The Night the Phillies Died: Cubs 11, Phillies 6

smh

Mine too.

Correction accepted.

Thank-you for the reminders of our prior pessimism— and the best evidence that we may be fine.

Thanks, man. Me too!

I hear ya.

But this is my encouragement from tonight’s game:

1. 7 walks.

2. Ryan Howard hitting lasers all over the place

3. 6 runs (and 19 for the 4-game series, which isn’t burnin’ the barn down, but it is an improvement).

4. A windblown homerun (Geovany Soto thanks you, Lake Michigan!) and a couple of hits that went against us changes the game completely (11 runs would have never scored if Halladay stays in the game).

5. It’s baseball. Not every game will go our way, and even our best player/Halladay is going to get beat, especially against a talented line-up like the the Cubs. So be it.

6. Most importantly (perhaps): We scored 3 runs after getting spanked for the big 5-spot in the 7th inning. Earlier this year I think we would have seen this team roll over and die. As frustrated as I’ve gotten with this team this year, I think I actually have seen a different level of effort out of them (albeit, yes, some recent mental mistakes make me yell and scream) and the fact that I still see the team out there playing hard makes me hang in there.

And yes, the Phillies made a lot of mistakes tonight and often looked really bad doing it. But don’t forget— we just SWEPT the Reds in four games and came 1-run from splitting this series with the Cubs (which isn’t so bad).

Times like these I remember a really wonderful bartender who, I want to believe, changed things during the NLCS last year against the Dodgers. I remember sitting at the full bar with friends who were quick to lose faith when the Phillies got behind. The bartender would yell above all the voices in Coco’s bar and tell us that we weren’t believing hard enough, that we were too quick to give up, that the Phillies were a good team and we needed to quit griping and believe.

It was right after one of the these moments that Raul Ibanez hit a 3-run homer off George Sherrill.

I’m not saying that bartender, or the bar patrons, were magic. But what I think I am saying is that the Phillies, as infuriating as they have been this year, are still a good team, it’s a long season, we’re still in it, and nothing is gained by cryin’.

Let’s go get ‘em in St. Louis!!! (Blake Hawksworth, you’re our BITCH!)

rock on, Phils Phans!

Do you have a word document of pre-written responses that you consult for this stuff? I swear you have written this same thing or something a lot like it at least 100 times this season.

Without mincing words, what I am saying is that this team “getting harder and harder to watch” is directly proportional to your posts getting “harder and harder to read”.

SMFH