The Main Event
- July 20, 1969 – During a doubleheader at Connie Mack Stadium, the PA announcer tells the crowd of the moon landing; players on both teams pause for a moment of silence, followed by Kate Smith’s “God Bless America.”
On the afternoon of July 20, 1969, a packed Sunday doubleheader between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs at Connie Mack Stadium was rolling along like any other summer ballgame — until, in an instant, it wasn’t. At 4:20 p.m., Phillies public address announcer Eddie Ferenz stepped to the microphone and told the crowd something no baseball fan had ever heard between innings before: Apollo 11 had landed on the moon. For a few minutes, thousands of fans in North Philadelphia stopped thinking about balls and strikes and thought instead about two American astronauts, a quarter-million miles from home, standing on another world.
A Doubleheader Interrupted by History
The Cubs came into Connie Mack Stadium that day riding high, four games clear atop the National League East, and they left having swept the Phillies in workmanlike fashion. Ferguson Jenkins tossed a complete-game 1-0 shutout in the opener, and Dick Selma followed with a complete game of his own in a 6-1 nightcap win. The Phillies, mired in a rough summer, managed just one run across both games. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been a forgettable Sunday for the home team.
But nothing about July 20, 1969, was ordinary. Apollo 11’s lunar module, Eagle, touched down on the Sea of Tranquility at 4:17 p.m. Eastern time, just as the two clubs were in the middle of their twin bill. Word traveled fast from mission control to newsrooms to ballparks across the country, and Connie Mack Stadium was no exception.
The Voice on the PA System
Eddie Ferenz had one of the more recognizable jobs in Philadelphia sports in the late 1960s, and on this particular Sunday his announcement carried more weight than any lineup change or ground-rule reminder ever could. Three minutes after Eagle’s landing gear touched lunar soil, Ferenz relayed the news to the stands. It wasn’t a dramatic broadcast production — no video screens, no highlight package, just a voice over a stadium loudspeaker letting 20-thousand people in on one of the most significant moments in human history while sitting in their seats along Lehigh Avenue.
Ferenz’s counterpart in New York was doing much the same thing at almost the identical moment. At Yankee Stadium, legendary PA announcer Bob Sheppard told fans, “You will be happy to know that the Apollo 11 has landed safely…” and the crowd reportedly erupted before he finished the sentence, drowning out the words “on the moon.” The Yankee Stadium scoreboard flashed the news too, misspelled in the excitement: “Theyre on the moon.”
A Moment of Silence and “God Bless America”
What happened next at Connie Mack Stadium is the detail that has stuck with Phillies historians for more than half a century. Players from both the Phillies and the Cubs walked out of their dugouts and lined up along the foul lines, standing shoulder to shoulder with their opponents for a moment of silent prayer for the safety of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Then, over the same loudspeaker Ferenz had just used, the stadium played a recording of Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” — a song already woven into the fabric of Philadelphia sports and one that would go on to become an even bigger good-luck charm for the city’s teams in the years that followed. When the song ended, both teams returned to their positions and the ballgame simply continued, as if a pause for a moon landing were something ballparks did every day.
Connie Mack Stadium wasn’t alone in marking the moment. Across the country at Candlestick Park, the San Francisco Giants were hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers, with Gaylord Perry on the mound. When word of the landing reached the ballpark at 1:17 p.m. Pacific time, play paused there too for a moment of silence. Thirty-four minutes later, Perry — a pitcher who had never hit a home run in nearly 500 career at-bats — belted one off Dodgers starter Claude Osteen, fulfilling a joking prediction manager Alvin Dark had made years earlier: “There’ll be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run.” On that particular Sunday, both things happened within the same half hour.
A Snapshot of a Nation Watching — and Playing
An estimated 200,000 fans were inside major league ballparks across the country that Sunday afternoon, many of them learning about the moon landing not from a television broadcast but from a PA announcer and the reaction of the strangers sitting around them. It’s a reminder that in 1969, baseball and American life weren’t separate things happening on different channels — they shared the same afternoon, the same stadiums, and, for one moment at Connie Mack Stadium, the same silence.
The Cubs went home with a doubleheader sweep that day, a small footnote in a disappointing season for the Phillies. But the real story of July 20, 1969, in Philadelphia wasn’t on the scoreboard. It was in the pause between innings, when a ballpark full of strangers stood together and looked, for just a moment, past the outfield wall and toward the moon.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for July 20
- July 20, 1912 – Sherry Magee stole home twice in a 14-2 rout of the Cubs.
- July 20, 1921 – Phillies fall 10-0 to Pete Alexander and the Chicago Cubs; two Phillies pitchers allowed 23 hits without a walk or a strikeout.
- July 20, 1926 – Al Simmons sets the American League record for consecutive games played to start a career, reaching 394 — a mark that stood until Hideki Matsui broke it in 2005.
- July 20, 1970 – The Dodgers’ Bill Singer no-hits the Phillies 5-0 in Los Angeles.
- July 20, 1973 – Rookie Dick Ruthven earns the only save of his career in 355 games – 323 relief appearances – by protecting a 6-4 lead against Atlanta.
- July 20, 2002 – Tony Taylor is inducted into the Phillies Wall of Fame.
- July 20, 2020 – Former GM Ruben Amaro Jr. joins the Phillies broadcast team for a summer-camp game during COVID.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for July 20
- Ed Madjeski (born 1908) – A catcher who started his major league career with the Phillies in 1932 and played for them until May of 1934 when he was released and signed with the White Sox.
- Gene Hasson (born 1915) – A first baseman with the 1937 and 1938 Phillies, Hasson hit .293 in 47 games in what would be his only two MLB seasons.
- Don Black (born 1916) – A right-handed pitcher who made 43 starts and 17 relief appearances with the Phillies from 1943 through 1945 before being sold to Cleveland.
- Ty Kelly (born 1988) – A utility player who was acquired from Toronto after the Blue Jays had claimed him off waivers from the Mets during the 2017 season, he played in 69 games for the Phillies that year before becoming a free agent and re-signing with the Mets.
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