Bill Giles, 1934-2026

Who is Mr. Phillies? Maybe it was Richie Ashburn, Hall of Fame player and beloved broadcaster. But Bill Giles oversaw the best years the franchise ever had -- and the years that replaced them as such.

William Yale Giles was born on September 7, 1934 in Rochester, New York, where his father, Warren Giles, was general manager of the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings. He grew up in Cincinnati, while his father was GM of the Cincinnati Reds.

Bill, naturally, was hired to work in the Reds' front office, and did so until he followed his father's successor as GM, Gabe Paul, to be part of the founding staff of the team now known as the Houston Astros in 1962. In Houston, Bill served as traveling secretary, then as publicity director, and then promotions director, including promoting the team's new home in 1965, the Astrodome, as "The Eighth Wonder of the World."

In 1969, he joined the Philadelphia Phillies as vice president of business operations. It was he who hired Astros broadcaster Harry Kalas away, starting in 1971, when the Phillies opened the new Veterans Stadium. With team owner Bob Carpenter giving his son Ruly Carpenter the keys to the kingdom, Ruly allowed vice president Bill Giles, general manager Paul Owens, and farm director, later manager, Dallas Green, from 1976 to 1983, 8 seasons, the Phillies made the Playoffs 6 times, won 2 National League Pennants, and won the 1980 World Series. Giles also created the Phillie Phanatic, baseball's most popular mascot, who debuted early in the 1978 season.

In 1981, the Carpenter family sold the Phillies to a group that included Giles and John Middleton. The Phillies won the Pennant again in 1983. They tailed off, but were rebuilt into Pennant winners again in 1993. In 1997, Giles was named Chairman, and he held that title until his retirement in 2015. This included the building of Citizens Bank Park, which opened in 2004.

When the Phillies lost the World Series in 1993, it was to the Toronto Blue Jays, whose general manager was Pat Gillick. In 2006, Giles hired Gillick to be Phillies GM. He built a team that won 5 straight NL East titles, 2 Pennants, and the 2008 World Series.

With the Commissioner's Trophy after the 2008 World Series

Giles had owned about 20 percent of the Phillies' stock, but sold his shares in 2013. As his father did from 1951 to 1969, he served as President of the National League starting in 2001. By that point, though the offices of both Leagues' Presidents were pretty much ceremonial only, with their main duty being the delivery of the trophy for winning the Pennant to the winning team's owner. In the case of the NL, Bill Giles handed the Warren Giles Trophy to, among others, his Phillies cohort David Montgomery 3 times: 2008, 2009 and 2022.

With the trophy named for his father

Bill and his wife, the former Nancy Kirwin, had 3 children: Mike, Joe and Chris; and 8 grandchildren. Nancy died in 2020 -- not from COVID. Bill Giles died this past Friday, September 25, 2026, at the age of 92.

October 26, 1825: The Erie Canal Opens

October 26, 1825, 200 years ago: The Erie Canal opens, connecting Buffalo on the Niagara River with Albany on the Hudson River, and thus connecting the Great Lakes to New York City. It has been called America's first superhighway.

It means that no longer must goods be delivered over land, through the Appalachian Mountains that separate what's now known as the Northeastern U.S. and the Midwestern U.S. It cut delivery time by several days.

This goes on to make the City of New York the biggest and richest City in the country, and (at least, for the rest of the 19th Century) the State of New York the biggest and richest State in the country. It also enriches Great Lakes cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. It also makes the sports teams eventually founded in those cities commercially viable.

A canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The State legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal, referencing its lead supporter, Governor DeWitt Clinton, denigrated the project as "Clinton's Folly" and "Clinton's Big Ditch." But the canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the State's construction debt within the 1st year of operation.

DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt Clinton was born on March 2, 1769 in what is now New Windsor, Orange County, about 65 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, He served as secretary to his uncle, Governor George Clinton, who became the longest-serving Governor of any State in the Union to this day, and would serve as Vice President in the 2nd term of Thomas Jefferson and the 1st term of James Madison.

He appointed DeWitt to head the Council of Appointments. Under the law of the time, this allowed him to control patronage in the State, including allowing him to appoint the Mayor of New York City and County Sheriffs, as these were not elective offices at the time. He used this position to stall the political career of the man who preceded his uncle as Vice President, Aaron Burr, who wanted to succeed Uncle George as Governor.

