Today in Cubs history: Mike Schmidt hits four home runs and the Cubs blow an 11-run lead

It was still 13-4 in the top of the seventh. The Phillies had already scored twice when Schmidt batted with two out and no one on base. He homered again, cutting the Cubs’ lead to six.

A six-run lead heading to the bottom of the seventh. What could possibly go wrong? (You likely already know the answer to that question.)

In the top of the eighth, Dick Allen singled in two runs with the bases loaded to make it 13-9. By this time Mike Garman had replaced Reuschel. It mattered not. Schmidt smashed his third homer of the game, this one a three-run shot, and suddenly it’s a one-run game, 13-12.

Darold Knowles relieved Garman. Knowles, famed for his work in the 1973 World Series for the Athletics, did not have a good outing on this windy day. Another homer — this one by Bob Boone — tied the game, and Knowles allowed two more runs in the inning, so the Cubs now trailed 15-13.

The Cubs weren’t done, though. With two out and runners on second and third in the ninth, Swisher singled in both and the game headed to extra innings tied 15-15.

With one out in the top of the 10th and a runner on base, Schmidt came to the plate [VIDEO].

Schmidt’s fourth homer of the game — and remember, he didn’t hit his first until the fifth inning — was off Rick Reuschel’s brother Paul, and the Phillies scored once more to make it 18-15. (That’s the WGN radio call on the video, with Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau.)

This game — which eventually ran three hours, 41 minutes — wasn’t quite done. With two out in the last of the 10th, Bill Madlock doubled in Mike Adams — the only run Adams scored as a Cub — and Jerry Morales stepped to the plate as the potential tying run.

Phillies manager Danny Ozark called on Jim Lonborg, normally a starter. Lonborg got Morales to ground out, and posted one of just four saves he had in his big-league career. Here’s how Tribune writer Richard Dozer recapped this game:

The combined delights of hitting behind a 20 mile-an-hour wind in Wrigley Field against a Cub pitching staff that only a foe could love thrust Mike Schmidt, the National League home run champion, full force into the big league record book Saturday.

Schmidt smashed four consecutive home runs to set a modern National League record. With them, he drove across eight runs and dragged the Philadelphia Phillies off the floor to an incredible 18-16 victory in 10 innings before 28,287 shellshocked spectators.

Unbelievably defeated in this one, the staggered Cubs actually were ahead at one stage by a 13-2 score. But while Philadelphia pitchers were knocking down Cub hitters to gain a measure of respect Cub hurlers rarely attain, the whipped Chicagoans were overtaken in a three-run Philadelphia ninth.

The Cubs thus lost a game they’d led by 11 runs — and by six going into the eighth! — by that 18-16 score.

Half a century later, the 11-run blown lead still stands as the biggest in National League history. (There have been a couple of AL games where a 12-run lead was blown.)

It all happened 50 years ago today, Saturday, April 17, 1976.