On to the Series

Philadelphia Philles: 2008 National League Champions.  It’s a beautiful thing.

As I watched the fairly easy Game 5 win, I was obviously excited, but I wasn’t completely appreciating the magnitude of this Phillie team’s accomplishment until my man Joe Buck started recounting the previous five Phillie teams to win the NL pennant.  For life-long Phillie fans, they are years that stick in your brain: 1915, 1950, 1980, 1983, and 1993.  The Whiz Kids, the Wheeze Kids, and the ’93 team that somehow never ended up with a nickname that stuck.  It’s pretty amazing to think that the ’08 group has now matched the accomplishment of those teams, even if they’ve done it with slightly less memorable characters on the team.

They’ll move on to the Fall Classic now, attempting to match the one Phillie team that stands alone above the rest: the 1980 Champs.  The silver lining in playing for (and rooting for) a team with a history of failure, is that the few teams that find success are revered for entire generations.  I was born two years after 1980, but I can name most of the 25 players on the championship roster.  I couldn’t tell you a single thing about Bake McBride, other than the fact that he was an impressively afroed member of the ’80 Phils.  As a kid, I watched guys like Lonnie Smith and Bob Walk with special interest, knowing that they too had been members of that team in ’80, even if they were young and didn’t contribute much.  Every player on the ’08 Phillies now has the chance to be entered into Phillie lore, to be a member of the team’s pantheon, and be remembered by a generation of Philadelphians and Phillie fans that aren’t even born yet.  That’s pretty cool.

The post-game on-field interview with Jimmy Rollins also brought the win into perspective for me.  As a fan, any time your team has some long-awaited success, it’s the guys that have been on the team the longest that make it that much more satisfying.  Jimmy is the leader of the team, and my favorite Phillie, and it’s great to see him with a chance to play on the stage of the World Series playing for a championship, and doing it with the Phils.  I’ve never been a huge Pat Burrell fan, but he’s grown on me this year, and it’s great that he’s here for this, after having been with the team so long.

To back away from the nostalgia for a moment, it will be interesting to see what the Phillies do with the rotation once they get to Games 3 and 4 in the Series next weekend in Philly.  My guess is that it will be Blanton in Game 3 and Moyer in Game 4, but they will have an option to consider:  Is it time to take the kid gloves off of Hamels and send him out there on three days rest in Game 4?  They’ve obviously refused to do that so far, but this is the World Series and he’s going to have six days off before his Game 1 start on Wednesday.  This would really only make sense if they are willing to pitch him on three days rest again in Game 7.  I don’t see it happening, but it’s a possibility, especially if they’re down in the series after 3 games.

As for the ALCS, I’d still rather play the Rays than the Red Sox, but it would probably be good if the Sox win Game 5 on Thursday night.  If nothing else, it would force the Rays to use James Shields (clearly their ace right now) on Saturday, making him unavailable for Game 1 of the Series, unless they throw him on three days rest.

One last concern will be the six days off for the team before they play again.  After a 7-2 tear through the first two rounds, they could lose some momentum with this long lay-off.  The Rockies and Tigers had long breaks before the last two World Series, and they ended up looking flat.  That may just be a coincidence, and there’s nothing that can be done about it, but it has to be a slight concern this week.

The concerns won’t be too great though, the Phils are World Series-bound and maybe 10 years from now, young Phillie fans will be closely following J.A. Happ for no good reason.