Kid calls in political chit with Rendell

It's not so easy right now to be a 10-year-old kid who bleeds Phillies red.

Jake Lancianese's mom, Cheri, made him go to bed Wednesday night in the fourth inning of his first World Series game.

She didn't have to say anything the next night. Jake, a fifth grader with a room festooned with Phillies pennants, a Jimmy Rollins poster, and baseball clock, fell asleep in front of the blaring TV.

"It's pretty tough on school nights," she says. She holds him to 9 o'clock, lights out.

She had to make an exception for last night's game, however.

Jake was sitting with Gov. Rendell.

The phone rang in the Lancianeses' Aston home Wednesday about 7 p.m. They had just gotten home from swim practice. Jake was at the kitchen table. Mom was putting down her pocketbook.

Eleven-year-old Rachel answered the call.

"Is Jake there?" the man asked. "This is Ed Rendell."

Rachel turned and looked at her brother with new regard.

"Jake, I think it's the governor."

It was. Rendell asked the boy if he'd like to be his guest at the World Series. The governor's invitation serves as a lesson for all of us who exact a promise from a politician.

Get it in writing.

Four Septembers ago, the governor dropped by Hilltop Elementary to praise the Chichester School District's decision to make kindergarten all-day.

Jake Lancianese was a first-grader that fall, sitting in the audience as the governor tried to tell students why early childhood education was so important. What would happen, he asked, if a strong building was built on a weak foundation?

Jake raised his hand. "It would fall down," he answered.

Rendell told the boy he was right, adding that the next time the Phillies made it to the World Series he would get him a ticket.

The governor promptly forgot about that. But the boy didn't.

Last year, when the Phillies got into the playoffs, Jake was hopeful.

"I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting the ticket," Jake said, "because he's a pretty good guy."

This year, when the Phillies took a two-game lead on the Dodgers, Jake got his mother to join him at the kitchen table and compose a letter to the governor. It had to be in cursive, Jake said, since that's how you write to a governor.

"Well, it took us four years, but we're almost there," the boy wrote. "I was hoping you'd still be the governor when they made it and lucky for me you are."

The kid's got some skills.

He included a baseball card from last summer at the Phillies Baseball Academy; he's shown swinging from the left side. He's a 4-foot-9, 80-pound first baseman.

And he added a copy of the Delaware County Daily Times, which had sent a reporter to Hilltop Elementary that day four years ago.

Jake highlighted the lines in the article about the Phillies ticket.

Rendell's wife, Midge, says the governor reads his own mail. After coming across the boy's letter, the governor made a few calls, and told his wife, an appellate court judge, that they'd be going to the game with an enterprising 10-year-old.

Judge Rendell called Cheri Lancianese late last week to make arrangements. The boy's mother said the governor's wife wondered how many times her husband had made a promise like that.

"She said, 'I don't imagine there are too many who have proof. Jake has the documentation.' "

The seats turned out to be not so bad - 23 rows behind the visitor dugout. Jake arrived with his dad, Pat Lancianese, a third-shift Amtrak maintenance foreman.

Jake wore his Phillies cap, his "Red October" hoodie. He brought his mitt in case of foul balls.

You going to stay up until the end, I asked him?

"Oh yeah."