Phillies All-Star One and Dones: The 1980s Part 1

In honor of the Philadelphia Phillies playing host to the 2026 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park, we here at The Good Phight are launching a yearlong series that focuses on the history of the Phillies and the All-Star Game.

Check back regularly for posts about the Phillies participation (or lack thereof) in the Midsummer Classic over its history.

At last, we’ve reached the first period of real sustained success the Phillies have had in their history as we take a look back at

all of their one-time All-Stars. The eighties started off pretty well with the team’s first championship and included another World Series appearance in 1983 after many disappointments at the end of the seventies. But by the latter half of the decade, the team once again slid into mediocrity and, eventually, back into the basement. That made it prime territory for one-and done All-Stars, and as such, this will be another two-part entry in this series. If you’d like to catch up with the rest of the series, you can with the following links: 1930s, 1940s part 1, 1940s part 2, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Al Holland, 1984

Holland was the forgotten relief ace of the forgotten 1983 pennant winning Phillies, but way before that he was the oldest of four boys born to Charles Holland and Sylvia Wade of Roanoke, Virginia. Al excelled in sports at Lucy Addison High School, a segregation-era school for African Americans. Holland was good enough to be able to play baseball and football at North Carolina A&T State University; a historically black university located in Greensboro.

His two-sport success peaked in 1972, when after leading the football team in rushing, Holland led the country with 143 strikeouts and pitched to a 0.54 ERA. His mind-blowing baseball season also included a no-hitter with 25 strikeouts and one ball being hit in fair territory. He would throw three more no hitters in his college career, one each season. Despite his athletic success, Holland planned to use his bachelor’s degree in Recreation to run youth recreation programs. He was drafted twice, once by the Rangers in the 30th round in 1974 and by the Padres in the fourth round in 1975, but Holland chose not to leave college either time. Because of this, he ended up being an undrafted free agent following his collegiate tenure and ultimately signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates in June of 1975.

Holland excelled in his first full season of professional ball in 1976, posting a 2.96 ERA in 39 games with 4 starts in A-ball. He continued to impress in 1977, and by late September of that year, Holland earned a call to the Majors to make his MLB debut on September 5th against the Phillies. The 24-year-old lefty entered in the 7th inning of a 9-1 game his Pirates were on the wrong end of. Holland allowed a single to Gary Maddox to begin the inning before retiring Tim McCarver, Ted Sizemore, and Steve Carlton on a fly out and a pair of groundouts.

Despite making two MLB appearances to end 1977, Holland spent all of 1978 and the majority of 1979 in Triple-A Portland. That was until he was traded by the Pirates to the San Francisco Giants in late June 1979. Holland was sent to the Giants as part of a six-player deal that brought Bill Madlock to Pittsburgh. Holland made his Giants debut on September 9th and threw three scoreless innings in relief. He made two further MLB appearances that year that were also scoreless, bringing his shutout inning streak to seven.

Holland made the Giants roster to start 1980 and quickly showed why he belonged there. His first eight appearances were all scoreless, extending his shutout streak to 16.2 innings. Holland rose to be the top left-handed option for the Giants out of the bullpen and finished his first full season in the Majors with a 1.75 ERA in 82.1 IP across 54 appearances. He struggled to begin 1981 but righted the ship by June, just in time for the MLBPA strike that shut down the season until July. By late September, the Giants opted to give Holland a chance at starting, and he ran with it. Holland made three starts to close the 1981 season and went 1-0 with a 2.08 ERA and 17 strikeouts in 21.2 IP.

The 29-year-old was a full-fledged member of the 1982 rotation, even being named the Opening Day starter. But Holland was back to the bullpen by June after missing almost all of May with a hamstring injury. He settled back into a reliever’s role, preferring the opportunity to pitch almost every day, once saying “If we play 162 games, I’d say I’d want to be in at least half of them.”

