What a Year
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by Tvern09
Stunned. Frustrated. Disappointed. All are feelings of every Phillies fan after the unacceptable performance by the team in the NLDS against the Rockies.
And all are things we should be feeling, reactions we should be having. But at this point, only a week after such a tough series, take a step back and overlook the NLDS.
The past three months, easily, was the most exciting time of baseball since ’93. One of the greatest seasons in Philadelphia sports in the past 15 years, no doubt about it. This team made the city, if only for a few months, forget about the year 1964, the doormat Birds, and the hopeless Sixers.
And who could have seen it coming. Forget the 4-11 mark in April; most still had leftover hope from their original preseason expectations. How about July 7 th, a game under .500 after losing 7 of 9. Who though this team was going to win the division then? Probably nobody outside the clubhouse. Who could have guessed at that point, with a .215 batting average and a comfortable seat on the bench, that down the stretch in September, with the game on the line, you would want Pat Burrell at the plate?
If I called in to WIP in March saying the Phils would win the division despite losing:
- Garcia and Lieber for the season,
- Myers and Gordon for 2 months,
- Utley and Hamels for a month each,
- Victorino for 3 weeks, and
- Howard for 2 weeks
I would have been asked what I was smoking.
But the team came through. How incredible it was. Jimmy Rollins played out of his mind. A 23 year old kid with a 4-7 minor league record became a shut-down MLB starter. The Bat, maybe the single most underachieving Philly athlete since Mike Mamula, earned every penny of his 13.25 million dollar contract down the stretch. Forget the .209 season and the 25$ million Ed Wade handed to him; I would trade it all for the second half of 2007 he had.
Nonetheless, with the loss to the Rockies, it looks as if the Philadelphia sports drought will add a year to the previous 23. The Curse of Billy Penn lives on, if only for one more year, because in March 2008 the Comcast Center will be complete, with a Billy Penn figurine sitting on top…
And we see the hope spring eternal. “Wait ‘til next year” has some meaning now, as “next year” returns almost every top ’07 performer, along with Uncle Charlie, the man who carried the team as far as it could go.
Over the past weeks we picked up a sound in a 71 year old man’s voice that we hadn’t heard for a decade. That voice that defines a franchise and mesmerizes a city had “high hopes.” And finally, going into a new year, we do too.
