Things have been going good for the Phillies lately. Like, real good. Like we've just won our last four games, and 19 of our last 22. Like our leadoff hitter has officially rebounded from his season-long slump, and our ace just looked the most like one that he had all season last night. Like we've turned around our once-dismal home record to a winning one in matter a couple of weeks. Like our three-four-five hitters have proven to be the most formidable middle-of-the-lineup combo in the league, with a two and a six who ain't too shabby either. Like we just acquired a pitcher who's one year removed from one of the best seasons in 21st century baseball, and didn't have to give up any of our top guys to get him. Yes, things have been going good for the Phillies lately--so good that I almost wonder sometimes if the baseball gods are starting to feel like we're poking them in the ribs just a little.
Personally, I'm on such a high now that I'm just about ready to hit the fast forward button on this season and pick things back up in October. But then I also remember that there's still a long stretch of baseball to go, that just a month ago we looked about as bad as we look good now, that the Marlins and Braves haven't fallen out of the discussion just yet, and that as recent years have proven, a seven-game lead in August isn't yet cause enough to start popping champagne--especially with a bullpen situation as currently volatile as ours, with a couple of our top guys out, and a few others still behaving on the vulnerable side. So I say we keep up the intensity and excitement until (hopefully) that magic number dwindles all the way down to zero--and then for the rest of the season after that just to be on the safe side.
Tonight might just be another game on the schedule--a relatively unsexy duel between our man J.A. Happ and the Diamondbacks' Yusmeiro Petit down in Arizona--but I know I'm as excited for it as any other game we've had this year. I want to see if our boys can continue to earn the swagger they've cultivated over the season thusfar--the kind of swagger that allows us to go make a deal for one of the best pitchers in the American League, just because we have the will and the resources to do so. Among the buyers and sellers in the baseball hierarchy, the Phillies are now officially buyers. And I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind keeping it that way for the foreseeable future.
9:40 first pitch from the desert. Let's go Phils, damn it.
Original Story:
http://www.the700level.com/2009/07/pr...
3
1
