a one run lead. Chris Short, who had relieved Jim Bunning with one on in the eighth, was pulled in favor of Roebuck. It's unusual for a manager to replace a pitcher with a 3-1 count on the batter, but Mauch said, "I hated to take Short out, but I had no place for a base on balls. When I think of Roebuck, I think of strikes, not balls." 

Roebuck threw two strikes. James missed them both. On the last strike, the Cardinals tried a double steal. Clay Dalrymple threw Boyer out at third for a strike 'em out, throw 'em out double play. Roebuck then struck out Julian Javier to end the inning. Roebuck finished off the save with a scoreless ninth. The win ended a Phillies' three game losing streak.

On June 9, Roebuck worked three innings of one-hit, no-run relief against the Pittsburgh Pirates to save a game for Art Mahaffey, 4-3. On August 1, Roebuck relieved Wise and shut down the Dodgers for 2 2/3 innings to earn his 11th save in a game the Phillies won, 10-6. On September 19, just before the Phillies big collapse began, Roebuck pitched five scoreless innings in an eventual 16 inning, 4-3 Phils loss to the Dodgers. Roebuck was extraordinarily effective against his old team all year. In 12 1/3 innings against the Dodgers, Roebuck gave up just five hits and no runs.

Roebuck pitched five times during the ten-game losing streak that cost the Phillies the pennant. While he pitched scoreless ball in four of those appearances, he could not escape making his own contribution to the Phillies downfall. In a September 23 game against the Cincinnati Reds, Roebuck coughed up a two-run homerun to Vada Pinson. The Phillies lost, 6-4.

Ed finished the season with a 5-3 record, a 2.21 ERA, and 12 saves in 77 1/3 innings pitched. His WHIP was just 1.034 and he tied Short for the staff lead in ERA+ at 158. As to the Phillies' failure to win the pennant, Roebuck was clear-eyed. "The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies were not a pennant-winning-caliber team," Roebuck told his SABR biographer Paul Hirsh. "If the season lasted long enough that would eventually have shown. Gene [Mauch] did a great job to have us where we were. During those last two weeks we were losing every crazy which way you could."

After a mediocre year with the Phillies in 1965 and just six appearances in 1966, Roebuck was shipped to the minor league San Diego Padres where he closed out his career. There is one footnote to his major league career that is worth mentioning, however. Roebuck was renowned as one of the finest fungo hitters in baseball. He launched fungoes over the scoreboard at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and off the far away centerfield wall at the Polo Grounds. Dodger manager Alston once fined him $75 dollars for hitting a ball into the colonnaded wall of the Los Angeles Coliseum. His fungo prowess was so legendary that he was asked to hit fungoes as high as he could to help the architects of then under construction Astrodome in Houston determine how high to make the roof so players could not hit the girders. 

After retiring from pitching after the 1967 season, Roebuck worked for 40 years as a scout for various major league teams. He died at the age of 86 in 2018.

Mike Schmidt’s First Major League Homerun: September 16, 1972

Mike Schmidt wearing #22 in 1972

The Philadelphia Phillies drafted future Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt out of Ohio University in 1971 in the second round of the June Amateur Draft. After a half season at AA Reading, and a full season at AAA Eugene, where he hit .291 with 26 homeruns, Schmidt was a September 1972 callup to the big leagues. He played in his first game and got his first hit, a single, when he entered a September 12 game against the Mets in the second inning. The Phillies regular third baseman, Don Money, had to leave the game with a muscle spasm in his right shoulder. Schmidt got his first start the next night and went 0-for-4. 

Schmidt's second start, against the Montreal Expos at Veterans Stadium on September 16, was a memorable one. At this point in the year, both the Expos and the Phillies were playing out the string on a long season. The Expos were 64-76, in fifth place in the National League East Division 25.5 games behind the division leading Pittsburgh Pirates. The Phillies at 51-89 had the worst record in the major leagues. A small crowd of 6,471 was in attendance, but that group did include Schmidt's parents, Lois and Jack "Smitty" Schmidt. 

The pitching matchup was the Phillies Wayne Twitchell (3-8) against the Expos 21-year-old rookie Balor Moore (8-7), a left-hander, who was coming off two consecutive shutouts. The Phillies lineup featured so many September callups that Montreal manager Gene Mauch spoke to his veteran catcher Tim McCarver before the game saying, "We're going to have to talk things over when we get back [in the clubhouse]. I don't know anything about Craig Robinson or Bob Boone or Mike Schmidt." McCarver said, "I don't know anything about Schmidt, either."* Later that night Schmidt would give them a lesson in pitching to Schmidt.