DeWitt Clinton served in both houses of the State legislature, and for nearly 2 years in the U.S. Senate. He served as Mayor from 1803 (appointing himself) until 1807, and again from 1808 to 1810. He was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1810, on the ticket of Daniel Tompkins. When Tompkins was elected Vice President under Madison in 1812 -- because Uncle George had died in office, the 1st Vice President to do so -- DeWitt became Governor, despite having been nominated by the Federalist Party for President, and having lost that election to Madison. As Governor, he pushed the Canal through the legislature. He served through 1822, and was elected again in 1824. He died in office on February 11, 1828.

At the time, the 363-mile length made the canal was the 2nd-longest in the world, after the Grand Canal in Chia. Initially 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918, when the "Barge Canal" was built, and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern Barge Canal measures 351 miles long, 120 feet wide, and 12 feet deep. It has 34 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States.

The Erie Canal's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads, including the New York Central Railroad and the Boston & Albany Railroad, until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th Century due to competition from trucking and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994.

Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It has also become a tourist attraction in its own right, as several parks and museums are dedicated to its history.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Les Harrison for Moving the Rochester Royals to Cincinnati

March 13, 1957: The Rochester Royals beat the St. Louis Hawks, 104-99 at the Rochester Community War Memorial Arena, or "The War Memorial" for short, in Rochester, New York. The Royals got a balanced attack: Bob Burrow scored 19 points, Maurice Stokes 17, Jack Twyman 15, Art Spoelstra 14, and Tom Marshall and Dave Piontek 10 each. This overcame 22 points by the Hawks' Ed Macauley.

It was the Royals' last game of the regular season, and, at 31-41, they had the worst record in the NBA, so they didn't make the Playoffs. So this would be the last game they ever played. 

The team was founded by the brothers Lester and Joseph Harrison, known as Les and Jack, and entered the National Basketball League for the 1945-46 season. At first, they played at the Edgerton Park Arena. In that 1st season, the Royals won the Championship of that Midwest-based league, and reached the Finals in each of the next 2 seasons, but lost.

The Basketball Association of America was founded for the 1946-47 season, based mostly in the Northeast. In 1949, the NBL and the BAA merged to form the National Basketball Association, which dates its founding to the 1946 formation of the BAA. The Royals joined, and won the Championship in 1951, with "Lucky Les" (who had starred as a player at East High in Rochester) as head coach, defeating the New York Knicks in 7 games.

Among the Royals' players were Basketball Hall-of-Famers Bob Davies, Bobby Wanzer, Al Cervi, Arnie Risen, Pop Gates, Alex Hannum, and future Knicks coach Red Holzman, who was elected as a coach, but was also a very good player, making 2 All-NBL Teams before the institution of the NBA All-Star Game in 1951. Les Harrison has also been elected to the Hall, in the Contributor category.

Bob Davies. He had starred at Seton Hall,

and a banner honoring him hangs

at the Prudential Center in Newark.

In 1955, the Royals moved to the 11,000-seat War Memorial. Among the construction workers was Robert Morella, who became one of the most popular professional wrestlers of the 1960s and '70s, under the name Gorilla Monsoon. Like the Philadelphia and Baltimore Civic Centers, it had a horseshoe-shaped seating area with a stage at one end.

Like the Baltimore version (now the Royal Farms Arena), but unlike the Philadelphia version (demolished to make way for a hospital), it still stands, under the name of the Blue Cross Arena It serves as the home of one of the most historic minor-league hockey teams, the Rochester Americans. It is also the home of the Rochester Nighthawks of the National Lacrosse League. 

For a while, on a court named for Les Harrison, it hosted the minor-league Rochester Razorsharks. Since 1963, it has hosted the Kodak Classic, an annual college basketball tournament founded by Les Harrison, and named for the photography company that put Rochester on the world's map.

But the arena no longer hosts professional basketball. After the 1956-57 season, the Harrison brothers moved the team to Cincinnati. Cincy is known as "The Queen City of the Midwest," so the name "Royals" still fit.

The experiment didn't work. The Royals got to the NBA Eastern Conference Finals in 1963 and 1964, but not to an NBA Finals, unable to get past the Boston Celtics. In 1966, the Harrisons sold the team to another pair of brothers, Max and Jeremy Jacobs. Jeremy would later buy the NHL's Boston Bruins. In 1972, the team was moved to Kansas City, which already had a baseball team called the Royals, so they became the Kansas City Kings.