However, the Giants decided they had enough left-handed pitching in their bullpen that they could afford to trade one. Holland became the choice to be moved, and he was traded to the Phillies along with 39-year-old Joe Morgan in exchange for Mike Krukow, Mark Davis, and C.L. Penigar. The deal was the second the Phillies made in less than a week to try and remake their roster in order to have one last ride with their championship core, as they traded Manny Trillo for outfielder Von Hayes six days earlier.

Holland suffered an elbow injury in spring training and missed the first month of the 1983 season, but he returned in May and quickly rose to be a stalwart in the Phillies bullpen, throwing his power fastball almost exclusively in an era of relievers focused on deception. Holland pitched to a 2.26 ERA in 91.2 IP across 68 appearances and collected 25 saves while striking out 100 and walking only 30, earning the nickname “Mr. T” thanks to a pair of gold chains given to him by his wife. One of the games Holland finished on the mound just so happened to be Steve Carlton’s 300th career win on September 23rd in St. Louis. Another notable game was the 1983 NL Pennant clincher against the Dodgers when Holland struck out Bill Russell to send the Phillies to the World Series. Holland excelled in the 1983 postseason, throwing 6.2 scoreless innings across four appearances, but the Phillies ultimately lost the World Series to the Orioles in five games.

The 1984 season started off well for Holland, as he was sitting on a 2.80 ERA and 17 saves by the time of the All-Star break. That strong performance earned him a trip to the All-Star game, conveniently being held in his old stomping grounds of Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Unfortunately for Holland, he did not appear in the game that ended in a 3-1 NL win. Part of the reason may have been that Phillies manager Paul Owens was the manager for the NL squad and opted to use Goose Gossage as closer instead and save his own closer. However, Holland took offense at the slight, telling the Philadelphia Daily News “I’m very disappointed in not pitching. Back in San Francisco, my first All-star game…I really wanted to pitch.” Holland added that he was never told if or when he was going to pitch, despite Owens claiming that he would have used Holland if the game went into extra innings.

Nevertheless, Holland, much like the Phillies, tailed off in the second half of the season. Despite breaking his own franchise record for saves in a season with 29, Holland pitched to a 4.34 ERA across 37.1 innings while the team went 36-42 in the second half, ultimately finishing 81-81. He was particularly bad in August and September, with a 6.86 ERA in 19 games and allowing 28 hits and five home runs in 21 IP. 1985 started with discussions about Holland’s weight, with it later being revealed that there was a $10,000 bonus in his contract if he could stay under 210 pounds, and speculation about Holland’s future as he entered the final year of his deal. Team president Bill Giles downplayed trade rumors, but a trade did eventually come to fruition. The 32-year-old Holland and minor league pitcher Frankie Griffin were shipped to Pittsburgh in exchange for 38-year-old reliever Kent Tekulve on April 20th.

But Holland wasn’t in Pittsburgh for long, as he was traded once again later in the season to the California Angels before finishing the 1985 with a 2.90 ERA in 56 appearances. However, his free agency was compromised due to his involvement in the Pittsburgh Drug Trials that investigated cocaine use in baseball. Holland was one of the players suspended 60 games but avoided serving the time by agreeing to donate 5% of his salary to drug prevention programs and completing 50 hours of community service. He eventually signed with the Yankees and became a favorite of George Steinbrenner for his no-nonsense attitude, but Holland began the season in Triple-A and then saw his season mired by injury and ineffectiveness before being released in August. He re-signed with the Yankees for 1987 but made just three big league appearances before a suffering a major injury to his pitching arm on August 9th. That would prove to be his final game, as Holland never threw another professional pitch and to this day cannot straighten his left arm.

Glenn Wilson, 1985

Wilson was a first-round pick by the Detroit Tigers out of Sam Houston State University in the 1980 MLB amateur draft. As a 21-year-old in his final year in college, the 6’1, 195-pound Wilson played third base and hit a staggering .469 with 11 home runs in 46 games. Despite this and being the 18th overall pick, Wilson wasn’t viewed as the Tigers biggest prospect acquisition at the time. That title would go to Eduardo Cajuso, the first Cuban refugee to be signed by a Major League club after commissioner Bowie Kuhn lifted the ban on such signings.

