The Astros and the Phillies in a Big Series? We’ve Seen This Before.

“That guy,” Schmidt said, “he is one of, if not the, greatest performer under pressure I’ve ever seen.”

The Phillies of the Harper era are making their first visit to the World Series, just like the Phillies of Schmidt’s era did in 1980. The Houston series that led them there might be the most wrenching and riveting postseason series ever.

“It has, to be sure, been a wild, memorable, classic baseball series,” Jayson Stark wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer, even before the uproarious finale. “It has been one that could make a baseball fan out of an armadillo.”

The Astros — who moved to the American League in 2013 — were making their first postseason appearance as champions of the N.L. West. The Phillies, meanwhile, had lost in the N.L.C.S. in 1976, 1977 and 1978. In 1980, they had the league’s M.V.P. in Schmidt, the Cy Young Award winner in Steve Carlton, and a nagging sense that their core of veterans — Bob Boone, Larry Bowa, Greg Luzinski, Garry Maddox — might never fulfill its promise.

“The magnitude of what this meant,” said Ed Wade, then the Astros’ public relations director, “for both franchises, was really extreme.”

It had been an eventful year for the Astros. Before the season, they signed two future Hall of Famers in free agency: second baseman Joe Morgan and starter Nolan Ryan, who teamed with another strikeout artist, J.R. Richard, for the most dominant one-two rotation tandem in baseball. Then Richard suffered a career-ending stroke in late July.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/sports/baseball/astros-phillies-1980-nlcs.html