By now you’ve heard that the Phillies are playing their first Game 7 in franchise history on Tuesday night. That’s incredible considering that the Phils have been around for 141 years and Arizona wasn’t even a state in 1883. Seriously. Zona wasn’t admitted to the union until February of 1912.

Anthony is writing more about the Game 7 factoid, but what’s even more crazy in my mind is that the Phillies rarely ever play winner-take-all postseason games. They almost never reach Game 5 in a 5-game series, nor have they reached Game 3 under the new Wild Card format. They never played in a one-game Wild Card series either.

Here’s the full list of winner-take-all playoff games they’ve appeared in:

  • 1980 NLCS – beat Houston 3-2 to advance to the World Series
  • 1981 NLDS – lost 3-2 to Montreal
  • 2011 NLDS – lost 3-2 to St. Louis

That’s it.

The 1980 NLCS is the most famous of the bunch. It was a highly competitive series. Steve Carlton got the game one win, then the Astros won 7-4 in game two and 1-0 in 11 innings in game three. Down 2-1 in the series, the Phils then came back and won 5-3 and 8-7 in games four and five, both of which went to 10 innings. That’s three straight extra-inning games leading to a World Series berth (EDIT  – I’m wrong, it was FOUR!). Greg Luzinski, Manny Trillo, and Pete Rose were the Phils’ offensive catalysts.


The 1981 NLDS is the one that younger fans probably aren’t familiar with. The Phillies actually went down 2-0 in the series after losing a pair of 3-1 games in Quebec. They bounced back with a 6-2 home win and then forced Game 5 with an extra-innings triumph in Game 4, only to get shut out by Steve Rogers, who threw a 6-hit complete game in a 3-0 clinching victory for Montreal. It was the only time the Phillies and Expos ever played in the postseason, and it was the last time the Expos/Nationals franchise won a postseason series before finally breaking through in 2019.

As for the 2011 NLDS, nothing needs to be said about that.

But yeah, crazy, isn’t it? It’s one thing for them to never have played a Game 7 before, but winner-take-all occurrences are uber-rare. And sure, they’ve lost a bazillion games, and have gone on lengthy playoff droughts, but it’s still hard to believe that a franchise founded during the Chester A. Arthur administration has only been in this position three times before.