In 1985, under yet another owner, they moved again, becoming the Sacramento Kings. In the 21st Century, there were threats to move to Anaheim and Seattle, before the Golden 1 Center was built, to keep them in California's capital.

To this day, the Kings hang a banner with the name "ROCHESTER," the NBA logo (the silhouette of Jerry West), and the legend "WORLD CHAMPIONS 1951" -- even though that was 70 years and 3 cities ago. That 70-year drought is easily the NBA's longest. And it's actually 4 cities, if you count the fact that the team was actually the Kansas City-Omaha Kings from 1972 to 1975, playing some home games in Nebraska.

Whether they should have stayed in Cincinnati, or in Kansas City, or in Omaha, is each a discussion for another time. But maybe leaving Rochester set them on a path to moving around, and to failure: In the 64 years since leaving Rochester, they have won just 9 Playoff series (and haven't even made the Playoffs since 2006, the NBA's longest current drought), and have never made the NBA Finals. They reached the Conference Finals in 1963 and 1964 in Cincinnati, did so in 1981 in Kansas City, and have done so in 2002 in Sacramento. That's just 4 trips to the NBA's round of 4 in 70 years. That's pathetic.

Should they have left Rochester?

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Les Harrison for Moving the Rochester Royals to Cincinnati

5. Seagram. The liquor producer had sponsored Les' 1st pro basketball team, and also sponsored the Royals at first. But they did not support his wish to take them into the larger league that was formed with the NBL-BAA merger. Had they stuck with him, the team might have lasted longer.

4. Television. Seeing Major League Baseball games on TV helped to kill the Negro Leagues and devastate the minor leagues. That didn't affect the NBA much, since there was almost no overlap in season.

But the rise of TV did give people a reason to stay home during basketball season. What's more, unlike MLB, boxing, horse racing and (eventually) the NFL, in the 1950s, the NBA didn't handle TV well. You'd think it would, since the court was small enough for cameras to easily follow. (Horse racing was then popular on TV because, despite having the largest "field," the horses were all bunched together, making for easy camera work.) Games were locally broadcast, but not nationally, and the teams just didn't get enough revenue from it.

3. The NBA. Like the NFL, it had started in smaller cities in the Northeast and the Midwest, and all those cities would turn out to be to small to keep the league going, and would lose their teams, except for Green Bay, Wisconsin.

There were 4 teams that didn't even survive the 1st BAA (NBA) season of 1946-47: The Pittsburgh Ironmen, the Cleveland Rebels, the Detroit Falcons and the Toronto Huskies -- and those were all big cities at the time. By the dawn of the 1950-51 season, Providence, St. Louis, Washington and even Chicago had lost their teams. The next season, Indianapolis followed. And the original version of the Baltimore Bullets, NBA Champions in 1948, folded early in the 1954-55 season.

The Royals/Kings aren't the only team that has made several moves. One of the charter BAA teams was the Buffalo Bisons. They didn't even make it to the New Year in that 1st season, moving to Moline, Illinois, next-door to Rock Island, and across the Mississippi River from Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa. They became the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. (The region is now known as the Quad Cities.) They only stayed until 1951, became the Milwaukee Hawks, and then moved again in 1955, becoming the St. Louis Hawks, the team the Royals played in their last game in Rochester. In 1968, they moved again, becoming the Atlanta Hawks.

The Royals weren't even the only team moving in 1957: The Fort Wayne Pistons moved to Detroit. (As with the Royals, the name made even more sense in their new city than in their old one.) In 1960, the Minneapolis Lakers, winners of 5 titles, moved to Los Angeles.

In 1961, an expansion team called the Chicago Packers began. After 1 year, they became the Chicago Zephyrs, probably because Chicagoans didn't want to root for a team called the Packers. In 1963, they became the new Baltimore Bullets. In 1973, they moved to Washington. In 1997, the Washington Bullets became the Washington Wizards.

So the moving of teams wasn't something the early NBA establishment frowned upon. They would have been more surprised if the Harrison brothers had tried to stay in Rochester. Especially when there were other options.

