Phillies Rock

Tom Durso at Shallow Center hung up the spikes in mid-summer, with a new baby, a new job and general blog exhaustion making the whole Phlogging thing feel old. He hadn't written about baseball since Aug. 4th.

Back then it was folly to think the Phils would be in the hunt when summer turned to fall.

Durso's can't believe he's back. In his first post in a month and a half, he writes:

No one said being a fan is easy. You have to risk a hell of a lot if you really want to believe. You have to risk disappointment, and heartbreak. Phillies fans are intimately familiar with these things. And now the team has pushed its chips to the center of the table and asked me to ante up. Well, okay then. Here's my heart, guys. And my soul. I'm all in.

So's Phillies Blog.net, who writes, "These last few games are going to give me a heart attack, I swear. Go Phils."

A few knights of the Phlogosphere have felt moved to counsel Philadelphia fans who find themselves slightly uncomfortable watching Phillies games that matter at this time of the season.

Philly Sports Review takes the hard guy approach:

Yes, the Phils have been here before and come up short. Yes, they've had a poor history in recent years. Yes, they've only won one World Series in their 100+ year history. And, yes, there is plenty of reason to think that they might not capture their first playoff birth in years despite being tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the N.L. Wild Card as the Dodgers enter play tonight.

Get over it, Philadelphia.

Being a sports fan is all about weeks like this. The crisp fall air seems to be settling in, every game will likely mean something in the next 10 days, one eye will be on what the Dodgers are doing (along with an ear on the San Diego Padres), the chance to hang on every pitch is here after a long summer, and to top it off Ryan Howard is chasing Roger Maris' steroid-free home run mark.

And you're scared?

While the rest of the Phloggers are analyzing the things big and small that the Phillies are managing to do right at the right time, Oisin/Wizlah, a Phillies-crazed blogger in Edinburgh, Scotland, has been thinking hard from across the pond about the music that the Phillies might be playing in their clubhouse.

(He explains how he became Scotland's loneliest Phillies fan in an email this morning: his mother left Philadelphia in 1964, when the local nine were still winning.)

For Chase Utley, O/W thinks Interpol's Turn On the Bright Lights would be appropriate, for the "grim resolve manifest in the drumming and  percussive guitar." He writes:

Even when the theme tune that is Utley's swing is dragging, he keeps you watching everything he does. You never know when he's going to explode in a flurry of hits and hard running.

From the look of the players as they fight for the Wild Card, only Ryan Howard would seem to be blasting happy music, he writes.

Not veteran pitcher Jon Lieber, who on Saturday seemed determined to win at all costs, O/W says, throwing stubbornly at Marlins hitters who kept getting their swings against him.

Not even Jimmy Rollins seemed to be smiling during that Phillies win, he wrote. Not even after his home run. Instead there was this "Get it done or go home" look on his face." O/W was reminded of Lawrence Fishburn in Deep Cover, and this led O/W, of course, to recommend Dr. Dre's "Deep Cover."

As for Howard, O/W has a suggestion, something to blast over the headphones and drown out the skepticism and the intentional walks, the media barrage that threatens to distract him from his game:

If I was to recommend an album to him, it would be Asian Dub Foundation's Community Music, a finely tuned collection of optimism, anger and worldliness. It's final track, Scaling New Heights is a gorgeous piece of aspiration and hope.