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.