April 10, 2000: Phillies vs. New York Mets

My support of the Phillies renewed, I eagerly counted down the days to the 2000 season.

I even bought a magazine that previewed the new season in the form of one-page breakdowns for all 30 major league teams, and I read it cover to cover. I was aware that despite my great knowledge of baseball, I still didn’t know it well enough to converse about it at length with my peers at school. My window on that potential boost to my popularity was nearly closed, with high school graduation just two months away, but my recent acceptance to Penn State University earned me a new and much bigger group to impress.

My dad still came first as far as attending games was concerned, and we crossed off another wish list item when we acquired tickets for the Phillies home opener, my first game at the Vet in nearly five years. We didn’t know quite what we were in for.

In my eyes, the Phillies’ biggest rivals were the Atlanta Braves, but that probably stemmed from my own hatred of the perennial division winners, and their fans’ insufferable and racially offensive Tomahawk Chop. I know now that the Mets are the main foe by simple proximity. Philadelphia, Boston and basically the entire state of New Jersey constantly deal with living in New York City’s shadow.

We entered a fog of tension that engulfed all of Veterans Stadium. Thousands of Met fans made the trip down the New Jersey Turnpike, and Philly fans expressed extreme displeasure of their presence in a variety of ways. My dad and I could hear the noisy taunts all around us, and more than once, we saw security guards leading the worst offenders out of sight.

The guards couldn’t respond fast enough to two different groups of Phillies and Mets idiots (they don’t deserve the label of fan) who leapt onto the field between the sixth and seventh innings to pummel each other into the Astroturf, an effective weapon against any enemy as I learned the previous December. It was impossible to believe in that moment that my dad and I shared anything in common with those mindless barbarians.

This was the first time I felt ashamed to be a Philadelphia fan, and given our general reputation, I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I admit that I get a little too critical and worked up at times, but I feel fortunate that on the whole, my dad raised me to be a respectful fan. If given the opportunity, we would have both personally apologized to the Phillies for the selfish acts of those brawlers, who not only behaved without regard to the people around them, but also disrupted the game.

The contest on the field was pretty wild as well, though it only got physical once when Phillies bench player Kevin Sefcik collided with the Mets’ Mike Piazza at home plate. A total of 16 runs crossed the plate in the game, all before the sixth inning.

New York scored four times off Paul Byrd in the first (the exact opposite of what occurred at the previous Phillies game I attended, also against the Mets), but Philly batted around in the bottom of the second, taking a 5-4 lead. The Phillies rebounded a second time in the fifth after the Mets retook the lead with three runs in the top half. Philly had already knotted the game at 7 when catcher Mike Lieberthal stepped to the plate with two outs and a man on. As he had done so many times the year before, Lieby launched a two-run shot to put his team in front to stay. It was his first bomb of the season, and the only one in the game.

I still wrestle with deciding between Bobby Abreu and Lieberthal as my favorite player from this era. Lieberthal was the new Darren Daulton, and he had proven as much in 1999 with an All-Star performance. He played a career-high 145 games behind the dish (earning his only Gold Glove award) and hit .300 with 31 home runs and 96 RBI. He would never achieve that kind of production again, but he remained a presence in the lineup and behind the plate for several more years, and contrary to Abreu, he was well liked by the fans.

The Phillies’ win jump-started a week full of excitement for me. I attended my senior prom, as well as a Boys and Girls Club scholarship award presentation. That organization, which my dad helped me join to avoid the dangerous streets of our neighborhood, played a pivotal role in my development as a youth, even on the baseball diamond with two years of T-ball.

The Phillies, meanwhile, beat the Mets again the following night to reach .500 (4-4) for the only time during the 2000 season. I eventually allowed my social life and preparations for college to occupy my time, as it was clear the Phillies were going down, not up. Their two newest recruits failed to deliver. In fact, Mike Jackson didn’t throw a single pitch in 2000 due to a bad shoulder. In the lineup and the starting rotation as a whole, only Abreu, Doug Glanville, Robert Person and Randy Wolf avoided serious injury or trade in 2000, and the Phillies languished in last place for all but 10 games.

Realizing their fate, the Phils traded away their last tie to the 1993 team, Curt Schilling*, at the end of July. He was finally rewarded for his great talent by winning the World Series, once with the Arizona Diamondbacks and twice with the Boston Red Sox. He joined ’93 teammates Mariano Duncan (’96 Yankees) and Daulton and Jim Eisenreich (both ’97 Florida Marlins) as the only players to get a ring after leaving the Phillies. Given how much joy and excitement they brought their fan base, they all deserved a taste of ultimate glory.

 

*Mickey Morandini also played for the Phillies in 2000, but he spent the previous two seasons with the Chicago Cubs. After being traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in early August, Morandini retired at the end of the season. I saw the writing on the wall in this game. During the eighth inning, I ventured down to the 200 level of Veterans Stadium to get a closer look at the action. I arrived just in time to see Morandini get picked off first base. The look of panic on his face as the first baseman's glove swiped across his diving hand seemed to say, "Oh man. I think I'm getting too old for this."

