‘Macho Row’ Phillies won the National League pennant on this week in Philly history
They weren’t good by traditional standards, but they were a reflection of the working-class city in which they played. And on Oct. 13, 1993, they beat the Atlanta Braves for the National League title.
It baffles fans of some of the more — how to put this — successful baseball clubs.
We celebrated a team that lost the World Series.
But those other fancy franchises with their fistfuls of rings and their snobby fans just don’t understand.
There’s a difference between a team that wins the World Series, and a team that wins the hearts of Philadelphians.
Macho Row
And, sure, we prefer to win it all.
The Phillies’ 1980 and 2008 World Series wins and the Eagles’ 2018 and 2025 Super Bowl victories will be celebrated for as long as Billy Penn stays perched atop City Hall.
But we remember the 1993 Phillies for different reasons.
The Phils had finished last in their division in 1992, and not much was expected of them in 1993.
And then they went and won the club’s first National League pennant since 1983.
They weren’t good by traditional standards, but they were a reflection of the working-class city in which they played: built on a collection of scrappy underdogs the city lovingly nicknamed “Macho Row.”
They won over the city with “belly-flop catches” and “inside pitching” and the “reckless joy with which they played the game,” as The Inquirer described them.
Philly deserved this team.
They were led by big-bellied and unkempt John Kruk, who made an odd couple with partner-in-crime Darren Daulton and his leading-man looks. The team featured ragamuffins like unshaven Pete Incaviglia; quick-to-anger Dave Hollins; and Jim Eisenreich, who had Tourette’s syndrome. The pitching staff included erratic closer Mitch Williams, “country-boy fireballer” Tommy Greene, and the mercurial Curt Schilling.
And their manager was Jim Fregosi, known to sneak cigarettes in the dugout.
This assembly of characters quickly became beloved.
“Beloved because it has warts and splotches and failings and faults, and rises above them anyway,” wrote legendary Inquirer columnist Bill Lyon. “They’re just so damn human.”
And on Oct. 13, 1993, this group of misfits closed out the National League Championship Series in six games, besting the perennial favorite Atlanta Braves, 6-3, in front of 60,000 people at Veterans Stadium.
History beckoned in the World Series.
Memory lane
But not the good kind of history.
Blue Jay Joe Carter became the second player in MLB history to win the World Series with a walk-off home run in Game 6.
Thirty-three years later, some of the alumni haven’t aged well.
Schilling, outfielder Lenny Dykstra, and to a lesser extent Williams went through personal and public turmoil.
But the team’s accomplishments are still celebrated by the city and its baseball fans, even if they didn’t win it all.
After all, the organization has made it to the World Series only eight times in 143 years.
But mostly the 1993 Phillies are remembered because they were a pitch-perfect reflection of the city they played for.
