Phillies formal welcome to Joe Girardi a late-day gut punch
By Rick Soisson
The Philadelphia Phillies finally welcomed their first-year manager Joe Girardi in a way all too familiar to those in the know about the local sports scene.
Some Phillies fans probably scratched their heads at the title above. Wait, they likely thought, Joe Girardi’s been here since this weird season began, even in spring training. Didn’t he have one of those news conferences where he said nice things about Philadelphia’s passionate fans, and his new challenge, and like that?
Other Phillies fans probably “got” the title immediately. They knew Girardi hadn’t really been welcomed to Philadelphia’s sports scene until he had undergone what he endured on Sept. 22. A few may not have immediately recognized that this was the day Girardi experienced – truly experienced – a Philadelphia late-season collapse with no self-initiated remedy possible.
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That day the Phillies played a COVID double-header against the World Champion, last-place Nationals. For days Girardi’s new team had barely hung onto a Wild Card spot for the playoffs, seeming to bravely produce just enough wins despite the rash of injuries that hit the club in September.
That day the Phillies lost game one of the DH because of some unfortunate outfield defense, including two errors by a rookie overall-number-one draft pick and Bryce Harper’s first error of the season. They lost game two in their regular manner this season, with a dreadful bullpen performance.
The second loss dropped the Phillies two slots below the eighth and final seed for the playoffs and pushed the team into a position of needing help from others to make the playoffs.
It was as though someone firmly pushed Girardi’s head underwater in the deep end of the pool: “Welcome to Philly, Joe. Now you’re one of us.”
His star catcher, J.T. Realmuto, said the situation was “like a bad dream.” So was one of Realmuto’s hips, which had kept him out of several games before the 22nd.
The manager himself made a somewhat shell-shocked pronouncement: “We have to fight out of it starting tomorrow. And we’ve got to win games. That’s the bottom line. Now we have to rely on other people. And we have to win games.”
Oh, the Phillies weren’t mathematically eliminated. They could still back into the playoffs, which would be fitting for a team that has somehow managed to play .500 baseball for three seasons in a row. But just for good measure, there was a small note in the morning paper in Philadelphia on Sept. 24, an off-day for the Fightin’s before their season-ending series against the AL East Champion Rays.
That note said Greg Bird, who had been signed Sept. 15 as insurance against an injury to Rhys Hoskins, ran into a positive COVID test at his entrance physical, and thus, was not included on the playoff 40-man squad.
Inquirer.com didn’t even bother to include in an update about that to the digital version of the article.
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So, yeah, now you’re one of us, Joe. And we’ve all been gut-punched. The only remaining question is: Who will pay for this?