Twitchell retired the Expos in order in the first. With one out in the bottom of the first the Phillies threatened when Terry Harmon tripled to centerfield. Harmon was erased, however, when he tried to score on Luzinski's flyball to right. Right fielder Ken Singleton gunned Harmon down at the plate.

The game remained scoreless until the fourth when the Expos eked out a run. With one out, Singleton walked and moved to third on a Ron Fairley single. Singleton scored as McCarver rolled weakly to short into a force out. Meanwhile, the Expos Moore kept extending his scoreless streak. That streak had reached 25 innings when the Phillies came to bat in the seventh inning.

Harmon led off the seventh with a single to left and moved to third when Luzinski followed with another single to left. Joe Lis then smashed a screaming line drive that shortstop Tim Foli snared with a dive to his right. Luzinski, who had been running on the pitch in an effort to avoid a double play, was easily doubled off first. It looked like the nascent rally might die, but at this point manager Mauch faced a decision. Phillies right fielder Roger Freed strode to the plate.

Freed was in his second year with the Phillies, who traded Grant Jackson and Jim Hutto to the Baltimore Orioles to get him after Freed had put up impressive numbers at Rochester in the International League. Freed had been a disappointment, hitting just .221 with six homeruns in his rookie year of 1971. His sophomore campaign had been little better, but with the tying run on third, two out, and an untested rookie on deck, Mauch ordered Balor to walk Freed intentionally.

Pitcher Moore tells the story of what happened ** "[McCarver] comes to the mound and asks what I know about Schmidt. We decide not to get beat on anything but my fastball. After two pitches we have the count in our favor, 0-2 and call for a fastball low and away. Good call. Bad pitch. Normally my fastball away will tail off the plate but, in this instance, it started low and away and ran back over the heart of the plate."

Schmidt smashed the pitch over the wall for a three-run homerun, the first of his 548 major league homers. Schmidt slapped hands with Harmon and Freed at the plate and the Phillies suddenly had a 3-1 lead. In the eighth inning, lefty Mac Scarce replaced Twitchell with two men on and two out. Scarce escaped that jam with no damage and closed the game out with a scoreless ninth inning for his third save of the season. 

Talking about his big homerun after the game, Schmidt told the Philadelphia Inquirer's, Bruce Keidan, "I consider myself a power hitter, in the sense that a power hitter is someone who doesn't have to get all of the ball to hit it out. I didn't get all of that one tonight. I got it down on the end of the bat. I really didn't have any idea it was going out." A reporter reminded Schmidt his 26 homeruns tied him for second in the Pacific Coast League with teammate Joe Lis and Schmidt replied, "I also led the league in strikeouts with 140 something."

And so, Phillies fans were not only introduced to Mike Schmidt the power hitter, but also to Mike Schmidt the enigmatic analyst of his own performance. It would be quite a ride for the next 17 years.

*Bruce Keidan, "Mike Schmidt's First Homer Gives Phils Win Over Expos," Philadelphia Inquirer, September 17, 1972: 66.

**from Every Pitcher Tells a Story by Seth Swirsky (Times Books, 1999). Moore's memory may be a bit faulty here. Newspaper reports say the count was 1-2 when Schmidt connected. Keidan also reported that the pitch was a high fastball.

Karl Drews: Ain’t that a Kick in the Head

In 1952 the Phillies had three pitchers in the top ten in virtually every statistical category. Long time students of Phillies history can probably name two of those pitchers: Robin Roberts and Curt Simmons. Likely only a few can name the third.  That would be a journeyman righthanded refugee from the minor leagues named Karl Drews. The 6' 4", 190-pound Drews went 14-15 for the Phillies in 1952, which may not sound that impressive until you add that he also had a 2.67 ERA, threw five shutouts, and 15 complete games over 228 innings. Drews was particularly effective against the pennant winning Dodgers, beating them four times, including two shutouts. He accomplished all this with a metal plate where part of his skull used to be. In fact, Drews himself credits the injury that resulted in the plate being inserted in his head with turning his career around.

Karl Drews professional career began in 1939 with the Class D Butler (Pennsylvania) Yankees in the old Pennsylvania Association. He gradually worked his way through the Yankees minor league system with stops up and down the east coast until he landed at the top Yankee farm team in Kansas City in 1946. Drews was exempt from service in World War II. Although he tried to enlist, he was rejected due to a heart murmur that was the result of the rheumatic fever he had when he was in high school. Drews' best weapon as a pitcher was a hard sinking fastball. The sink was the result of a broken finger he suffered during a pepper game that caused him to change his grip on the ball.

Drews was called up to the Yankees in the fall of 1946 and stuck with the team with indifferent success for 2 1/2 seasons. In mid 1948 he was dealt to the lowly St. Louis Browns. After a terrible 4-12 season with a 6.48 ERA in 1949, St. Louis sent Drews to their minor league affiliate in Baltimore. In five seasons in the major leagues, he was 15-24 with an ERA close to 6.00. His chief difficulty was his control. He averaged more than seven walks per nine innings.