Unlike Cajuso, who only played 23 career games, all of which at A-ball, Wilson quickly rose through the Tigers system and made his MLB debut on April 15th, 1982. Wilson, now playing right field, pinch-hit in the eighth inning of a 4-2 game with the Tigers leading. Wilson struck out looking against the Blue Jays’ Jerry Garvin, but that inauspicious first impression didn’t last too long. Wilson went on to hit .292 with a .778 OPS and 12 home runs across 84 games in his rookie season, winning the Tigers Rookie of the Year honors.

Wilson posted another steady season in 1983, hitting .268 with 11 home runs. Spring training 1984 started with swirling trade rumors for the Tigers, but a potential trade of John Wockenfuss to the Philadelphia Phillies for Gregg Gross fell through due to Gross exercising his 10 and 5 no-trade rights after neither team offered him financial incentives to waive them. Wilson meanwhile was the victim of a prank in the Tigers clubhouse on March 23rd when he arrived to see a shirt with the Tigers old English “D” on the front and “Trade Bait” written on the back. It turned out that prank was prophetic though, as Wilson was traded the next day to the Phillies along with Wockenfuss in exchange for reliever Willie Hernandez and Dave Bergman. To clear room for Wilson, the Phillies traded 1983 NLCS MVP Gary Matthews to the Cubs in a trade that landed Philadelphia reliever Bill Campbell and catcher Mike Diaz. Team president Bill Giles put the reasoning bluntly by saying “We feel Glenn Wilson will be better than Gary Matthews, but that’s yet to be seen.”

That statement didn’t age too well at least in 1984, as Wilson had the worst year of his career to that point when he hit a pedestrian .240 with a career-low 6 home runs in 132 games. The Phillies reportedly tried to trade Wilson at the winter meetings in 1984 as part of a package to acquire Luis Salazar, Luis DeLeon, and shortstop prospect Ozzie Guillen from the San Diego Padres but the talks never advanced.

It turned out the Phillies were lucky that trade never materialized, as Wilson had one of the best years of his career in 1985. He was hitting .266 with 8 home runs and jockeying for the league lead in RBIs with 61 while leading all outfielders with 12 assists by the time of the All-Star break. Despite this, Wilson was originally not named to the NL All-Star team because the 37-49 Phillies already had their representative in catcher Ozzie Virgil. However, Wilson was eventually added to the roster as an injury replacement for the Dodgers’ Pedro Guerrero, sending him to the game to be played at the Metrodome in Minnesota.

Despite being one of the last men named to the squad, Wilson did actually appear in the game when he pinch hit for pitcher Jeff Reardon in the 9th inning with the bases loaded and the NL leading 4-1. The man Wilson would face was of course Willie Hernandez, the exact player he was traded for. Vin Scully, who was calling the game for NBC, realized the moment and remarked “Here’s the trade. Here you have it.” Wilson flailed at a screwball in the dirt for strike three.

Wilson continued to have solid offensive seasons in 1986, hitting a career best 15 home runs with a .275 AVG, and 1987 while continuing his exceptional defense, leading all NL outfielders in assists in both seasons. He made his pitching debut on August 5th, 1987, when he pitched a perfect ninth inning against the Mets in a 13-3 blowout loss. Wilson’s Phillies tenure ended on December 9th, 1987, when he was traded along with Dave Brundage to the Mariners in exchange for Phil Bradley and Tim Fortugno. He went on to play four more seasons in the Majors for the Mariners, Pirates, and Astros. Wilson was a free agent following the 1990 season but was not offered an MLB contract after a pedestrian season in Houston where he hit .245 with 10 home runs in 118 games as a 31-year-old. He played in Triple-A for the Braves organization in 1991 before retiring. But the Pirates brought him out of retirement in 1993 for his second stint with the team, signing the 34-year-old Wilson to a minor league deal in January. He appeared in just 10 MLB games that season and hit .143 before retiring again for good.

