No, the Phillies could not extend their late regular-season magic into the postseason.

Edge-of-your-seat drama amidst towel-waving fans hungry for playoff success was not to be found. The Colorado Rockies, now headed to the World Series, were mostly responsible for that.

Prior to last week, the last time the Phillies experienced playoff drama was in their last trip to the playoffs. It was 1993 and Joe Carter provided the excitement, but it was for the Toronto Blue Jays. His homer off Mitch Williams gave the Blue Jays the title and signaled a drought that lasted until this year.

Of course, you know that the Phils won it all in 1980, but might they have won the World Series in 1977? We'll never know because they never made it out of the National League Championship Series. And the reason they never made it out boiled down to the ninth inning in Game 3 against the Los Angeles Dodgers when the Phils had a two-run lead with two out and no one on base.

It's been billed as Black Friday, and it had nothing to do with Christmas shopping.

Thirty years ago. Doesn't seem like that long ago to Gene Garber.

"I still wake up with nightmares from that game," said Garber, former Phils' reliever and Lancaster County native and resident.

This past summer when the Lancaster Barnstormers hosted the Atlantic League All-Star game, the team asked Garber and another former major-league player from Lancaster, Don Wert, who played for the Detroit Tigers, to be honorary captains.

At a pre-All-Star game gathering, Garber encountered Tommy John, the manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish and manager of the All-Star North team.

Upon seeing John, Garber's memories came flooding back. John was a member of that '77 Dodgers team.

"The series was tied at 1-1, and whoever won that third game went up 2-1 in the best-of-five series, so the third game was pivotal," Garber said. "We had Lefty (Steve Carlton) going the next night (in Game 4), and the Dodgers had TJ. That made Game 3 so important. In a short series, whoever wins two games has a decided advantage."

Remember, this was 1977. While the Phillies had won their second straight division title, they had not made a trip to the World Series. They were still three seasons away from their one and only World Series title.

Garber remembers Game 3 against the Dodgers because of a chain of events that occurred in the ninth, all to the Phils' detriment.

Garber entered the game in the seventh inning, coming in for Ron Reed, with the score tied at 3-3. Garber got three groundouts in the seventh and three more in the eighth (Reggie Smith, Ron Cey and Steve Garvey).

In the bottom of the eighth, the Phils got an RBI single from Garry Maddox, knocking in Richie Hebner, who hit a leadoff double off Elias Sosa. Maddox scored to give the Phils a 5-3 lead, coming in when Bob Boone reached on a Cey error.

In the top of the ninth, Garber got another two groundouts by Dusty Baker and Rick Monday.

"So, I've faced eight guys and gotten eight guys out," Garber said. "The 63,000 people at the Vet are yelling and screaming, 'Geno, Geno, Geno.' "

"Garber won the first game of this playoff, and now he is about to win his second. The score is 5-3 and with just one more out to go, the Phillies will have the Dodgers on the brink of elimination."
— Marv Adams, Intelligencer Journal Sports Editor

With one out to go, Vic Davalillo pinch-hit for Steve Yeager. Garber threw him a changeup, and Davalillo flailed at the ball, missing badly.

"Then with the 0-1 count, Davalillo lays down a perfect drag bunt," Garber said. "He could not have rolled it out there any better. He got it past me, and the first baseman, Richie Hebner, couldn't get it. Ted Sizemore tried to scoop it over, and Davalillo was safe. That's when the nightmare started."

The bunt quieted a crowd anticipating a third out and a 2-1 lead in the series.

You may remember the next play. It's one of the most talked about shoulda, woulda, coulda moments in Phillies history.

Phils' manager Danny Ozark had routinely replaced left fielder Greg Luzinski with the more nimble Jerry Martin for late-inning defensive purposes. Not in this game, though.

Pinch-hitter Manny Mota came to the plate and hit a fly ball to left. With the wind picking up, the ball kept carrying.

