2012 MLB Season Preview: Philadelphia Phillies

2011 Season Review

September 30, 2007

I watch Brett Myers toss his glove into the air in celebration as the Phillies send the stupid Mets home with nothing.  I rush home on the Broad Street line to my apartment near Temple campus and watch highlights of the game while playing “We Could Be Heroes” by the Wallflowers on repeat.  When my roommates come home and ask me why I’m crying I tell them that a stray dog had come at me on my way home and I was forced to kill it with my bare hands.

They do not believe me.

October 29, 2008

My then-girlfriend yells at me amidst the post-World Series riots for reaching for the twelve pack in her hands instead of saying hello to her as we meet up in Center City.  Moments later, a man is struck in the head with a glass bottle while trying to climb a traffic light.  Everyone takes a moment to reflect on why any of this has anything to do with baseball and then we all casually flip over a news van.

November 4, 2009

Distraught after watching the Yankees win the World Series, I demand the server at St. Stephen’s Green bring me “…one of those quesadillas filled with mashed potatoes.”  Outside, several of my cohorts hatch a plan to drive to New York and burn down Yankee Stadium.  They get as far as Front Street before changing the plan so that it includes everyone going home and going to sleep.

October 23, 2010

I sit in a bar in Sacramento, CA as Ryan Howard hits a game-winning home run to send the Phillies to their third straight World Series.  I am awoken minutes later by my friends, who inform me that I have been convulsing and bleeding my nose for 20 minutes as jubilant Giants fans dance around me, celebrating Ryan’s called third strike to end the NLCS.

October 7, 2011

I watch Game Five of the NLDS with no audio on an airplane somewhere between California and Pennsylvania.  Raul Ibanez misses a lead-taking home run by two inches and I stifle a yelp of despair so unsuccessfully the air marshal grips his taser lightly.  The rest of the game is like being smothered to death by the Phillies offense.

When my brother-in-law picks me up at the airport, he asks how my flight was.  I punch him in the face.

So you see, the Phillies have been working through a slowly dropping higher standard of success, in a city so unfamiliar with the concept that it will literally rip itself apart upon the achievement of said success.

Which begs the question.  Do we really want these aging champions to dive once more through the closing window of opportunity?

Yes.  Yes we do.  And we are willing to flip over any number of news vans to prove it.