The “Phillies 50” series is the year-long celebration during 2020 of my half-century following the Philadelphia Phillies, which began for me in the 1971 season. During this year, I’ve been finding various ways to look back over that span at the greatest and most interesting teams and players during these past 50 years.
Inspired by an item that I saw on the web today, I decided to research back over those years to find the players who reached base the most for the Phillies during that time. Though the title of this piece is “Who’s on first?“, the below ranking includes reaching second on a double, third on a triple, and circling the bases on a home run as well.
Here are the top ten players over the last 50 years reaching base via the combination of a hit, walk, and hit-by-pitch while wearing a Phillies uniform.
- Mike Schmidt: 3,820 – 2234 hits, 1507 walks, 79 HBP
- Jimmy Rollins: 3,097 – 2306 hits, 753 walks, 38 HBP
- Bobby Abreu: 2,444 – 1474 hits, 947 walks, 23 HBP
- Chase Utley: 2,421 – 1623 hits, 625 walks, 173 HBP
- Ryan Howard: 2,243 – 1475 hits, 709 walks, 59 HBP
- Larry Bowa: 2,173 – 1798 hits, 359 walks, 16 HBP
- Pat Burrell: 1,977 – 1166 hits, 785 walks, 26 HBP
- Greg Luzinski: 1,932 – 1299 hits, 572 walks, 61 HBP
- Von Hayes: 1,808 – 1173 hits, 619 walks, 16 HBP
- Garry Maddox: 1,605 – 1333 hits, 250 walks, 22 HBP
Six of these players (Schmidt, Abreu, Bowa, Burrell, Luzinski, Maddox) are already enshrined on the Phillies Wall of Fame. Undoubtedly, Burrell will be joined on the Wall over the next few years by fellow 2008 World Series heroes Rollins, Utley, and Howard.
His place among these all-time franchise greats leads to an interesting question: does Von Hayes deserved a place on that wall as well? There are currently several players and others involved with the team over the years who deserve to go on before him. But at some point Hayes is likely to get a more serious look.
MATT VEASEY 