Where does Roy Halladay's no-hitter rank in the pantheon -- a less-crowded pantheon than many, it must be acknowledged -- of Philadelphia greatest sports moments?
Everybody's answer is different. Mine, not untypically, is a little bit complicated.
We all have our own personal list -- Wilbert Mongomery's run, Wilt Chamberain's 100, fourth-and-26. We all are struck differently, at different times in our lives, by what we see -- by Villanova's perfect game in the 1985 championship, and Pete Rose rescuing that wayward popup in 1980, and Mike Schmidt hitting those four home runs into the jet stream at Wrigley Field.
But, well, put it this way:
The best individual accomplishment in the history of the town is Halladay's no-hitter Wednesday night against the Cincinnati Reds. The night was owned by one man in a way that most of us can only imagine. It was mastery raised to a higher power. It was domination crafted as history.
But the biggest game? No. The clinching of every major championship would surpass it, first of all. And, short of that, it wasn't even the biggest game or the greatest team accomplishment in the last 6 months in Philadelphia. That honor belongs to Game 7 of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs this spring, when the Flyers -- down by 3-0 in games in the series and then down by a 3-0 score, on the road, in Game 7 -- came back to conplete the most improbable comeback in the history of professional sports on this continent.
It will take a lot to top that, frankly.
It will take another championship.
But you know what the best part of this discussion is, and this ranking of moments? There are no wrong answers. Everybody is right.