Phils Top Royals, 4-1, to Take Series

The Philadelphia Phillies, boosted by the pitching of Steve Carlton and Tug McGraw and the hitting of Mike Schmidt, won the first world championship of their 98-year history last night, beating the Kansas City Royals 4-1 in the sixth game of the World Series.

Typical Philadelphia jokes like "I spent a month in Philadelphia last weekend" can never be told again, for last night the city of Philadelphia joined the exalted ranks of the other privileged major league cities--New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Boston--that boast world champions.

As Philadelphia--represented by 65,838 screaming fans--waited, their Phillies delivered consistently good baseball. Players like Schmidt--the series' Most Valuable Player, --Pete Rose, Larry Bowa, and Lonnie Smith, excelled in every facet of the game, and coming through with solid hits, perfect bunts, timely RBIs and smarth baserunning.

The Phillies attack came in three spurts.

In the third inning, a walk to Bob Boone, an error charged to KC second baseman Frank White, and a perfectly executed bunt by Rose loaded the bases for Schmidt, who then doubled in the first two runs of the game.

Scramble

In the fifth, Smith stretched a single to a double on Amos Otis's throw and Rose sacrificed him to third. Otis scored later on Bake McBride's broken-bat single. The fourth run came in the sixth inning after Bowa doubled off the left field screen and then scored on Boone's base hit.

Carlton, slated to win the CyYoung award in the National League, came into last night's game on five days' rest and pitched seven tireless innings against the Royals, striking out seven and allowing only four hits. His only problem came in the eighth inning when he let the first two KC batters on, and manager Dallas Green called for lefty McGraw to come in and finish the job.

Differences

Although the game belonged to the Phillies, the Royals threatened in the eighth and ninth when McGraw loaded the bases twice. What saved the Phillies was pure hustle and what McGraw called "reaching back to find some extra."

McGraw's last pitch of the game, a strikeout pitch, sent the Royals back to Kansas City never having won a world series and left the Phillies in temporary heaven in the City of Brotherly Love where firecrackers ripped through the sky. In the words of one loyal fan's banner, an entire city was assured that "this ain't Mudville."