YOU KNOW WHY I LOVE THE PHILLIES? Because they hurt so good. Just when you think you've seen it all -- as Harry and Whitey used to say in disbelief at least once a week years ago -- something happens that no one has ever seen before. For instance, I've never seen an individual Phillies batter get hit by a pitched ball three times in a single game. And I saw that yesterday in the top of the seventh inning when Mets reliever Scott Schoeneweis plunked Chase Utley in the back -- Utley's third hit batsman notation on the scorecard --with the New York Mets leading 2-0 in their last home opener at Shea Stadium. Until today the Phiilies had never beaten the Mets during a home opener in Queens.

What happened next is, well, pillow talk between Phillies fans and the devil they sold their souls to win this game against all the odds. With the bases loaded and one-out, Ryan Howard bounced a soft grounder to first for an inning-ending double play -- EXCEPT! -- Mets first baseman Carlos Delgado threw the ball into Chase Utley's back (his FOURTH hostile ball bruise of the game) as Utley headed to second. The ball skittered into right field and instead of being out of the inning with a two run lead, the Mets were now tied 2-2 with the Fightin's who end up winning 5-2, breaking the Shea Opening Day curse while arriving at .500 for the first time this young season.

Four-four seems a pleasant plateau after a first week that promised so much less. On opening day at the Bank, the Phillies rallied late to tie the game against the Nats only to see Flash Gordon pitch like Ming the Merciless Mets Fan. When your closer gives up five runs in the ninth inning, Phillies fans tend to become ill tempered and impatient, if not actual al Queda terrorist operatives. In game two of the Nationals series, Cole Hamels one run surrendered was enough to decide the outcome. On the following afternoon during a Businessperson Special the Phils fell behind 6-1 to the Potomac pests, and the home crowd was in danger of beginning a spontaneous chant of "Give us Barrabbas!"

And then. . .and then. . .baseball happened. It was 7-7 going into the bottom of the 10th. And when Jayson Werth walked with the bases loaded on four pitches for the Phillies first win of the season, there was something in the air that you could identify as hard core Philly addytood. Just look at the body language of those fans (photo above) ACTUALLY DARING the National's ill-fated reliever to throw a freakin' strike, for crying out loud. Oh, yeah, baby. It's going to be a long and bumpy season. And the homeboys and homegirls are amped to the max.

And this is only April.

Continue reading "CAN'T ANYBODY HERE PLAY THIS GAME EVEN WEIRDER" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 08:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

EVERYWHERE IN THIS FAVORED LAND the sun is shining bright, everywhere bands are playing and every heart is light. Everywhere men are laughing and everywhere children shout. There is even joy in Mudville because not one Phillie has yet struck out.

We should know better, you and I, than to get pumped up on opening day of the baseball season. But after a century and a quarter of opening days, Phillies fans have acquired the instincts of lemmings hurling themselves off a cliff into a raging sea of 162 games where all Phillies teams have drowned except one in 125 years.

I've just finished a sobering new book called "The Rise and Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team's Collapse Sank a City's Spirit" by Mitchell Nathanson, a lifelong Phillies fan and an associate professor at Villanova Law School. It should be required reading for every fan who forgets the Phillies past and is doomed to repeat the heartbreak of every Phillies season except its single championship in 1980.

The book chronicles the history of Philadelphia and professional baseball through the prism of a nine ninning game played in October 1977, Game Three of the National League playoffs in what would be instantly enwreathed in the hearts of Phillies fans as Black Friday.

It was a "you had to be there" day at Veterans Stadium that never shook with the lung power of fans like it did in the bottom of the second inning when Phillies fans literally hooted Dodgers pitcher Burt Hooton into walking in three bases-loaded runs. A stadium that was never so silent as the bottom of the ninth after the inexplicable disaster that unfolded in the top of the inning.

It was like watching the two-week collapse of the 1964 Phillies take place in a matter of 20 minutes. You who are too young to remember are born with this dreadful losing Phillies DNA in your baseball fan genetic makeup, like a renegade gene to some fatal disease where the odds are 125-to-one against.

The books's unlikely thesis is that "the city of Philadelphia is a baseball town that passionately hates its baseball team." That may sound strange in the era of the feel-good young Phillies coming off a division-winning season.But we're talking about a franchise that made headlines in 1923 for arresting an 11-year-old boy who refused to return a foul ball. The kid spent the night in jail and was charged with larceny, until a judge released him with a stern lecture to the Phillies management. The Phillies made baseball history by establishing the right of a fan to keep a foul ball.

And our Fightin's made history of a sort today when tied 6-6 in the ninth inning our closer Tom Gordon gave up four of the five runs our bullpen would allow in an 11-6 loss that would be the first of 2008. God, I love being a Phillies fan. It hurts so good.

Continue reading "No one ever said it was easy to be a phillies fan" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THERE WERE NO TEARS or groans in the DeLeon house when the Phillies dream died early yesterday morning. Dad was the only one still awake a little after 1 a.m. when in the ninth inning Harry Kalas almost sighed, "The Phillies are now down to their last strike."

Continue reading "Feeling good while feeling really really bad" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 10:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

TELL THAT LITTLE GIRL that the Phillies have no chance. Go ahead, I dare you. When I saw her last Saturday outside Citizens Bank Park, I had high hopes just like she did that the Phillies would win that day. They didn't. But they did the next day to clinch the division. And now we face another must-win game in Colrado Saturday night. And, well sir, to summon the words of my departed pal Tug McGraw, "Ya gotta believe!"

Continue reading "Oops there goes another Rockie Kerplop!" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 03:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THE LAST TIME the Phillies played in the World Series in October 1993 a blimp flew over Center City on a particularly colorful sunset. Back then, I thought I'd see skies as beautuful as this this as frequently as I'd see the Phillies in the championship game. Unfortunately, I was right. I haven't seen either since.

Continue reading "Purple mountains majesty" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

WHY DO WE CARE? That is the question? 'Tis not about outrageous fortune, or slings and arrows. It's about the Phillies. Our Phillies. Our team.

Alas, poor Yorick. I know them well. And they have cut out my heart and stomped on it so many times, I scant believe I have a heart left. What should be a flat spent bladder of blood still beats. And yet why? How?

Continue reading "Alas, poor Yorick, we're Phillies fans" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)