Well, I am admittedly a little late with the news, but do not doubt that I lived the ups and downs of a phan in the first week of this holy month of October. I could go into the exhilaration of seeing Jimmy Rollins' early season "team to beat" comment come true in the east on the last day of September, or the humbling fall back to earth after the red-hot Rockies' 3 game post-season sweep; but after all this time, what I wish to relay to the reader is the coming together of that mixture of emotions on October 11, just before Colorado's first NLCS game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Just minutes before the game started on television, I fell into a funk that I was not expecting to come on. All through the last days of summer I had been fearing baseball withdrawal - or, rather, Phillies withdrawal. And I thought I was lucky to have avoided it, as bland as the feeling was after the defeat by Colorado. But it hit me last Thursday evening, and as the opening of the Rockies/Diamondbacks game showed clips of the Phillies defeat, I found myself utterly unable to watch Colorado battle on.
Oh, how I hated that team at that moment. Suddenly, their underdog status, their young players, their uphill battles against the giants of baseball, all fell to the wayside. All I could think of were my beloved players in red pinstripe, of whom I think I've spoken quite dearly on this very blog. I wondered if Carlos was already back in Panama. I wondered if I'd see Aaron Rowand in our colors again. I thought about looking over our balcony for the next six months and seeing blackness in the evenings where the Citizens Bank Park lights had been. All this came out in a little tantrum, and yes, I cried. I mourned. I realized that while I had feared an offseason of no baseball, what was lonelier was the postseason without the Phillies.
But this last 2007 baseball season entry can only end on an up note, for - at the close of all this - it is not even an option to cement into writing any memory or feeling other than the pride to have known a team that played hard, honest ball, and came out on top in their division. After all, I was there the whole season, from the freezing opening series, to an hour-long rain delay against Chicago, to the ubiquitous white rally towels in the last week of September. While the citizens of Philadelphia have waited 14 years for this Phillies victory, I was lucky enough to be welcomed with it in my first year in the city. And there could not have been a better team to help me settle into baseball in a new place. Rollins, Howard, Utley. Hamels, Kendrick, Moyer. Carlos.
You are the 2007 NL East Champs, and don't think I'd ever forget it.
