Extra Innings podcast: Greatest game in Phillies history? Game 5 of the 1980 NLCS.

Opening day is postponed, but we’re still rolling. Join us for the ride every Thursday with the Extra Innings podcast, featuring Matt Breen, Bob Brookover and Scott Lauber. This week, we look back at Game 5 of the 1980 NLCS. The Extra Innings podcast is available on iTunes and SoundCloud.

A portion of this week’s episode is transcribed below:

Matt Breen: Guys, once again we watched an old classic Phillies game. There are no live Phillies games to watch, but we’re still getting our baseball fix. We dug back into YouTube and came up with a game that I think after watching it and thinking about it that this is probably, not just the most important Phillies game of all-time, but I think we can make the argument on this podcast that it’s the best Phillies game of all-time.

And it was a 1980 National League Championship Series. Game 5 of a five-game series in Houston at the Astrodome against Nolan Ryan. It was just an incredible game and why it’s the most important game is because to me ... the 1950 Whiz Kids win the pennant. The rest of the 50s for the Phillies pretty much stink. 1960s, they’re pretty terrible besides ‘64 when they break your heart. Early 70s, they are terrible, then they get good in the late 70s. Then what do they do? They break your heart again. And then here in 1980, this era of Phillies history is finally going to get to the cusp. They have to get through Nolan Ryan in the Astrodome. Just as such an important game for the city, for the fan base and for this team. And I was just blown away watching last night.

Scott Lauber: Yesterday, Matt, when we decided to pick this game, you posed the question, ‘Is this the most important game in Phillies history?’

And the only game that I have anywhere close to it is the last game of the 1950 season because if they don’t win, well let me just say this [game in 1980] beat that because if they don’t win that last game in 1950, they get a play-in game with the Dodgers. It’s not over. There would have been a tomorrow. But that game to end the 1950 season is huge because imagine if they don’t get to the World Series in 1950, now you’re talking about a gap from 1915 until 1976 where they don’t make the playoffs. Who knows if the franchise even survives in Philadelphia. Any number of things can happen if the Whiz Kids don’t come along, even that one-year flash that they were.

But this is the biggest game for me because this team would have been broken up. … And if they don’t win Game 5 against the Astros, the season’s over and that team gets broken up and doesn’t win the first World Series in franchise history. So hard to beat that in terms of stakes and level of importance.

Bob Brookover: I can speak to it from a fan standpoint because my father lived through 1964, and all he ever talked about was the ‘64 season and how that broke his heart. He was at that time like a 30-year-old man, and it just stuck with him forever. I was one-year-old. ... But by 1980, this was the team that everybody thought would be the team that finally does it.

But that series, maybe you could define it as the greatest game ever, Game 5, and the most important game in Phillies history. I think that’s fair. But the series itself was just such an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish. The last four games all went extra innings. As we prepared for this, I was talking to Matt yesterday. I told him I think I shut off the TV or walked away like six times and just couldn’t even watch anymore because I couldn’t believe this game was falling apart. When it got to 5-2, I thought, ‘This is just done.’ I was a typical Phillies fan. … A lot of the Phillies people said we were going to win, but if you were a Phillies fan you absolutely didn’t think we were going to win because this is what they had done your entire lifetime. But it was such an incredible game for the fan base. I think you can see it in the postgame, how relieved that team was. It was not like they won the World Series, but it was like all that pressure just came off their back that they got there. … You could hear it in the clubhouse after that game.