July 10, 1993: Phillies vs. San Francisco Giants

My father lit the spark of my interest in baseball, but the 1993 Phillies fueled the flames.

We all like to pretend that we are not fair weather fans. We support our team no matter what, but the truth remains that when “our guys” are winning, we cheer louder, we pay more attention and we are much more willing to spend some of our hard-earned money to attend their games.

What made the ’93 Phillies such a great team to watch was that no one saw them coming. The squad didn’t include a single superstar; just a bunch of scruffy, mullet-wearing goofballs. Hell, their highest paid player was their closer, Mitch Williams, who was the wildest and bushiest of them all.

My dad and I watched in awe from the very beginning, as the Phillies swept their opening series and jumped out to a 9-3 start. They carried that .750 winning percentage into mid-May, and I remember thinking that this team was really something special following a win on Mother’s Day when Mariano Duncan slugged a game-winning grand slam against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Speaking of my dear old mother, not even she nor my sister could avoid the Philly fever gripping the region, so they joined my dad and I for our first game of the year against the San Francisco Giants.

I paid close attention to this four-game series because to this point in the season, the Giants were the best team in baseball. They also had the best player, moody superstar Barry Bonds, who would go on to swipe his third Most Valuable Player award in four years. In our eyes, this was the Phillies’ biggest test of the season and gave us a look at how they might stack up against a postseason opponent.

We went to the third game of the series, and the ugliness of the first two games didn’t fill us with confidence. San Francisco dropped a few touchdowns on the Phils, outscoring them 28-10 (the only bright spot being rookie Kevin Stocker’s first major league home run the day after getting called up to the bigs).

If the boys in red pinstripes were going to right the ship, they would have to battle both the Giants and the elements. The two lopsided losses had mercifully taken place at night, but this Saturday game took place in the afternoon on the hottest day of the year.

I will never forget how my mom brought a cooler full of ice into Veterans Stadium. She insisted we rub our arms and face with ice cubes throughout the game to stay cool. Thinking back, I’m sure sunscreen would have provided better protection for our skin, but when you’re 10 years old, mother always knows best.

The beginning of the game featured an exciting back-and-forth. The Giants scored a run in the first and two in the second, but the Phillies matched them each time. Philly left fielder Milt Thompson provided the early fireworks with a rare two-run shot. The celebration in the crowd was brief, however, when it was discovered that the ball hit a young girl in the head. She had to leave the stadium with her parents, but from what I remember, she wasn’t seriously injured and had a story to tell for the rest of her life, I’m sure.

The Phillies brought back the smiles with a run in the bottom of the sixth, taking their first lead of the entire series. The lead would stick thanks to an incredible moment that also remains a humorous one between my parents and I.

Wes Chamberlain had taught me two years earlier that even the little guy could be a hero. They didn’t come much smaller than Mickey Morandini.

The lanky, second baseman would emerge as one of Philly’s better hitters in the mid-1990s, but to this point, his only claim to fame was an unassisted triple play in 1992 (amazingly, one of his three victims was Bonds, who was in his last year as a Pittsburgh Pirate).

The left-handed hitting Morandini stepped to the plate with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth. The way he always choked up on the bat, he needed the fattest of pitches to drive the ball, but he must have gotten one. All of a sudden, I saw the small, white dot fly over the right-field fence just inside the foul pole for a game-changing grand slam.

Everyone in Veterans Stadium lost their minds, except for my poor father. A few minutes before Morandini’s blast, he had succumbed to the call of nature. When he returned to us, befuddled by the sudden change in score, we gleefully told him what happened, adding salt to his wound with a, “We can’t believe you missed that!”

When my mom and I bring this up with knowing smiles on our faces, my dad always beats us to punch. “Yeah, I know. I was in the bathroom.”

There was every reason to believe we were good luck charms for the Phillies that day. It was the only game in the four-game set that they won, and the only one in which the Giants didn’t score in double digits.

Bonds particularly faltered in our presence. He went 0-for-3, got thrown out at home plate and dropped a foul ball. We had a great view of that miscue from our seats along the left-field line. The seats weren’t anywhere near the field, but my dad and I pretended Bonds could hear our taunts.

Looking back, the best thing about this win was that it came from the unlikeliest of sources. Between the two of them, Thompson and Morandini amassed a grand total of seven homers during the 1993 season. By comparison, Pete “Inky” Incaviglia (a fellow platoon outfielder with Thompson) deposited eight noggin nailers into the stands in the month of August alone.

Despite all the magic we witnessed that day, it came as no surprise to me. Though there was plenty of season left, I had bought into this team. However it happened, they were going to win.

Even if it meant forcing Dad out of the room whenever the Phils loaded the bases.