Damn Yankees. Wouldn't you know they'd keep us waiting. It seems like weeks since the Phillies clinched , but the Yankees had to go and make the American League championship series "interesting." With all due respect to the California Angels, this isn't about you. This Phillies-Yankees World Series is more than just a great matchup, it's destiny. The baseball gods could not have scripted a more perfect and unlikely pairing than this: the defending world f. champion Philadelphia Phillies versus the New York Yankees. The ultimate Us versus Them. Oh, the humanity. This will be Armageddon.
In my first year of life the then-reigning world champion Yankees swept the Phillies 4-0 in the 1950 World Series, a baptism of failure that seared itself into my hometown DNA. Philadelphians my age grew up knowing that the Yankees represented everything the Phillies were not. And we hated them for it. And not in a good way like the way we hate the Mets. Phillies and Mets fans are like brothers in misery and disbelief with brief periods of joy. We have smelled each others stink in battle. The Yankees on the other hand are like the French at Agincourt, superior numbers gathered on a hillside; haughty, distant, exotic. Like orchids in a field of dandylions.
In a memorable moment during the Phillies 1980 World Series celebration, Tug McGraw spoke the unspoken for our city and for the ages when he bellowed,"New York can take this championship. . . and STICK IT!" Remember we had defeated the Kansas City Royals in the 1980 World Series, but then as now, everyone knew it was the Yankees we wanted. Why? Because they have it coming.
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