"Garber went to the pitch that has bailed him out of so many jams this season — a changeup that many think is the best in the National League."
— Bill Carroll, New Era Sports Editor

"Luzinski put his glove up, and the ball hit in his glove, and somehow it came out of his glove," Garber said. "I don't know if it hit the wall or what. Bull was a good fielder. He didn't have a lot of range, but he was a good fielder. I never saw him drop a ball or miss a ball that was in his glove, and this one did."

Garber remains puzzled as to why Ozark did not replace Luzinski with Martin in left.

"I don't know why Danny didn't replace Luzinski with Jerry Martin because he always did it," Garber said. "Somehow that night, he just didn't do it, probably because I was pitching so well. Who knows? Jerry might not have caught that ball either, though. But I suspect he would have caught the ball. Jerry caught everything, but so did Bull. It was one of those things."

One of those things at the worst possible times.

Luzinski's throw went in to second base, but the ball hit a seam in the artificial turf and bounced past Sizemore to the fence behind first base. Davalillo scored on the miscue and more critically, instead of being held at second, Mota went to third.

But the Phils still led by one run, 5-4 and had two outs.

Up stepped Davey Lopes (a Phillies coach these days), the leadoff hitter. Lopes hit a hard groundball to Mike Schmidt at third, and it ticked off his glove toward shortstop Larry Bowa. Bowa barehanded the ball and threw to first. Umpire Bruce Froemming called Lopes safe but replays indicated otherwise.

Garber, after the game, defended Froemming's call.

"The replays showed he got the call wrong," Garber said. "But I defended him and defended him. I was probably grilled for two hours. (Associated Press reporter) Ralph Bernstein (who just passed away this year) must have asked me about that play 10 different ways to get me to say something bad about the umpire. I defended the call, and that ended up being a positive for me.

"It was just like when Howard Cosell interviewed me after the Rose thing. (Garber ended Pete Rose's 44-game hit streak in 1978). Cosell wanted me to rip Rose in the worst way. This was a taped segment. I finally said, 'Howard, it doesn't matter how many different ways you ask me that same question, the answer is going to stay the same.' And that was the end of that interview! Howard thought he could intimidate everybody. Ralph wasn't nasty. Howard Cosell was just nasty. Ralph could be direct but not nasty."

Garber defended Froemming because he was defending the integrity of the game.

"I saw it differently than (Froemming) did, but he's the one that counts," Garber said. "He certainly wasn't trying to miss it."

The call may have prevented the Phillies from going to the World Series. Even so, Garber remains against instant replay in baseball.

Froemming's call, though, had a profound effect on the game and the series.

"Instead of us winning and being up 2-1 in the series with (Steve) Carlton going the next night, now we're down 2-1, and they have TJ going," Garber said. "That call really changed the dynamics of the whole series."

Lopes had stolen 47 bases that season, so Garber wanted to keep him close at first.

"I threw over a couple of times, and I don't know how, somehow a throw got by Hebner," Garber said. "I didn't think it was a bad throw. But it got by him, and it rolled to foul territory, and Lopes goes to second."

Garber was charged with an error on the pickoff throw. That brought Bill Russell to the plate, and Russell singled through Garber's legs to give the Dodgers a 6-5 lead.

"So, I faced eight guys and got eight out, and then the next four guys got hits," Garber said.

And the hits were anything but normal.

 
"Angry as hell, I stormed back to my office, punched the door and broke my hand. It was our only break that day."
— Bill Giles, Phillies vice president

The Phillies put a runner on with two outs in the home ninth — Luzinski was hit by a pitch and Martin, somewhat ironically, ran for him — but Hebner grounded out to end the game.

The next day, John scattered seven hits and pitched a complete game. The Dodgers won 4-1 in a game playing mostly in a downpour.

And the Dodgers were off to the World Series.

"A game like Game 3, I would never wish that on anyone," Garber said. "I had a sleepless night that night and a few more after that. You ask yourself why those things happened. You just think, that's the way baseball is."

E-mail: kfreeman@lnpnews.com