I was walking to my job in midtown Manhattan today wearing my Cliff Lee jersey (a nice button-down job, although it has a somewhat incongruous "2008 World Series Champions" patch on the sleeve) when someone--a Yankees fan, presumably--called out to me on the street. "Hey! We got you next! Yeah, kid, Game One in South Philly!" (Apparently he missed the All-Star Game this season). I smiled and responded "See you there," and as I walked the rest of the way to my building, I couldn't stop thinking "Wow, this is gonna be a fun World Series."
One problem with all this: Apparently you have to win four games in the NLCS to get to the World Series these days, and lest we forgot, the Phillies have won just two so far, with up to four games still to go. I'm feeling confident, you're feeling confident, Cliff Lee and Ryan Howard are definitely feeling confident, and we all should--the Phils positively embarrassed the Dodgers last night with their dominant 11-0 performance, packing all the hitting, pitching, fielding and swagger-ing that we have come to expect from our defending champion team. With last year's CS win over the Dodgers in our back pocket, and last year's post-season stalwart Joe Blanton taking the hill tonight, you'd have to be pretty damn cynical to not have a little bounce in your step going in to Game Four.
But consider this. 18 times this season, the Phillies scored in the double-digits of runs. In the games following ten of those instances, the Phils scored three runs or less. The offense appears to be clicking on all cylinders, but we were also going up against a rusty Hiroki Kuroda and an over-extended Dodgers pen. Meanwhile, LA starter tonight Randy Wolf has been the very model of level-headed consistency for the Blue this season, going at least five innings in all but one of his starts this season, and only three times giving up five or more runs (all way back in June). And of course, he's also an ex-Phillie, and if any of us had forgotten about our departees' nagging tendency to burn our boys upon their return, we were certainly reminded of them with Vicente Padilla's super-quality start against us in game two of this series.
Still, though we should all remain cautious with our optimism, we all have to feel pretty good about where we are right now. At the very least, we have a not-so-secret weapon to unleash on the Dodgers tonight, with two-way threat Mashin' Joe Blanton hitting in the nine-spot (we presume--possible that Charlie has moved him above Feliz in the batting order, for obvious reasons). Game four of the NLCS, coming up on TBS at 8:00 tonight. No live blog on the Level tonight, unfortunately, but please comment to your heart's' content.
And if you're going to the game tonight, get your steroids and avocado-related chants ready. We certainly want to be able to hear them over the announcers' blathering.
Original Story:
http://www.the700level.com/2009/10/20...
