In October, 2007, I had this to say about the Phillies:
As anyone who knows me well can attest, I'm a huge sports fan, but not a HUGE SPORTS FAN. I don't don jerseys or scream at the TV in sports bars, and my email address isn't 'COWBOYFAN1@hotmail.com. Then there's the Phillies. Try as I might, I just can't shake them. For as long as I can remember, a day hasn't ended between April and October when I haven't had to find the answer to the question, "Did the Phils win tonight?" More often that not, the answer has been no. As I'm sure you're aware, the Phillies recently lost their 10,000th game, the first professional franchise to do so. They've won ONE World Series in their 120-year existence. Then again, all that losing has made it easy to love the Phils. You can't get disappointed when you always expect the worst.
Jayson Stark, baseball writer extraordinaire, had this to say about the Phillies on Wednesday night."That's what baseball does. There are going to be people today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year saying, 'I was blank-blank-blank when the Phillies won the World Series.' And that's pretty cool, to have a story of wherever they were when the Phillies won the World Series: 'I was in the parking lot. I was in the stands. I was at a bar. I was having dinner. I was coming back from a trip and I couldn't see it so I listened to it in the car.' And to me, that's kind of cool, because that's what baseball does for people. I just think that's why it's so special."
Agreed.
Wednesday night, I watched on as nearly three decades of futility and frustration culminated in a moment I'll never forget, as the losingest professional sports franchise in history shook off its "chronic disappointment" tag and won the 2008 World Series.
And as Mr. Stark points out, it's the manner in which I celebrated that long-awaited moment, even more than the victory itself, that will always hold a place in my memory.
I've always idolized my older brother Mike. That's just what younger brothers do. And growing up, Mike was about as big a Phillies fan as one could be. He collected their baseball cards, sported player cut-outs on the wall of his bedroom, and fostered an unhealthy obsession with Von Hayes.
So it was only natural that at the age of eight, I would declare my life-long allegiance to the Fightins', and out of that grew a bond that Mike and I have shared ever since. We've experienced a lot since then: some great seasons, some historically awful ones, signs of promise, and of course, the back-breaking 1993 Joe Carter moment that brought the two of us to tears. The one thing we hadn't seen, of course, was a world championship.
Neither Mike nor I are the most gifted "talkers." We both prefer to keep things bottled up, and as our lives have taken various twists and turns over the decades, the "heart to heart" conversations one would expect between siblings have never really materialized. But one thing we've always been more than happy to discuss is our beloved Phils.
During the season, we talk pretty much every day; always about the Phils. This year, I think I made my first "maybe next year" call to Mike a whopping THREE games into the season, but in my defense, the Phils had dropped two straight to bottom-feeding Washington and were trailing 6-1 in the sixth inning. They would bounce back and win that game, and our confidence followed suit.
I often feel sad for Mike. It can't be easy to be the eldest of three brothers, only to watch your two younger siblings and best friends move off and start life elsewhere. Our lives have changed so dramatically since we first became mesmerized by the sound of Harry Kalas' voice. But through it all, the moves, the distance, the marraiges, the children, the medical emergencies, we've always had the Phillies to keep us close when the distractions and demands of life threatened to pull us apart. Some of my fondest memories of this summer were those nights when Mike would stop by, as I struggled with my recovery from brain surgery, and watch a couple innings of the game with me. Sure, there were other things we could, and given the circumstances, probably should have talked about. But it was always the Phils, and we were both just fine with that. It's as if we knew that some day our dedication would be rewarded, and we'd have those shared moments to look back at and cherish.
So it came to be that Wednesday night, with the Phillies poised to win the first world championship I would ever witness, I shared a table in a crowded restaurant in Denver, Colorado with none other than my brother Mike. And together we watched history.
Amazingly, this wasn't some planned encounter with the hopes of sharing the Phillies' coronation. In fact, the string of odd coincidences that had to play out in order for the two of us to make it to that table border on the unbelievable.
My brother's never been to Colorado. He'll probably never come again. The guy avoids cities like Howard Hughes avoided Port-A-Potties. But this year, this month, he had the opportunity to attend a conference in Denver for two days, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. At the time he booked it, the idea that the Phils would be one of the last two teams standing was laughable.
Even as the Phils continued to rack up wins and advance, the odds didn't look good that we'd be able to share that final pitch. First and foremost, the Phils opened the world series as heavy underdogs to the Tampa Bay Rays, a dynamic young team that had just disposed of the defending champion Red Sox. With Game 6 originally scheduled for Wednesday night, Mike and I started the series hopeful that the Phils could find a way to muster at least two wins, so we could watch them play as the series moved back to Tampa.
But then a funny thing happened. The Phils, after splitting the first two games in Tampa, ripped off two straight wins at home. And with their best pitcher on the mound on Monday night with a chance to end 28 years of misery and avoid the return trip to Tampa for Games 6 and 7, Mike and I agreed via telephone that we would happily sacrifice a chance to watch a game together to have the Phillies end this thing in five, and at home. As the Phillies proved in the NLDS and NLCS, there is something lost in clinching a series on the road. The celebration is muted and seemingly held in a vacuum, 25 men rejoicing as 55,000 shuffle out of a quiet stadium.
So as Game 5 began on a cold and wet Monday night in Philly, that was the situation Mike and I faced. Either win tonight, and watch the city of Philadelphia explode in a fit of unfettered glee, or lose, and gain the chance to watch a Game 6 on the road together.
The rest, as you know, is history. Game 5 was suspended in the sixth inning -- the first time a World Series game had ever been suspended -- and suddenly Mike and I were in the midst of a perfect storm. He was on his way to Denver, I was going to make the 3-hour drive from Aspen, and together we would watch the Phillies improbably attempt to close this thing out at home.
As Brad Lidge's final slider of a perfect season cleanly evaded the bat of Eric Hinske, two lifetimes of blind devotion were rewarded. As I reached across the table and hugged my brother Mike, I thought of all the reasons I had to be happy: starting with the simple yet undeniable fact that after what happened six months ago, I was lucky to be alive to witness it.
To see the Phillies players laughing and crying and doing the things newly crowned champions do, and to have intimate knowledge of what an unlikely occurrence it was to have this group of guys earn this moment, was also extremely gratifying.
But as I looked at my older brother, and thought back to all we've shared because of a baseball team of all things, I quickly realized that it wasn't the Phillies winning I was grateful for, it was that this team, ALL of these Phillies teams, have given me something wonderful I could share with him.
And that is what Jayson Stark meant. The Phillies could win it all again next year -- hell, for the next fifty years -- and it will never matter quite like it did on Wednesday night. Because it won't be with Mike.
