For Phillies fans, fantasy baseball becomes reality

TAMPA, Fla. - It was more than a little disorienting, arriving in Clearwater as the 2011 Grapefruit League schedule began.

Picking up 40 degrees on the thermometer was nice, but that wasn't it. Neither was treading carefully to avoid immaculately manicured infield grass instead of patches of black ice, although that was a welcome change. Oh, and we can safely report that the sun is still working just fine. It will find its way north, honest.

But that stuff has always come standard with the change in latitude. The real shock to the system couldn't be measured at the local weather station. It was purely baseball-related.

Clearwater is still Clearwater. Florida is still Florida. But the Phillies aren't exactly the Phillies anymore. That is certainly a good thing, but it is still sort of jarring.

They opened their exhibition season in the southern capital of the Evil Empire. George Steinbrenner, whose 2010 passing was observed with a pregame ceremony that lasted just slightly longer than 2010, used to run the New York Yankees from an office suite a few miles from the ballpark that bears his name. Before the Rays appeared down in St. Pete, this was all just a banana republic in the Boss' baseball empire.

For decades while Steinbrenner roared, the Phillies quietly played their exhibition games across the causeway. On a typical day, a smattering of snowbirds and retirees would find their way from Lenny's breakfast spot to sit on aluminum bleachers at modest Jack Russell Stadium. A foul ball landing in one of the empty sections sounded like thunder and would reverberate for long seconds.

On a good day, say when the Yankees or Red Sox buses were parked near the visitors' clubhouse, there would be a pretty good crowd. Of course, the fans would have a chance to watch Shane Rawley and Jeff Stone and Ken Howell and Glenn Wilson and Jon Lieber and Mike Lieberthal preparing to charge north and win 70 or 80 games.

It was like being in a dead nightspot on a Saturday night, knowing the real party was elsewhere. You could almost smell the hopelessness back then. The baseball that mattered was being played somewhere far away.

It would have taken a pretty good imagination, back then, to envision Ryan Howard striding to the plate at Steinbrenner Field and getting, ahem, an ovation. There were an awful lot of red caps and shirts in what turned out to be the largest crowd ever at Steinbrenner Field. There will be plenty more Sunday, when the Phillies play the first of a slate of sold-out home games in their own spiffy park.

No one is forgetting that these very Yankees denied the Phillies a repeat championship in 2009. Even with the Boss gone, this is a powerful franchise with the means and the will to contend every year. That hasn't changed. What has changed, and changed dramatically, is that those words now also describe the Phillies.

It is still new to Phillies fans, which is why they savored it so much when Cliff Lee chose Philadelphia over New York back in December. As two fighter jets buzzed Steinbrenner field in a pregame flyover, you had to wonder if the Boss would have allowed such a thing to happen. At the least, failing to land Lee would have cost someone a job.

Whatever else you thought of him, Steinbrenner was driven to win championships. That was the only standard. It is still a little dizzying to have the Phillies conducting their affairs with that same determination. The addition of Lee to a pitching staff that includes Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt officially made the Phillies the Most Intriguing Team in Baseball going into this season.

They are now always playing baseball that matters. Always.

The only guarantees, of course, are in the enormous contracts handed out to Howard, Lee, Halladay, and the rest. The 162-game regular season is the most thorough pass-fail test in professional sports. It takes talent, but also luck and chemistry and consistency, to come out the other side with a chance to compete in the postseason. Weaknesses are impossible to hide for 162 games.

That used to be the harshest of truths for Phillies teams that were built to fail. Now the long, unforgiving season works in their favor.

It takes about 220 games - pre-, regular- and postseason - to win the World Series. That's a journey that began with a single step Saturday afternoon in the Land of Steinbrenner. It is a journey that should be fascinating, no matter where it leads. It is a journey that could well end with these two teams meeting in another World Series.

Now if we could just find a way to play it in this weather.