For the first time in 100 seasons, a professional sports team from the City of Brotherly Losers has been crowned a champion. On Wednesday, October 29, 2008, the Fightin' Phillies, who hadn't won the World Series since 1980, beat the Tampa Bay Rays to the relieph of millions of phrustrated phans.
(Okay, I already feel the "ph" thing has gone too ph^%*ing phar. Enuph!)
The Rays' 2008 campaign had been a sudden beam of sunshine that burst through ten years of stormy seasons, but came to a soggy end in a game that had been suspended the night before due to a horrendous downpour -- an omen that we Philly fans have learned to interpret two ways.
Was it the spiritual cleansing of 100 losing seasons (and 10,000 Ls); the gods' great catharsis before this long-awaited rebirth?
Or, as many liphers worried (okay, that's the last one. Promise. It's just that for many, being born into this world with some form of "P" on one's head can sometimes feel feels like a life-sentence.)
on the city's miserable sports record - or crying out tears of joy at the prospect that this team, any team that made its home on Broad Street, might possibly wind up a winner? Either way, this was rain so dense that no Ray could penetrate its purposeful hammering -- except, of course, for Carlos Pena driving in BJ Upton in the sixth inning of game five, leaving the Phillies faithful (yeah, that whole "ph" thing went on way to ph#%*ing long) feeling a little under the win-column weather, as the lead, and perhaps the momentum slid through their soaked fingertips.
It's happened before, to the Red Sox, the Cubs, and others who got within pitches of Series championships only to be disappointed. Why not the Phils? They seemed born to play that role. Indeed, it was in the year of my birth, 1964, that the Phillies blew a six and a half game lead with ten games to go, throwing a perfect gutter ball to and the year.
Let me offer a little testimony.
I grew up watching the Phils, Sixers, Eagles and Flyers of the 70's, who, if not for them, I might have "traded up" to being a Baltimore fan, with their equally feckless Bullets and Colts (this was long after the Unitas era), and only kept rooting for them because I was the biggest fan of their biggest fan, my dad.
He cussed and swore at a great lineage of RCAs while I was under his tutelage.
Three years ago, next month, I was in his hospital room, while Dad fought his ultimate fight, against cancer. One of the side effects of his drug treatment was, unfortunately, dementia. Dad would convulse and gesture through the night, and occasionally blurt out something mostly unintelligible. Then, I guess it was about three a.m., he raised up a bit from his reclined position and threw out his hands in a gesture of apparent disgust, and he just said, "That's Philadelphia for ya!"
It would be just like his Phils to wait until he had his own seat above the 700-level to give him something worth watching.
I'm sure he saw it all. And I'm sure that rain was no less than tears of joy pouring out from him, and countless other Phillies fans like him who couldn't seem to stay on earth long enough to witness a World Series Championship.
I'm glad he saw it.