Shane Rawley, 1986

An impressive year at Indian Hills Community College in Iowa was enough for Shane Rawley to get on the radar of MLB teams. It was there as an 18-year-old that Rawley went 7-2 on the mound and racked up 63 strikeouts. The Dodgers first selected the Racine, Wisconsin native in the fourth round of the January draft in 1974 but he did not sign, rather waiting until he was selected by the Montreal Expos in the second round in the June draft. It’s likely a no hitter he threw in between the selections on May 27th helped bump up his draft positioning.

Rawley pitched well in rookie ball for the Expos and quickly earned a promotion to Class-A Kinston where he struggled as a still 18-year-old pitcher. 1975 was kinder to Rawley, as he finished the year good enough to earn a promotion to Double-A for 1976 where he went 11-7 with a 2.69 ERA in 25 starts. Despite the 20-year-old lefty progressing well, the Expos elected to trade him along with Angel Torres to the Reds in exchange for 24-year-old MLB hurler Santo Alcala on May 27th, 1977. Alcala would appear in only 31 games with the Reds with a 4.69 ERA and never appeared in the Majors again after 1977. Rawley meanwhile was traded again following the 1977 season, this time being shipped to the Mariners in a deal for outfielder Dave Collins. The then farm director for Seattle, Mel Diddier, was who originally signed Rawley to the Expos in 1974. Rawley welcomed the move, later saying to his hometown newspaper that he “didn’t like Cincinatti too well” and that they “didn’t treat their minor league players with any respect.”

Rawley made the MLB roster for the Mariners to begin 1978 and made his debut in the second game of the season on April 6th. The youngest player on the Mariners at just 22-years-old, Rawley entered his first game in the second inning with the Mariners down 4-0. He got future Hall of Famer Rod Carew to ground out to end a scoring threat and then continued to throw four scoreless innings in relief with three hits, a walk, and three strikeouts. Rawley’s efforts allowed the Mariners to rally back to within one run but were ultimately doomed by baserunning mistakes in a 5-4 loss. Rawley though went on to appear in 52 games his rookie year with two starts and logged a 4.12 ERA in 111.1 innings pitched.

1979 started off well for Rawley, as by the end of June he was emerging as an ace in the Mariners’ bullpen. But that all changed after collecting his tenth save the night of June 29th, as he and teammates Rick Honeycutt and Mike Parrott got involved in a bar fight in Caledonia, Milwaukee after the game. Rawley ended up suffering a fracture in his left pitching hand after trying to break up the altercation, forcing him to undergo immediate surgery and keeping him out of MLB action until August 21st. Rawley finished the year with a 3.84 ERA and 11 saves in 84.1 IP across 48 appearances.

Rawley had his best year to date in 1980, totaling a 3.31 ERA in 113.2 IP with 13 saves. But the Mariners finished with the worst record in baseball, and he saw his name dangled in trades talks all winter as the team was in the process of being sold to new ownership. Rawley wasn’t traded that winter of 1981, but he did suffer a broken foot playing in a basketball game in January that required surgery and for the foot to be in a cast for six weeks. He only missed about two weeks of the regular season, but Rawley struggled to get going when he did come back. He had a 4.41 ERA in 32.2 IP by the time the 1981 player’s strike halted the season. Rawley pitched better when the season resumed and finished the year with a 3.95 ERA.

The next winter brought more trade rumors but this time, they came to fruition, albeit in spring. Rawley was traded on April 1st to the Yankees in exchange for three players and cash. The 26-year-old didn’t really lament the trade, telling the media that “it really gets old, losing” and that he didn’t believe Mariners new owner George Argyros “cared about the players as people,” adding that Argyros “doesn’t know the game as well as he thinks he does.”

