I feel like the worlds against me, Lord

Call me crazy,

But strangely,

I love the odds

- Jay Z

photo credit: David Maialetti via Philly.com

Right
now, with fireworks going off around my neighborhood (at least I hope they’re
fireworks), with a dead battery in my phone and with my Philadelphia Phillies
four wins away from a chip, well, it’s hard to do anything but let the moment
wash over.  I feel as speechless as Ryan Howard, who answered Ken Rosenthal’s questions with a grin that seemed to cover the ravine and the happy truth that the Phillies are going to the World Series.

And how.

The game started perfectly: 
Jimmy Rollins taunted the Dodgers’ young arm, making Chad Billingsley
throw pitch after pitch after pitch before he finally gave into the reigning
MVP (don’t tell me you forgot) and Rollins took the series into the right field
stands – can’t be no punk against
Philly either, I suppose.  From there it
was time.  Right from the jump during the
bottom half of the first Hollywood
- the other reigning MVP – let it be
known that the same fate wouldn’t befall him as his counterpart.  Billingsley was green … Hamels might be
young, but Hamels didn’t show it – the Dodgers went down quietly. And then it was on.

Actually, for one of the Phillies, the game started perfectly before that.  Last night, hours before game five, Geoff Jenkins‘ first baby boy was born – he named it Justyce Jenkins (with a name like that I’m guessing he can already hit the ball further than we can) and the little guy has never seen a loss.

I was talking to my buddy Nick before the game and he said
something like, “I just have that Philadelphia
feeling, like this is too good, like something is going to go wrong.  We can’t win, we’re not supposed to.” 

He asked me if I knew what he meant.

I did. Of course I did. I remember Carter and I remember Barber. I remember Shaq and I remember Creed.  We want the perfect beginning because we know the perfect ending is supposed to belong to someone else.  We watch the Superbowl but getting exciting for the draft, we root for the NL in the Series, but care more about Spring Training.  We’re not supposed to win, and I got that. But, for the first time I can remember as a Philadelphia fan, at the same time I didn’t.  I’ve watched this Phillies team, I’ve been with this Phillies team, and, for some reason, I kinda believe in this Phillies team.  I know I shouldn’t, and part of me wants to expect another loss, but I didn’t have it in me – this team was better than the team they were playing, the fact that they weren’t supposed to win made that all the more obvious.

That was the thing, this Phillies team deserved this
victory, they deserve to go to the World Series. So yes, we made a couple “DeWitt
for MVP” or “Furcal is the new Chick Gandi” jokes along, but in the end the
Phillies beat a team that the experts (if not our experts) expected them to
lose to.  And they did it the right way.

The did it with starting pitching – Hamels is on the fast
track to becoming Stairsian, if he isn’t already – and they did it with the
type of timely hitting that has eluded this team for as long as anyone can
remember.  They did it with their stars,
who finally broke through, and they did it with their Stairs.  They did it with Bait Burrell, who had to wait all these years to get here, and they did it
with Joe Blanton, who wasn’t CC Sabathia.  And
because of all of that they’re headed to the World Series.

What will happen there? Who knows?  We have a week to figure
that out, and Lord knows we’ll use it all.  For now?
The Philadelphia Phillies have won the Pennant. Which means game five ended perfectly too.  And that is another perfect beginning.

It’s a New World people.

Good Night. All around.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 1:22 am and is filed under About Last Night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.