What A Season It Was

EL HOMBRE KNOWS SPORTS

There is always a temptation to focus on the outcome of a long journey, rather than the process of reaching the destination. If you drive for hours to watch a game, reveling in the company and discussion along the way, little of that is remembered if the contest’s outcome is dissatisfying. Over the river and through the woods is no fun – in retrospect – if the turkey is overcooked, and the eggnog is sour. No matter how much enjoyment can be found along the way, if the end doesn’t measure up, the whole production suffers.

That’s particularly true in sports. No matter how much enjoyment a team provides throughout a long, arduous season, if the odyssey doesn’t end in a championship, fans find it hard to deem the campaign a success. Think Patriots supporters remember the warm glow of 18-0, or the misery of their Super Bowl loss? Ask the folks from Oklahoma whether they think about last year’s 13-0 start or suffer nightmares of the “national title game” loss to Florida. It’s almost universal.

Winning it all is important, but sports can’t be a zero-sum game, unless you are a Pirates fan, in which case every season
is a disaster. There is one champion per sport per year. If you apply the win-it-all-or-bust theory to a 30-team league, there will be 29 sets of miserable people scattered throughout the country, with their dreams crushed week-by-week as the schedule unfolds. Or, in the case of the Browns, the minute training camp begins. For those fans fortunate enough to enjoy regular-season success, followed by playoff intensity, a win-or-bust mentality will erase any happiness created by months of relative prosperity should the trophy end up somewhere else.

It shouldn’t be that way, especially when it comes to the Phillies’ World Series loss to the Yanks. It’s right to be sad and
even a little bit angry (okay, when it comes to Brad Lidge’s meltdown in game four, mad as hell; more on that later) about the defeat, but to judge the season anything less than terrific is ridiculous. Are Philadelphia fans’ memories so short that they cannot remember the euphoria that took hold of the city after the NLCS triumph over the milquetoast Dodgers? Is it that hard to recall the sense of pride that prevailed when Cliff Lee mastered the Yankees in the first game of the World Series, in the Bronx? It remains remarkable that people who accept – and often cultivate – mediocrity in their own lives, refuse to appreciate excellence in their sports teams, even if the ultimate outcome isn’t perfectly palatable. It would have been historic and remarkable had the Phillies won a second straight Series, but they ran into a better team and couldn’t scale the final peak. For that we’re supposed to deem the season anything less than great? Come on.

Thursday night, El Hombre had a wide-ranging conversation with compadre and financial whiz Roger Ramjet. During the discourse about the Phillies and their off-season mandates, RR said something that should be remembered as fans try to put the 2009 season into perspective. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without a game to watch,” he said. There it was, crystallized in its purest form. From April until early November, the Phillies had given the city seven months of nightly enjoyment and excitement. As other Majoke League Baseball teams were rendered irrelevant one-by-one (the Nationals became meaningless in early May), the Phillies marched along, through the regular season and its highs and lows, through the playoffs and their high drama and onto baseball’s biggest stage. No matter how heartbreaking the outcome, fans cannot forget the remarkable ride. They can’t do anything but adore their heroes, even if the New York triumph ceases all ridiculous talk about “dynasties” and “greatest teams ever.” For the record, the Celtics’ 11 titles in 13 years from 1957-69 constitute a dynasty. The Yankees’ seven World Series championships from 1936-47 were dynastic. The Canadiens’ nine Stanley Cup wins from 1956-69 equaled a dynasty. The 806-year (1027-221 B.C.) Zhou rule in China, now that was a dynasty.

Anyway, the 2009 Phillies season goes into the books as giant W, despite the final shortfall. Let’s face it; as much as we wanted the Phils to knock off New York, it was rather hard to compete with the all-star laden lineup the Yanks put forth, especially with some of the small showings by previous Philadelphia stalwarts (see Hamels, Cole; Lidge, Brad; Howard, Ryan). Watching the Yankees win the World Series is like watching a rich guy buy his way out of legal trouble. There’s something antiseptic about seeing Standard Oil celebrating a stacked deck. Worse is hearing network apologists saluting the “great group of guys” and “tremendous camaraderie” the Yankees showed, when the real reason for the title was a team payroll obscene enough to generate protests from the Moral Majority.

While the Yankees plot their next move and continue to print money, the Phillies must address some questions during the off-season. In no particular order, they must find a new backup catcher (so long Paul “Master Builder” Bako), a utility infielder who doesn’t look like a Civil War re-enactor and play like a Daughter of the American Revolution, a pinch-hitter who can do more than hit one homer every Halley’s Comet sighting and a reliable middle reliever (Chad Durbin) who doesn’t find his way onto the field courtesy of some compromising photographs of the team manager and Lainie Kazan.

More important are the futures of Cole “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” Hamels and Brad Lidge, who needs to 86 the Amish beard and find his mojo. Forget about Hamels’ comments after game three of the Series. He needs to focus on developing an effective third pitch, or he’ll never be an ace again. And Lidge needs to understand that pitchers with ERAs hovering near 8.00 don’t get to pitch for contenders. That’s why the Orioles are still in business.

Answers (we hope) to all of these questions will emerge in the coming weeks and months. For now, fans should relish the memories of a tremendous season, despite the disappointing dénouement. Things may not have ended perfectly for the Phillies, but they provided the city with one helluva ride. Think about that for a while, and you might just get something more important than a championship.

Perspective.

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EL HOMBRE SEZ: People who railed about the ridiculous length of the World Series games focused on mound conversations, batters’ stepping out and various other time-wasting tactics. The real culprits were the four-minute commercial marathons that Fox unfurled between each half-inning. Add those up, and you have enough time to play five innings…U.S. skier Bode Miller has announced he will return to the slopes and take part in a “full schedule.” Of course, that means something different for him than most people in his sport. Included on the itinerary are beer pong, nightclubbing, late-night hot tub liaisons in Gstaad and maybe even some skiing…How about that Andre Agassi autobiography? There’s some strong stuff in there. Love the part about the wig. And revealing that he wore lifts to marry Brooke Shields is priceless. Could do without the information about playing while not wearing underwear, though. Now, if Gabriela Sabatini wants to write a tell-all and reveal that information, she should have at it. Now…Fox is bringing its NFL pre-game show to Afghanistan to support the troops and perhaps use Terry Bradshaw as a weapon against the enemy, but the biggest reason for the road show is that Minnesota has a bye this week, so there will be time to fill in lieu of the usual weekly posterior-polishing of Brett Favre. Undaunted by the schedule gap, espn is planning a 15-minute segment detailing Favre’s leisure-week activities, including in-depth interviews with his couch and lawnmower.

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YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? Now that the main sports season in Philadelphia has concluded, the Eagles have a chance to take the stage and capture the city’s fans – at least until pitchers and catchers report next February. A win over Dallas Sunday night would go a long way toward accomplishing that. If there is one thing that has characterized the Birds this year it has been their inconsistency. They certainly looked great trampling the overrated Giants last week, but the Cowboys are hot, and another desultory effort (Raiders, Redskins) will put the Eagles in a tough spot in the NFC East. Injuries have been a concern this year for Andy Reid’s team. So has continuity. The good news for Sunday night? Reid vs. Dallas coach Wade Phillips is a mismatch. And though it isn’t January yet, you can usually count on Tony Romo to choke it up in big games. Win this one, and the Birds’ bandwagon will be filled. Lose it, and the spring training countdown might get cranked up a couple months early.

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AND ANOTHER THING: If NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is smart, he has begun the process of investigating the allegations that Raiders coach Tom Cable physically abused his former wife and girlfriend. And should Goodell find compelling evidence that Cable did indeed hit them, he should be fired. Goodell has been hard on players who have broken the law and acted inappropriately, and he cannot back down on Cable, if the coach indeed struck the women. There is no room for that kind of behavior in society, and there should be no tolerance for it in the NFL. We heard all about the need to preserve the league’s image when Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress, Tank Johnson and Pac-man Jones were being disciplined, and rightly so. The league’s image is at stake in this situation, also. If Cable did it, he must go. That’s all there is to it. Goodell needs to find out what has happened and act quickly, or his credibility as a law-and-order commissioner will take a hit, and the NFL will look like an organization that condones physical abuse of women.

-EH-