As Mets-Phillies NLDS awaits, here are the 10 most memorable moments in their rivalry

The very first batter in the history of the New York Mets was much better known as a Philadelphia Phillie.

Richie Ashburn, the future Hall of Famer, played one season with the Mets and hit .306. He was only 35, but retired to spend the second half of his life in the Phillies’ broadcast booth. When Ashburn died, in 1997, he had just called a Phillies game at Shea Stadium.

These franchises, relative neighbors in the National League for 63 seasons, are meeting in the playoffs for the first time Saturday in the opener of a best-of-five Division Series in Philadelphia. Soon we will know who wins “the damn thing”  — as an exasperated Bob Murphy once said, after the Mets nearly blew a nine-run lead in Philly — and who must cope with the shame of defeat.

Chase Utley hates the Mets, and the Mets hate Chase Utley. The Phillie Phanatic smashes Mets bating helmets. Mr. Met thinks the Phanatic smells. Zack Wheeler got his start with the Mets, but became an ace with the Phillies. Mike Piazza grew up rooting for the Phillies, but went to Cooperstown as a Met.

The Phillies hold the edge in their head-to-head matchups, but it’s close: 555 wins for the Phillies, 525 for the Mets. The next few games will matter most of all, as both teams chase their third World Series title.

Here are the 10 most memorable moments in the history of their rivalry:

The Perfect Game, 1964

It was the final day of the Phillies’ first-ever series at Shea Stadium, a Father’s Day matinee with their new ace, Jim Bunning, on the mound. Bunning, a future Hall of Famer and U.S. Senator, defied tradition as the 1-2-3 innings rolled by.

“He talked about it on the bench, starting about the sixth inning,” said catcher Gus Triandos, who had been traded with Bunning from Detroit the previous winter. “I’ve never seen him so gabby.”

Bunning struck out 10 but needed only 90 pitches to spin the NL’s first perfect game since John Montgomery Ward did it for Providence in 1880.

The Tug Trade, 1974

“Ya Gotta Believe” was a Mets thing, a rallying cry from 1973. Leaping off the mound at the end of the World Series? That was a Phillies thing, the enduring image from their first title in 1980. Both groups of fans claim Tug McGraw, who was dealt to the Phillies as part of a six-player trade that brought John Stearns to the Mets in December 1974.

The Phillies did not know that McGraw needed shoulder surgery at the time — but wisely, they held onto the flaky lefty, who became one of the most beloved and fan-friendly athletes in the history of Philadelphia.

The Homecoming, 1983

Five and a half seasons after trading Tom Seaver to Cincinnati, the Mets brought him back in 1983, theoretically to finish his career where it started. Seaver’s return to Shea went splendidly on opening day, when he spun six shutout innings to outduel the Phillies’ Steve Carlton and help the Mets to a 2-0 victory.

“It took me a couple of innings to calm down,” Seaver said later, on the Kiner’s Corner postgame show. “It was very touching, and it couldn’t have turned out to be a better day.”

Alas, the sunshine didn’t last: the Mets finished in the division cellar, the Phillies went to the World Series – and Seaver (who finished with a hard-luck 9-14 record) went to the White Sox, when the Mets somehow left him unprotected that offseason.

The Rout, 1985

It was the most runs ever scored by the Phillies and the most ever allowed by the Mets, a fleeting, frenzied flurry of offense from a lineup of mostly nondescript Phils. If you were scoring at home — like I was — you might have run out of ink filling in all those boxes in your scorebook, which had never before tracked a 26-7 baseball game.

The Phillies, who batted around four times, scored nine runs in the first inning as Von Hayes homered twice. They pounded out 25 other hits, including five by second baseman Juan Samuel and four hits by third baseman Rick Schu (yes, kids, Rick Schu bumped Mike Schmidt to first that season). Mets starter Tom Gorman gave up six runs in one-third of an inning, and two relievers served up 10 runs apiece: Calvin Schiraldi and Joe Sambito, who probably assumed it would be their worst day in the major leagues. Alas, with the Boston Red Sox the next October, the duo combined for a 14.54 ERA in a bitter World Series loss to their former team.

The Lost Weekend, 1986

The 1986 Mets swaggered into The Vet on Sept. 12 for a three-game weekend series, needing one win to eliminate the Phillies and clinch the NL East. Thousands of fans — rowdy and ready to party — made the short trip into enemy territory, piling into the upper deck. The weekend drew 128,830 fans (“We’re boosting Philadelphia’s economy,” Gary Carter said), making for the most electric atmosphere at the Vet during the Phillies’ entire nine-season playoff drought (1984 through 1992).

Mike Schmidt, en route to his third MVP award, homered off Dwight Gooden in the opener, the 493rd blast of his career, tying Lou Gehrig on the career list and propelling the Phillies to a stunning sweep, capped by a Kevin Gross shutout.

