The Phaithful

Our local sports media always believed in the Phillies — didn't we?


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Published: Oct 22, 2008

"experts"

In Philadelphia sports, something is supposed to go wrong. Our draft picks hate us, our captains are concussed and our quarterbacks can't win that last game. Our stars are flawed and our role players misplaced. Hell, even our victories are mostly moral — the year the Eagles stopped Emmitt Smith twice on his own 29, he ended up with a championship; and Rocky, our fictional hero, lost in the only movie that mattered.

We've internalized this. (An Indiana University researcher once showed that when Indiana teams won, avid fans actually grew more confident that they could get dates — their self-worth was directly tied to the success of their teams. Given that, it's amazing that any two native Philadelphians have ever found themselves together.) And our media has come to embody the tone, nit-picking, critiquing, forever predicting doom and gloom.

But these Phillies have been different. A hard-working bunch like this, with top-shelf talent and supporting members who actually seem to know their roles — surely, even our town has been with them from the get-go, right? Let's look back.

Spring Training

"This year, tell Jimmy Rollins we're the team to beat," Mets center fielder Carlos Beltran told the media at the beginning of the season. The media believed him. The Phillies weren't supposed to win the pennant, they were supposed to finish third ... in the National League East. That's where four out of five ESPN experts had the Phillies pegged, just like Yahoo Sports and Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA rankings. And all of that was actually kinder than Prospectus' Joe Sheehan, who foresaw just 80 wins for our home team: "The idea that they're the favorite in the division is addled," he wrote. Hell, even our preview quoted an expert proclaiming the Mets "the clear favorites." The local guys tended to eschew hard-line predictions, but the national media had set the tone — the Phillies were not going to thrive this year.

June Slump

By June, the Phillies were off to a better start than in any other year of the Charlie Manuel era. But local columnists were calling for blood.

Mid-month, the Phillies faced interleague play, and the results were not pretty. In 12 games against the American League, the Phils managed just three wins. Worse, they scored two or fewer runs seven times during the stretch. The Phillies' supposedly feared offense had abandoned them, and the pundits attacked. The Daily News' Bill Conlin called the lineup "moribund"; Jim Salisbury of The Philadelphia Inquirer was convinced that the team was "[not] capable of winning the World Series"; the Daily News' Rich Hofmann believed that the Phillies needed to make a move but didn't have the pieces to do it; and Kevin Cooney of the Bucks County Courier Times proclaimed the Phillies "not a team on a world championship level."

This Phillies squad was incapable of winning the World Series. A two-week stretch in June had proven it.

Brett Myers Implodes

The Phillies started July in first place, but the response to the team didn't get any better when Brett Myers, the opening day starter and alleged ace of the staff, was sent down to the minor leagues. The Inquirer's Bob Ford claimed that Myers would never be a starter again, and Jack McCaffery of the DelCo Times opined that the team was not "collapsing now. They've collapsed."

The Phillies finished the month in first place.

Trade Deadline

At the end of July, the trade deadline came and went with the Phillies making only one move: the addition of Joe Blanton and his 5-12 record. Jim Salisbury said the team "needed more," and chided them for being cheap when they were just "one frontline starter away" from contending. ESPN proclaimed that the Phillies would struggle to catch the Mets (whom the Phillies were still ahead of in the standings).

Final Push

Being in first place was never enough to stanch the steady flow of criticism, but it did at least stem the tide. Second place? Well, in the middle of September the Phillies fell three games behind the Mets, and the fight for best eulogy was on. Ford said "shame on" the Phillies for not adding the piece they would need to get to the playoffs, and the Inquirer's Phil Sheridan wondered whether the team was scared or just bad (he concluded it was both). The Daily News' Sam Donnellon said the pitching had suffered a "meltdown," and I said that Manuel didn't understand the current game. The Inquirer's John Gonzalez wrote that the team didn't have the makeup to win, and CSN analyst Mitch Williams declared, with no caveat or hesitation, that Cole Hamels was not an ace. Even the usually even-keeled Mike Sielski, a PhillyBurbs.com columnist, declared the Fightins finished.

The team won the division by three full games.

Playoffs

In October, even as the local columnists were (by and large) coming around to the Phillies, the national media came swarming back to town and tried to knock the team off its perch. When the NLDS began, not one of ESPN's 18 experts picked the Phillies to make the World Series. After the Phillies won the first round, national writers, enthralled with the idea of a Manny-against-the-Red Sox World Series, overwhelmingly picked the Dodgers to knock them off.

And Now ...

Today, with both the city and local media behind the Phillies, perhaps we can break away from the city that seems to always — and maybe unfairly — assume the worst. Maybe it's time to acknowledge that this Phillies team might actually have the parts it needs to bring home a chip. For once, let's stop thinking about how the city is doomed, and accept a team littered with stars and Stairs, with guys who have earned a championship and guys who deserve one, with a team that has proven itself both lucky and good — a team that can win the World Series.

Until then? Rays in six.

(e.james.beale@citypaper.net)