Early in the 1950 season with Baltimore, Drews was attempting to cover first base on a slow roller to the right side. Second baseman Eddie Pelligrini's throw was low and wide, forcing Drews into the baseline, where base runner Dutch Mele's knee struck him in the temple. Drews was carried off the field. He had suffered a fractured skull. A few days later surgery was performed to remove bone fragments from his brain, and a silver plate was inserted in his head. 

Drews came out of the hospital a changed man. He told the New York Post's Milton Gross, "All the time I was in the Yankee chain I was a strange kind of guy. I worried about a heart murmur I was supposed to have. I got mean and morose. I lost my taste for the game."

"Then a funny thing happened. After the accident, I developed some sort of personality change. I became a different guy on the field and a different guy off it. When I came back to pitch, I found I couldn't hurry myself. Before when I got wild, I kept throwing faster and faster and getting wilder and wilder. Now I took my time. The ball started going where I wanted it."*

In 1951, the Baltimore franchise shifted affiliations to the Philadelphia Philles and Drews became Phillies' property. After an outstanding 17-13 season, Drews was a September call up. He got into five games, including a complete game 7-3 victory over Don Newcombe and the Brooklyn Dodgers. That win struck a damaging blow to the Dodgers who were trying to hold off the streaking New York Giants in the pennant race. Suddenly, 32-year-old Karl Drews had cast himself into the conversation to be a member of the 1952 starting rotation for the Phillies.

Drews was indeed in the starting rotation to start 1952. He lost his first two starts 2-1 and 3-0 despite pitching well. In his third start on May 10, however, he announced to the league what kind of pitcher he could be. Drews threw a complete game, 2-hit shutout over the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbet’s Field, winning 4-0. The only two hits he allowed came in the first inning on back-to-back singles by Billy Cox and Jackie Robinson. Drews retired Roy Campanella and Andy Pafko to escape the inning. The former wild man walked only one, Duke Snider in the eighth inning. The only other man to reach base was on a Willie Jones bobble at third base. Jones hit a two-run homer in the second inning to give Drews all the runs he would need. The Phillies padded their lead in the fifth on an Eddie Waitkus single, a Richie Ashburn double, and a Granny Hamner single. Drews coasted home from there.

Drews became an unwelcome sight for Dodger fans on the mound in Brooklyn. On June 30, he shut the Dodgers out again, this time on five hits, all singles. On August 17, he beat the Bums for a third time. This time by a score of 2-1, the only run scoring on a Willie Jones error. The Dodgers managed four hits, again all were singles. 

At home in Shibe Park on June 22, Drews shut out the Cincinnati Reds on five singles, besting future Phillies hurler Herm Wehmeier in a game shortened to seven innings by darkness.  He shut out the Chicago Cubs on July 27, 3-0 on six singles. In that game a sixth-inning three-run home run by Hamner off Cubs ace Bob Rush provided all the scoring. Drews fifth and final shutout of the year came at home on August 13 over the Boston Braves. Home runs by Del Ennis and Connie Ryan provided the only offensive support Drews needed.  In this game, Drews allowed just five singles.  His sinker seemed to be inducing a lot of ground balls and weak contact. Remarkably, in the five shutouts he pitched in 1952, over 43 innings, Drews allowed just 22 hits, every one of them a single. 

At the end of the year, Karl Drews was second only to Robin Roberts on the Phillies team in WAR at 4.7. He tied for second in wins with Curt Simmons at 14. His 2.72 ERA was seventh in the league. He was third in shutouts with five and sixth in complete games with 15. Finally, as a pitcher who struggled with his control throughout his career, Drews averaged just two walks per nine innings pitched.

Unfortunately, Drews was unable to repeat his 1952 success in 1953. While his record was a respectable 9-10, his ERA rose by almost two full runs to 4.52. The good sink seemed to be gone from his fastball and he was relegated to long relief and spot starting duty. On June 15, 1954, he was sold to the Cincinnati Reds. He stuck with the Reds for the remainder of the season with modest results (4-4, 6.00 ERA). Drews then kicked around the International League for a number of years, before ending his career with two seasons with the Mexico City Reds of the Mexican League. 

In 1961, Drews retired to Hollywood, Florida with his wife and four children. On August 15, 1963, he was run down and killed by a drunken driver while standing outside his disabled car attempting to flag down help. Karl Drews was just 43 years old.

* This quote and some of the
other information in this post comes from Karl Drew's SABR Biography by Peter Mancuso which you can access here.

.