Did the Phillies still finish a distant second? They sure did, by 21 1/2 games. But, like the Mets this season, they kept their rivals from clinching on their turf — and that sure counted for something.

“This weekend,” Schmidt said, “we played each and every game like it was the last game of the World Series.”

The Fight, 1989

The Mets ended the 1980s in New York with a pile on the pitcher’s mound — but it wasn’t to celebrate a championship. The Mets’ Gregg Jefferies grounded out to second to end the home finale in 1989. It looked routine, until Jefferies tagged first base and spun around to confront the Phillies’ pitcher, Roger McDowell, lifting him in the air and driving him to the dirt, sparking a wild brawl.

Jefferies, a young player who was meticulous with his bats, had broken one against McDowell earlier in the series. McDowell, who had been part of a hard-edged Mets core that never accepted Jefferies, mocked his former teammate on his way to first. When they met again in the home finale, Jefferies jawed back at McDowell after the final out — and an awkward kind of fight was on, with a less-popular current Met challenging a very popular ex-Met.

“I would imagine there were 30 guys on our side rooting for Roger,” Phillies manager Nick Leyva said, “and about 20 guys on their side rooting for Roger, too.” Years later, McDowell and Jefferies told the New York Post that they both regretted the incident, which marred the final Mets home game for Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez.

The Comeback, 2007

The Mets had won the division handily in 2006, but that didn’t stop Jimmy Rollins from proclaiming publicly, the next January, that the Phillies were “the team to beat.”

Never mind that the franchise hadn’t reached the playoffs since 1993.

To Rollins, it was a message his teammates needed to hear. Down seven games to the Mets with 17 to play, the Phillies seemed unlikely to fulfill his prophecy — until they went 13-4 and the Mets went 5-12. On the season’s final day, the Mets’ game at Shea started earlier than the Phillies’ game at Citizens Bank Park, and because of the out-of-town scoreboard, the fans knew the good news before the players: the Marlins had thrashed the Mets for seven runs in the top of the first.

“Inside the clubhouse, you can hear something happening outside,” Rollins said recently on a podcast with Ryan Howard. “We didn’t have any TVs on, because we had to focus on what we needed to do; we have to go win a ballgame. (But) you could hear the energy, you could hear the crowd just stomping and screaming and yelling.”

The Phillies beat the Nationals to complete their comeback, Rollins was named NL Most Valuable Player, and a year later — after another September comeback over the Mets — the Phillies won the World Series.

The Unassisted Triple Play, 2009

Not satisfied with just one extremely rare feat — a perfect game — this rivalry served up another: an unassisted triple play, the most recent of the 15 in major-league history. The Phillies’ Eric Bruntlett turned this one, with two on and two out in the ninth, to seal a 9-7 victory at Citi Field. Bruntlett, the second baseman, was breaking to cover the bag when he snared a Jeff Francoeur liner for the first out, stepped on second for another out, and tagged the incoming runner, Daniel Murphy, for the third. It was the first game-ending triple play in NL history.

The Captain Returns, 2015

When the Mets checked into their Philadelphia hotel for a road trip in August 2015, they were greeted by their team captain, in uniform, serving them cookies on a platter.

David Wright had missed more than four months with the spinal injury that would shorten his career, and he’d fought hard to join in on the fun. “This team seems to be on a mission,” observed Wright, who belted a homer in his first at-bat the next night at Citizens Bank Park in a 16-7 thrashing of the Phillies. The Mets kept on surging to a pennant, and Wright again punctuated the moment, slugging the first-ever World Series homer at Citi Field.

The Slow Trot, 2019

In the first five seasons that Statcast tracked the speed of home run trots, the longest trip around the bases came from Rhys Hoskins, then with the Phillies, at Citi Field in 2019. Hoskins — who now plays for the Brewers team the Mets just beat — had been brushed back twice the night before by Mets reliever Jacob Rhame.

“I enjoyed the moment,” Hoskins said later, and the clock showed that he enjoyed it for 34.23 seconds.

It’s not a record anymore; the Yankees’ Juan Soto took a 37.7-second stroll on a homer against Tampa Bay this June, mocking the Rays’ Jose Siri for his own slow trot. But expect fans of the winning team in this NLDS to do their own Hoskins impression: they’ll savor the humiliation of the other side.

Bonus: The Second Spitter, 1987

OK, so it didn’t really happen. Given the enduring popularity of “Seinfeld,” more people have surely seen the aftermath of a fictitious Mets/Phillies game than any actual Mets/Phillies game. That’s right, in the “Seinfeld” canon, the famous “Nice game, pretty boy” incident — involving Kramer, Newman, Keith Hernandez and Roger McDowell, from “The Boyfriend” in Season 3 — followed a game between the Mets and the Phillies.

(Top photo of the September 1989 brawl between the Phillies’ Roger McDowell and Mets’ Gregg Jefferies: AP Photo/Susan Ragan)