Baseball Hitting Home Stretch

Posted on August 22, 2008
Filed Under Chief Blogging Officer

We’re getting late into August, and people are starting to get football fever, but the baseball season is hitting the home stretch and it will be a mad dash toward the playoffs. I like watching football much more than I like to watch baseball, but I actually follow baseball more closely because I am a big fan of my favorite team.

I have to admit that I am a lifelong fan of the Philadelphia Phillies. That designation is not an easy one to bear. The Phils have been around for 126 years, and they have won a grand total of one (1) World Series. Last season, on July 25th, the Phillies accomplished the ignominious distinction of being the first professional sports franchise to lose 10,000 games. Ouch.

But they came on late last year and made an astounding run to catch the Mets and win the National League East on the last day of the season. The New Yorkers had a seven game lead over the Phillies on September 12th. Phillies historians are familiar with this type of painful collapse; they had a 6.5 game lead back on September 20th of 1964 and lost the last ten games of the season, winding up a game behind the St. Louis Cardinals.

This year the tables have turned a little bit. The Phillies had a nice lead on the Mets early in the season, but since the All Star break, their vaunted offense, led by Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard hasn’t been able to hit, and the Mets have made their move. They are 2.5 games ahead of the Phils as of this writing.

The Phillies never seem to do the things that good teams do to address their needs before the trading deadline. The Milwaukee Brewers acquired last year’s American League Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia just before the trading deadline. He’s started nine times since then. His record? 9-0 with a 1.60 ERA, and five, count ‘em, five complete games. The Brew Crew is sitting 2.5 games in front of the Cardinals for the National League Wild Card spot, and 5.5 games behind the Central Division front running Cubs, who have the best record in baseball at 78-49.

On a similar note, the Dodgers picked up Manny Ramirez from the Red Sox and their anemic offense has improved, but the Arizona Diamondbacks have won eight of their last ten and hold a slim 2 game lead over Joe Torre’s charges in the National League West.

Over in the junior circuit, the big surprise is the Tampa Bay Rays, who had the worst record in baseball on this date a year ago and are presently tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in the American League at 77-49. The two teams sit atop the Eastern and Western Divisions respectively, and the White Sox are clinging to a half game lead over the Minnesota Twins in the Central. The Red Sox and Twins are deadlocked with identical 73-54 records in the Wild Card race. The Yankees run of thirteen consecutive years in the playoffs is in serious jeopardy; they’re sitting six games behind the Beantowners and the Twins.

As for my Phillies, they have six games left against the Mets, so they have a chance to make up ground when they play head to head. If they can’t beat the Mets when it counts, well, that means that the Mets have the better team and they deserve to advance. It’s been 28 years since the Phillies won that one World Series, and to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t happen again for 28 more. But…I’m hopefully optimistic.