BEFORE THERE WAS Black Friday - Oct. 7, 1977 - the Phillies endured Soggy Saturday and Sunless Sunday.
Sunday was the day general manager Paul Owens and manager Danny Ozark learned the real difference between a team that would win 101 games for the second straight season and a Los Angeles Dodgers team of similar talents.
It was the day the words "bleeping Dodgers" were hurled in scatalogical volleys with shortstop Larry Bowa leading a profane chorus.
They were in LA for a three-game weekend series. The Dodgers won Friday night. On Saturday, Mike Schmidt pounded a two-run homer off Al Downing in a three-run 13th and the Phils won, 7-4.
There have been just 17 rainouts in Dodger Stadium history. And on May 8 and 9, the Phillies had the honor of being just the second visiting team to be rained out two games in a row. First, the scheduled Sunday game was washed away by a rare spring Pacific storm. It was rescheduled for a Monday open date. The Pope was not thrilled about that.
"Hey, we'll be happy to play two when we come back in July," Owens pleaded. But the Dodgers were not about to lose a sellout gate in July to play a doubleheader.
Flamboyant former third-base coach Tommy Lasorda, a Norristown native, was at the controls of a dynamic young team comprised mainly of players he had managed in Triple A before replacing Ozark on the coaching staff in 1973.
When Monday's makeup game also was rained out, the Phils were stuck. Traveling secretary Eddie Ferenz was told the club's charter flight to Philadelphia would not be available before the scheduled 7 p.m. departure. Worse, the club's charter buses from Dodger Stadium to the LA airport were in use. Meanwhile, while the Phillies sat around the shabby visitors' clubhouse, hissing and moaning, the Dodgers had boarded their buses and were transported to their private jet, a Boeing B-720B worthy of Donald Trump.
By the time the Phillies were finally airborne, the Dodgers' traveling party was in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. The Phillies landed with dawn streaking the eastern sky, a game with the well-rested San Francisco Giants just 14 hours away.
In my view, the ties that bind these teams in a six-degrees-of-separation kinship date back to those twin rainouts. Over time, they have branched into an almost eerie series of coincidence and connection that began with two outs in that shattering ninth inning of Black Friday, an unraveling I called "The Ten Minute Collapse."
Here are some:
