WHEN JIMMY ROLLINS AND THE PHILLIES return from this disastrous west coast road trip, he'd be prudent to remember the sign that greeted the 1964 Phillies when they returned from their final road trip of the season, where the Fightin's won two in a row against the Cincinnati Reds to finish the season one game out of first place.
Unfortunately those two victories had been preceeded by ten straight losses that dropped the Phillies out of a six-game lead in the National League pennant race with 12 games remaining -- a collapse that seemed to play out in slow motion as it seared the soul of every little boy and girl and man and woman in the city of Philadelphia.
When the Phillies arrived home that Sunday night on a charter flight that taxied to a remote corner of airport, there was a crowd of fans waiting to greet them. From the windows the players could read a sign held up by one of the mob: "Give Us Barabbas!" As the players prepared to step off the plane one of the Phillies said, only half in jest, "Run out in groups of three. That way they can't get us all with one burst."
JRoll would do well to heed that advice when he trots out to his now fortified bunker at shortstop when the Phillies open their first home stand since free falling out of first place like an anvil without a parachute following Rollins appearance on ESPN where he dropped the "F bomb" on Philadelphia baseball fans. The problem with Phillies fans, said the 2007 National League MVP, is that we're "frontrunners."
And just to underscore what kind of baseball club frontrunning fans root for, Rollins and his first-place teammates promptly lost four in a row to the Dodgers to launch a 1-6 road trip to California that vaulted the Phillies into second place to end the week two games behind the smirking New York Mets.
Frontrunners? Us? Oh, like we've had lots of practice rooting for our first place baseball team. Let's see, last year Phillies fans had, what -- one whole day? -- to wallow in the luxury of being frontrunning fans when the Phillies won the National League East on the final day of the season before being swept by the Colorado Rockies in the first postseason baseball game played in Philadelphia since Mitch Williams didn't need liposuction.
There are Phillies fans entering college in September who have never seen their team play in a World Series. There are 30-year-old fathers who drop a couple of hundred bucks to take their kids to a baseball game at Citizens Bank Park to root for a team those same fathers aren't old enough to remember the last time -- the only time --the Phillies won it all.
Jimmy, you can take that frontrunner comment and do what Tug McGraw said New York could do after the 1980 World Series. Stick it.
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