Phillies First Press Guide
Oct. 23, 1963, was my first day on the job as the Phillies' publicity director, the fourth different person in four years. The date certainly doesn’t qualify as a monumental one in Phillies history.
Up one steep and narrow flight of stairs near the Connie Mack Stadium office entrance on 21st Street was a small office on the second floor. A big green metal desk that resembled an Army surplus piece of furniture took up most of the space. Plus, a chair, tall black metal cabinet, a huge green electric IBM typewriter and a phone with four buttons.
In the cabinet were a couple of 1963 yearbooks, some money from fans who ordered a yearbook and never got it, a few press guides from other teams and large red diaries dating back to the 1940s. A box score and handwritten note was posted for each Phillies game. The 1963 diary was blank after May 1. One can only imagine that helped pave the way for me.
There was one book in the cabinet, The Philadelphia Phillies, written by Fred Leib and Stan Baumgartner and published by Putnam in 1953. It was the only Phillies history source.
Missing was a Phillies Press Guide, a publication for writers and broadcasters. Of the 20 teams in the Majors, the Phillies were the only organization without one. When I sought permission to publish one, I was denied as “too costly.”
With the help of my bride of six months, we decided to handmake the first Phillies Press Guide. Julie designed the cover and, using a red sharpie, colored the hat that was part of team logo.
Googling the first guide, I stumbled across the following, “Collectible of the Week: 1964 Phillies Press Guide” on thephilliescollector.net (Jan. 14, 2012):
*"Shenk typed by hand a master stencil for each page of the guide, fitted the stencils one at a time around the mimeograph machine’s inked drum and produced multiple duplicate copies of each page. A laborious task was made even more onerous by the fact that two pages of the guide could be typed onto a single stencil. This was economical, but every copy mimeographed from each stencil had to be cut in half by hand to separate the two pages. With the mimeographed pages of the guide printed and cut, Shenk now faced the grueling task of collating and binding all of the pages for each of the guides."*
Our Wilmington apartment living room floor was the workstation. It was a tip toe maze.
Phun Phacts
Number produced: 300
Number of pages: 58
Size: 4 1/8" x 8 1/2"
Value: Auction prices: Aug. 23, 2002 ($2,000); Nov. 11, 2011 ($650); currently on ebay ($11.95).
1965: I had one professionally published by a printer. I didn’t ask this time. Not sure of the quantity or cost. Pretty sure it was under $2,000.