Well, that sure was something. And while we can spend the next five months spitting bile at all those whom we believe should be smited (smote?) from the Phillies roster (and oh, how we will do just exactly that), consider this: Your Philadelphia Phillies are, and will very likely remain to be, an historic baseball team. And their work is not even close to being over. While even we can’t believe how hackishly Philly we’re about to sound, think of it this way: The Phillies — these Phillies, whose sweat and grit and true love of the game made for some of the most exciting baseball we’ve ever seen in just this last post-season alone — are not unlike the Rocky saga. Stop rolling your eyes for a second, and bear with us. Rocky I is a meandering parable and the stuff of underdog legend. In the first film, Rock was lucky enough to be there at all; that was a kind of victory, just the heady feeling of being somewhere you’ve never been before and knowing the rest of the world is stymied at just how the hell you got there in the first place. Rocky loses, of course, but the moral is basically the same. Rocky II is more complex: Rocky is married, he’s got a kid on the way, he can’t keep his Trans Am and has to get a job carrying spit buckets, and could die if he’s seriously hurt again. There are expectations; there is a rep to uphold. It’s these kinds of complexities that the made the Phils so compelling to watch this year, in good times and bad: Lidge had a brain cloud, Ibañez and Chooch became stars, Hamels morphed into a travesty and parody of himself, Pedro came along and gave the team a sense of perspective and mortality, and Cliff Lee emerged as a full-on hero. In Rocky II, as you know, Rocky wins. And while of course the Phillies didn’t win the World Series, there are many victories to be celebrated here: The first-ever two successive NL Pennant wins for the Phils; the Mets are but a distant memory; the Phils representing to a whole new generation what post-steroidal baseball should look like; and of course, the simple fact that more people now hate the Yankees than at any other moment in American history. That’s nothing to sneeze at. So we’ll agree with what Charlie said last night: “We will be back here.” Fuck yeah we will. Bring on Mr. T.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 1:14 pm.