Fourteen Years

Fourteen years have gone by since the Phillies have had reason to celebrate like this.


It was a long wait, but this team earned it. I was debating what to name this blog entry. There were a lot of possibilities. "Phinally!", "I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so scared!", and of course "It turns out it was Billy Wagner that wasn't committed to winning." Any of them would have worked out fine.

(Side note on Wagner: He blew two saves against the Phillies this year, a team that beat his team for the playoffs by one game. In 2005, he blew two games against the Astros, a team that beat his team (the Phillies) for the playoffs by one game. Coincidence? I think not. Suck it, shithead.)

Back to the entry. Anyway, any of those titles would have been fitting, but "Fourteen Years" seems the most appropriate. You know what has happened since the last time the Phillies made the playoffs? As far as my life is concerned, pretty much everything. I was 9 in 1993. Since then I have begun and completed middle school, high school and college. 7 years of Clinton and 7 years of Dubya have gone by. 9/11. Four Yankees World Series rings. Three Patriots Super Bowl victories. Two Michael Jordan retirements. The Red Sox and White Sox won the World Series. O.J. Simpson's public image changed a little. Tupac, Biggie, mainstream hip-hop - all dead. And thats only the tip of the tip of the iceberg. In the cosmic sense, 14 years is the blink of an eye. But in the 23 year old Philadelphian sense, its a fucking eternity. It's roughly 60% of my life.

And now? Vindication. At least temporarily. My memories of playoff baseball are distant, but still relatively vivid. I remember clinching the division. I remember beating the Braves - Nails' 10th inning homer, Wild Thing's leap. And I remember the World Series - Schillings amazing performance, losing a game in which we scored 14 runs, Joe Fucking Carter. And I was happy right up until that last moment. Unbelievably happy. Happy in a way I have been only a seldom few times in my life. That happiness? It's back.


And yes, I know, the Phillies still have to get past the Rockies or the Padres. And then they would have to get past another NL team. And then they would have to beat a superior AL team. And yes, I am a realist. I do not think the Phillies will win the World Series. But I sure as hell didn't think the Cardinals were winning the World Series last year. And I didn't think the Marlins were going to win in 1997. Or 2003. (Can you believe the Florida Marlins have won two World Series? Ugh.) The thing is, anything can happen once you're in the playoffs. And the Phillies are in. And I'm ready for whatever comes next.