It's odd, I admit, that in the middle of this glorious summer, I keep thinking back to that October night at Citizens Bank Park, bundled in a thick red hat, toes frozen to stumps.
But spotting the Phils on the tube these days and hearing about them from an anguished Mets fan/friend over the last week, I keep going back there. Because too much happened in those final three World Series innings. Too much that I can't quite put to bed yet.
Before and after the Big Win, standing in the cold behind third base, long-buried summer memories crept out like ghosts. Triggers. Answers to why, even as a once-rabid but now happily apathetic Philly sports fan at age 38, I always seem to have room in my heart for the Phils - even if I barely know who's batting.
Even as a kid whose immigrant parents never knew the sport as kids but watched like natives.
Even as a grown-up with responsibilities, heartache and a head full of worries.
Especially as a grown-up.
Because with baseball, whether you stay loyal to the team or wander away, you're 10 all over again, and no amount of apathy can shake it. And boy, could we use a dose of that this crummy year of layoffs and economic ick.
The Phillies may not be at the top of their game yet this season, but after a year like last, there's ample room for forgiveness. Who else has made you as happy as the Phils?
Yes, it was freezing that night at the ballpark. But in my heart I was running around Upper Darby with the Soundtrack of 1980 in the background: Big Wheels roaring on blacktop, trolleys rolling by, and me barreling through stop signs on a 10-ton Schwinn five-speed with gears that rattled. No helmet, no elbow pads, no stopping.
The great challenges of each day: getting the most time on the wooden swing hanging from the Weeping Willow in the yard; hoping for weather hot enough for the garden hose sprinkler; convincing my mother to dig into her purse when the Good Humor ice cream man came along.
The great lessons: The names and numbers of a lineup that was in the middle of a World Series run, guys like Bake McBride, Larry Bowa, Pete Rose, Greg Luzinski.
The teacher: An old man named Sam, whose grape arbor in the back was where the neighborhood watched games on an 11-inch TV atop a round, steel table coated in shiny red paint.
Millie and Sam's grape arbor was like a giant treehouse except in the driveway. Where others would have parked their car, this old Italian couple from South Philadelphia built a three-sided trellis about six feet tall. A cube woven with grape vines and lined with big wooden benches all around.
My parents were the ones on the block with thick foreign accents. But in the grape arbor such differences faded away. We were Phils fans. All of us. To the core.
And even when my dad was in no mood for the arbor, he and I would savor games on the living room couch - a sofa covered in protective plastic that made the back of your thighs sweat even if the window air conditioner was on full blast.
That night at the ballpark, it all came back to me. The way it comes out every single summer, but in a less intense way.
"I know nothing about my grandmom, but I know who her favorite Phillie was: Bobby Wine," says my old college friend Christine Qualtieri, 37, the most diehard Phillies fan I know. "It's always been there."
Why baseball, though, and not, say, football, basketball or hockey?
Baseball is like a long marriage. It requires a lot of patience, it goes on and on, it's sometimes horribly boring, but it delivers fireworks if you just hang in there.
Sometimes the team disappoints time after time. But unlike football, which feeds adrenaline junkies an all-or-nothing smackdown once a week, baseball delivers joy and disappointment in less lethal doses, and with redemption always just another game away over the course of a very long, languid season.
And unlike the supercharged bloodbaths of professional hockey and football, in baseball there is time for quiet. It ain't yoga, but the chill factor can be just as high.
Growing up in Hunting Park, the time spent enjoying the game with her dad still stands out in Chrissy's mind.
"It was the end of the day, the dishes were put away, sitting there in the kitchen listening with dad," she said. There was nothing like listening to home games on the radio with Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn at the mike.
"You don't even have to talk," she remembered. "You just let them, Harry and Richie, do the work for you."
Years later, the weeping willow is gone. The ants hollowed it out. Gone, too, are my parents, the Good Humor truck and the days of riding a bike without a helmet.
But it is summer again. The summer after glorious Game Five. And while the Phillies may not look as polished as a year ago, they are around, and they are in it for the long haul, as usual.
And as long as the boys in red pinstripes are swinging, those raucous days of childhood kick around in your chest. If you stop long enough to feel the pangs, you just might remember that kid in the grape arbor with Sam, on the couch with daddy, in mommy's pocketbook scrounging for coins.
That kid never really went away. Don't believe the adults for one second. And thank the Phils for the reality check.
Contact staff writer Maria Panaritis at 215-854-2431 or mpanaritis@phillynews.com.
