This is getting ridiculous. Not that I am not the least bit less excited about this Phillies team's march to the world championship as compared with last year. I was confident last October the same way I am confident now (as if MY confidence matters). But it does matter to me, and this new, newer, newest-found confidence in the Fightin' Phils goes against my grain in some weird inexplicable way. Like black means white. Like warp means woof. Like the way things have always been don't have to be that way. Not this year. Not next year.
Not. . .
And this is where the dream gets too weird. I begin to believe that the Phillies can win every year. I had that dream last night. During the deciding NLCS game on TV the so-called marquee brand name Dodgers had the look of deer in the headlights from the national anthem until the wasted champagne. The Phillies, and their fans, and their city, blew L.A. and the Dodgers out of here like gnats before swine. The swine, of course, would be the Yankees.
Every Philadelphian wants to beat the Yankees. It's been in our baseball DNA since Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn and the National League champion Whiz Kids were swept by the American League champion Yanks four games to zero in October 1950. Sixty years ago this month. Who would remember such things other than us? We forget nothing or we forget everything but the grudge. We keep score and somehow it matters that we do so.
Face it, the Yankees represented -- and still do today -- everything that the Phillies never were and aren't today. We are the losingest franchise in major league history, they are the Yankees. So what else can we do now except roll down the windows and fuck'em in the World Series like we know we can. Like we will.
"Like we will." That's the new feeling I'm feeling. Confidence rather than hope. Expectation rather than anticipation. Feel the same way? Call us the Dead Yankees Society. Let the broken hearts stand as the price we've got to pay.
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