2. Cincinnati. At the time, it looked like a good market. Between the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University, it had proven itself to be a good market for college basketball. There wasn't much competition: The overlap with baseball's Reds was minimal, since the NBA Playoffs had yet to extend into May; and there was no professional football team, just UC.

Cincinnati, circa 1957

On February 1, 1957, the Royals had played a regular-season game in Cincinnati, at the Cincinnati Gardens. Two of the Royals' players, Jack Twyman and Dave Piontek, were Cincinnti natives, and suggested the game. Playing games at neutral sites, in order to build up NBA fandom in places where the league didn't have teams, was fairly common in those days before a national TV contract would make such games unnecessary.

The Royals beat the Pistons, 96-80. The Gardens was roughly the same age and size as the War Memorial: It was relatively new, opening in 1949; and seated 10,000, slightly less. It, too, had the horseshoe shape with a stage at one end. The game was a sellout, unlike most of the Royals' games in Rochester.

At the time, Cincinnati was home to about 500,000 people. Today, it's only a little over 300,000, thanks to "white flight." And with just 2.8 million people, it's one of the smallest metropolitan areas with a major league team in any sport.

And the city did lose the Royals in 1972. Despite the building of the Riverfront Coliseum in 1975, the NBA has never returned. The Gardens was torn down in 2018, and the Coliseum, now the Heritage Bank Center, has had minor-league hockey as its main program for most of its history.

1. Western New York State. While Cincinnati's population has shrunk significantly, Rochester didn't have a whole lot of people to lose. Even in 1957, it was home to only about 330,000 people, a little more than Cincinnati has now. Today, despite a reputation for scientific research, and for being the basis of the city of Port Charles on the ABC soap opera General Hospital, Rochester has barely over 200,000 people, with a metro area less than half the size of Cincinnati's, at 1.1 million.

A recent photo of downtown Rochester

This is matched by the other cities in Western New York. Syracuse lost the NBA's Nationals in 1963, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers. Like Rochester, Syracuse has a longtime team in minor-league hockey, the Syracuse Crunch. Both cities also have long had teams in baseball's Class AAA International League, the Rochester Red Wings and the Syracuse Chiefs. But not in the major leagues in either sport.

Frontier Field, home of the Rochester Red Wings since 1996

As stated earlier, Buffalo had already lost the BAA's Bisons in 1946. Buffalo also had a team called the Buffalo Bills in the All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1949, but when the NFL took 3 teams from the AAFC, they took the Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Colts and the San Francisco 49ers. It became known as "The Screwing of Buffalo."

Buffalo would gain the AFL's version of the Bills in 1960, and the NBA's Braves and the NHL's Sabres in 1970, the same year the Bills became part of the AFL-NFL merger. The Braves would move in 1978, and are now the Los Angeles Clippers. And the Bills and Sabres have both faced the possibility of having to move. Today, both are still struggling, despite both being owned by billionaires Terry and Kim Pegula.

Remember the movie It's a Wonderful Life? George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart), operator of a building and loan association, is shown what his New York State hometown of Bedford Falls would have been like if he had never been born.

He sees that the company his father had founded had gone out of business, because George wasn't there to save it; the low-income housing George had built wasn't built; Henry Potter, the miserable old man who controlled everything in town but the building and loan, had changed the town's name to Pottersville; and, like an organized crime boss, he let other businessmen do what he pleased, so long as he got his cut.

And what businesses were doing well? Bars and casinos. The very things that, today, are pretty much the only businesses doing well in New York State, thanks to the local Native tribes getting casino licenses. In 2009, at the depth of a recession, a New York Times writer pointed this out, and contrasted it with the housing market that George Bailey once ran. The writer concluded that, for the sake of the future of the State of New York, the kindhearted Bailey was wrong, and the old bastard Potter was right. (And you thought the Times was a liberal newspaper.)

Put simply, New York State, from the capital of Albany on west through Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, simply can't support major league sports in the modern era.

VERDICT: Not Guilty. If Les Harrison (1904-1997) and his brother Jack hadn't moved the Royals when they did, they would have had to do so eventually. If they had sold the team, to take the decision out of their hands, no matter how committed the new owner(s) would have been to the city, the move would still have to have happened.

Western New York's 10 Greatest Teams

This Sunday, the New York Jets visit Orchard Park, New York to play the Buffalo Bills.

