Living in New York City, I don’t make it to many games at Citizen’s Bank Park, but I was in attendance on Tuesday night, for what the Inquirer’s Matt Gelb called “arguably the strangest game in the park’s history.” My night was stranger than most. Thanks to an overturned tractor trailer on the Jersey Turnpike, my bus ride to Philly took over four hours. I didn’t get to the stadium until the 5th inning, and I was in line at Tony Luke’s when the Phils’ got on the board with a run in the 6th.
Settling into my seat in left field for the start of the 7th, I figured I would at least get to catch three innings of a tight game, and enjoy a roast pork sandwich with broccoli rabe, in the process. Everything was going along as expected until Jimmy Rollins came to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the 9th, and no one on base. The way the Phils’ offense has been going, it was impossible to see what was coming next: a game-tying home run deposited into the right field seats. It was the kind of moment that has you turning to high-five complete strangers after you high-five your friends.
You probably know the debacle that ensued in the extra-innings. Ryan Howard was bogusly ejected in the 14th. After the commotion, we suddenly realized: we have no bench players left! A pitcher’s gonna play first?! Oswalt’s the best athlete, right? Sure enough, Oswalt did come into the game, but he came out to left field, right in front of our seats. We were all cheering like crazy as he jogged out to start his warm-up throws. Of course, the first batter of the inning hit a flyball into left, and Oswalt smoothly made the play. The next batter sent a flyball down the left field line and we all held our breaths as Oswalt gave chase, stopping in front of the wall as the ball went foul.
With the Phils down two in the 16th, the Astros intentionally walked Utley to get to Oswalt. As Dan Baker announced: “Now batting, LEFT-FIELDER, Roy Oswalt!”, the roughly 20,000 fans (impressively) still in the stadium started to chant, “Let’s Go, Oswalt!!!”. Of course, Oswalt grounded out to end the game. It was obviously a tough loss. Not only did the Phils burn through their pen, but they lost a game in the heat of a late-August pennant race.
But, if there’s a silver lining to take away from it, I think it will be the fans reaction to Oswalt, both when he came out to left field, and when he batted at the end of the game. It was much publicized that Oswalt was hesitant to come and play in Philly. He’s a rural Mississippi guy who was worried, for whatever reason, about coming to play in a major East Coast city. I have to think he was impressed by the fan support he got in that game, and it may have been the moment where he was both accepted by Phillie fans and where he came to realize that Philly is a pretty cool place to play. What impact that may have on his performance is impossible to say, but if it can help morale and help cement him as a part of the organization, that can’t be a bad thing. As for me, if I was going to see a loss in person, it would have been hard to pick a better one.
First of all, we need to stop playing the Astros at home late in the season when we’re in a pennant race. I remember all too well the pennant races of 2005 and 2006, both of which we lost pretty much exclusively because the Phils couldn’t win games at home against either Houston or Florida. Why is this happening again?
That is a great point, Doogan, about Oswalt. I actually heard an interview with him and he said that he’s from a town of 500 people! Five-hundred?!? That’s hard to imagine for a guy who grew up in a “small” suburb of just under 45,000.
Well, any goodwill Oswalt may have felt about playing here might be disappearing after watching this offense get swept out by his old team like that. Ugh
That ejection of Howard was total crap! A rookie ump on a powertrip might have costed us the game. First of all, he didn’t go around on that checked swing, so if the ump didn’t have an axe to grind, we might have won it in the 14th. Then, the defensive liability after the ejection (Oswalt playing LF and Ibanez playing 1B) showed in the would-be double play in the 16th that Ibanez dropped. Howard would have made that play and saved a run. So it would have been 3-2 in the bottom of the 16th with Chase up to bat with a runner on and they would have had to pitch to him because Howard would have been on deck. Instead, it was 4-2 and they could walk Utley to get to the leftfielder, Oswalt. Total crap.