This Date in Phillies History: November 5

The Phillies apparently take November 5th off; we couldn’t find any events of significance. So instead, let’s look at a few events across Major League Baseball on This Date in ~~Phillies~~ MLB History.

Major League Baseball events on November 5

1968 – Denny McLain, fresh off a 31‑win season for the Detroit Tigers, was the unanimous choice as American League Most Valuable Player, the award recognizing one of the modern era’s most dominant single seasons.
1976 – In the 1976 expansion process, the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays each made their early expansion-draft selections, with Seattle taking outfielder Ruppert Jones and Toronto taking infielder Bob Bailor as their first picks.
1996 – Derek Jeter was the unanimous American League Rookie of the Year. Jeter played in 157 games with a line of 10-78-.314/.370/.430/.800 for the Yankees.

Phillies players, managers, executives, and broadcasters born on November 5

Putsy Caballero (1927) — Infielder who made his major-league debut and spent his entire eight year career with the Phillies. Played in 322 games and finished his career with a .228 batting average.
Mike Goliat (1921) — Second baseman who spent the prime of his big-league career with the Phillies; a regular contributor from 1949-1951 as part of the club’s postwar rosters.
José Santiago (1974) — Right-handed pitcher whose big-league career included roster stints with Kansas City, Cleveland, the New York Mets and part of the 2001 season with the Phillies.
Jacob Waguespack (1993) — Right-handed pitcher for Toronto in 2000,2001 and pitched in Japan until 2004 when he returned to the majors with the Tampa Bay Rays. Waguespack was in the Phillies organization early in his career and returned to spend part of the 2025 season with Triple-A Lehigh Valley. He is now a minor league free agent.

A DEEPER DIVE… The 1976 Expansion Draft

Here’s a trivia question for you: Who did the Phillies lose to Seattle and Toronto in the 1976 Expansion Draft?

The Answer: Sorry, it was a trick question: No Philadelphia Phillies players were taken in the 1976 Major League Baseball expansion draft. The reason is straightforward. The 1976 expansion draft, held November 5, 1976, stocked two new American League franchises, the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays, and Major League Baseball limited selections to players from American League clubs. National League teams, including the Phillies, were not part of the player pool for that draft. As a result, there were simply no Phillies on the list of 60 players chosen by Seattle and Toronto.

That context matters because expansion drafts can reshape rosters and careers, but their impact depends entirely on which teams are required to expose players. In 1976 the league chose to draw exclusively from American League rosters. The new teams still needed to assemble full rosters for 1977, so the expansion draft drew heavily on AL depth and veterans, leaving National League rosters intact through that particular mechanism. For Philadelphia, this meant the club did not lose personnel in that November 5 event and preserved its 1976 core intact into the 1977 offseason, free to make any other trades or signings without having to replace players taken in the expansion.

It’s worth noting the broader consequence for players: a player’s fate in expansion years could hinge on league alignment rather than individual team decisions. Later expansions used different rules, sometimes drawing from both leagues, but the 1976 format left National League clubs, like the Phillies, untouched.

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