Western New York's 10 Greatest Teams

10. 1973-75 Buffalo Bills. 3 seasons, 26-16, but only 1 Playoff berth, in 1974 -- the only postseason game of O.J. Simpson's career. The 1970s Bills had the misfortune to play in the AFC East at a time when the Miami Dolphins dominated it every bit as much as the New England Patriots have in this past generation.

9. 1980-81 Buffalo Bills. Back-to-back Playoff berths, the team's 1st Division title in 14 years (1980), and its 1st postseason win in 16 years (1981 -- of course, against the Jets). But they stumbled into mediocrity in 1982, and went 8-40 from 1984 to 1986. Of course, that allowed them to pile up the draft picks that built their early 1990s AFC dynasty.

8. 1995-99 Buffalo Bills. A sub-.500 season in 1994 allows this period to be considered separate from the one of 1988-93. 5 seasons, 4 Playoff berths, and the 1995 AFC East title, but only 1 Playoff win. Marv Levy's gang still had something left in them, but they were getting old. "The Music City Miracle" of January 4, 2000 would be the Bills' last Playoff game for 18 years.

Before clinching a Playoff berth on the last day of last season, the Bills were the only team in the "big four" sports not to have clinched a Playoff berth in the 21st Century. But they made it. They almost certainly won't make it this season, but there could be more for this team.

7. 1973-76 Buffalo Braves. They made 3 straight NBA Playoffs, something the franchise now known as the Los Angeles Clippers would not do again until 2015. But they only won 1 Playoff series, against the Philadelphia 76ers in 1976, and wouldn't make the Playoffs again until 1992.

6. 1996-2001 Buffalo Sabres. 5 straight Playoff berths, an NHL Northeast Division title, 2 trips to the Eastern Conference Finals, and a Conference Championship in 1999. They got slightly closer than the 1975 edition, taking Game 6 to overtime. It's worth remembering, though: Even if that goal had been waved off, the Sabres would still have had to win that game and then beat the Stars in Dallas in Game 7.

5. 1974-81 Buffalo Sabres. 7 straight Playoff berths, 3 NHL Adams Division titles, 2 trips to the Stanley Cup Finals, and the Bills' 1st berth in the Stanley Cup Finals. They gave the Philadelphia Flyers a better fight than the Boston Bruins had the year before. But they couldn't get back until 1999.

4. 1988-93 Buffalo Bills. This is the most talented team in the history of Western New York sports, but not the most accomplished. 6 straight Playoff berths, 5 AFC Eastern Division titles, 10 postseason victories, 5 trips to the AFC Championship Game, and 4 AFC Championships. But they lost the Super Bowl by margins of 1, 13, 17 and 35 points (not in that order). It was a great achievement to keep getting back, but they could never finish the job.

3. 1949-57 Syracuse Nationals. Okay, Syracuse is in Central New York, not Western New York, but I'm counting it. 8 straight Playoff berths, 3 regular-season NBA Eastern Division titles, 9 Playoff series won, 7 Eastern Division Finals reached, 3 NBA Finals, and the 1955 NBA Championship -- still the last World Championship won by a team in New York State but not in New York City.

2. 1945-55 Rochester Royals. Rochester definitely counts as "Western New York," Although it says something that the NBA put Syracuse in the Eastern Division and Rochester in the Western Division. Syracuse, State College and Harrisburg are where America's Northeast begins to turn into its Midwest.

8 straight Playoff berths, 3 regular-season NBA Western Division titles, 4 trips to the Division Finals, 3 National Basketball League Finals berths, the 1945 NBL Championship, and, after moving to the NBA in 1948, the 1951 NBA Championship.

But the NBA could not be sustained in small cities. So, in 1957-58, the Rochester Royals moved to Cincinnati (then the Kansas City Kings in 1972 and the Sacramento Kings in 1985), and the Fort Wayne Pistons moved to Detroit. In 1963, the Syracuse Nationals moved to become the Philadelphia 76ers. The days when the teams from mid-sized Midwest cities like Anderson, Indiana; Moline, Illinois; and Waterloo, Iowa could be absorbed into the NBA were over.

1. 1963-66 Buffalo Bills. 4 straight Playoff berths, 3 AFL Championship Games, and the 1964 and 1965 AFL Championships. These are still the only 2 times that a major league sports team from Buffalo has gone as far as the rules of the time allowed them to go.