Unfortunately for Rawley, more losing was in his future, as the Yankees finished 1982 in fifth place at 79-83, just three wins better than his old team in Seattle. 1983 was better for the Yankees and Rawley, as he was moved into the rotation and pitched a career-high 238.1 innings with 13 complete games while sporting a 3.78 ERA. One of those came on June 24th where Rawley went 5.1 innings and allowed 3 runs on 10 hits. That game is notable because it was the infamous “pine tar game” where George Brett’s g0-ahead two-run homer was disallowed due to “excessive” pine tar on his bat, giving the Yankees a 4-3 win. American League president Lee MacPhail later ruled that the game had to be resumed on August 18th with Brett’s home run counting, leading to the real final score to be a 5-4 Royals win.

Rawley started the 1984 season in the rotation again but this time it didn’t go as well as before. He dealt with injuries and had a 6.21 ERA across 10 starts by June 30th. That’s when he was then traded to the Phillies in exchange for Marty Bystrom and Keith Hughes. The 28-year-old turned his season around in Philadelphia, making 18 starts and going 10-6 with a 3.81 ERA, but the Phillies could not keep up a strong first half and finished 81-81. The lefty was even better in his first full season in Philadelphia in 1985 when he went 13-8 with a 3.31 ERA and threw 198.2 innings, proving to have been a shrewd trade for the Phillies at a time when such moves were almost non-existent.

Rawley appeared to be growing into the ace the Phillies desperately needed to start 1986, as he was 11-5 with a 2.96 ERA across 146.1 IP by the time of the All-Star break. The young lefty couldn’t shake the constant comparisons to another famous lefty who was recently the ace of the Phillies staff. “You can’t replace a Steve Carlton,” Rawley told the Daily News, adding “The very idea of that is ridiculous.” What wasn’t ridiculous was that Rawley was named an All-Star for the game to be played at the Houston Astrodome. However, unlike his teammate Mike Schmidt who started at third base, Rawley did not appear in the game that was a 3-2 AL win. Dwight Gooden started for the NL and was relieved by Fernando Valenzuela, Mike Scott, Sid Fernandez, and Mike Krukow.

The good times soon ended for the Phillies’ new ace, as he struggled mightily to begin the second half, allowing 12 runs in just 8.2 total innings in his first two starts after the All-Star break. Then he suffered a strained muscle in the upper part of his back that sent pain down his pitching shoulder and forced him to leave his third start on July 29th in the fourth inning. The injury was severe enough that Rawley missed the rest of the season as injuries dampened the Phillies chances of winning the division.

Rawley took a step backwards in 1987, going 17-11 but with a 4.39 ERA in 229.2 IP. He logged another ERA over 4 in 1988, but this time had a losing record of 8-16 and allowed a career-worst 250 hits as the Phillies’ rotation finished as the worst in the league. Rawley also got into a physical altercation with teammate Juan Samuel during a game on September 25th. Samuel had reportedly gone to the mound after a walk and suggested to Rawley, who was never shy about airing his grievances about his teammate’s play, to start throwing strikes. Rawley reportedly answered that Samuel was welcome to do the pitching if he liked. The second baseman didn’t like that and slugged his pitcher in the dugout tunnel before the fight was broken up by John Vukovich.

Rawley’s Phillies tenure ended on October 24th when he was traded to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for second baseman Tommy Herr. Rawley made sure to get a parting shot in on Samuel in his reaction to the trade though, telling the Daily News “They got Tommy Herr and that frees up Juan Samuel to go play the outfield. That makes the pitching better, because I just don’t think Juan Samuel can play second base at the major league level.”

It turns out, Rawley couldn’t pitch at the major league level much longer either, as he lasted only one season with the Twins and went 5-12 with a 5.21 ERA. The 33-year-old was a free agent following the disappointing season and signed a one-year deal with the Red Sox on January 10th, 1990. But he did not make it through spring training with Boston, as they elected to release him during cut downs on April 2nd, effectively ending his career.