Sam Donnellon | '93 team phanatic about Phillies
MICKEY MORANDINI was in a car heading for the noontime pep rally.
In Chicago.
GEORGE REYNOLDS/Daily News file photo
Mitch Williams leaps off the mound after the Phillies eliminated the Braves in 1993 NLCS.
For the Cubs.
"What do you think?'' he asked. "Should I wear my Phillies gear?''
Around the country, amid the lives they now lead outside of baseball, members of the 1993 Phillies - the last pennant-winner this town has known - have been entranced by the current improbable run, just like the rest of us.
Jim Eisenreich in Kansas City. Lenny Dykstra in Southern California. Tommy Greene in Richmond, Va. Morandini from his Indiana home in the suburbs of Chicago. Mitch Williams, John Kruk from right around here.
"This team,'' Kruk said from his South Jersey home yesterday, "well, they're just better than us.''
While Kruk might get an argument from older fans and some old teammates - "the difference between us and them is that we would never waste beer,'' Williams quipped after witnessing Sunday's celebration - his sentiment captures the admiration and commonality that '93 team feels for the current group.
"My kids have them on the television all the time,'' Dykstra said. "They're really into it.''
"My 9-year-old son and I are going like gangbusters,'' Eisenreich said on the phone the other day. Zachary, his third of four, "is a big numbers guy, especially when it comes to the Phillies.
"He gets up before school and gets on the computer to see how they did. He's been really into it.''
Eisenreich played for five major league teams in a career that covered 15 seasons, even won a World Series ring with the Florida Marlins. He was a Royal longer than he was a Phillie, he was a Twin almost as long, too. Yet when asked what team he most identified with, he said, "Oh, Phillies, always.''
"That's just the way it is,'' he said. "It's funny, my wife [Leann] is still the same way. It seems like it was a real team, like the way teams were when you were a kid. We played together and we hung out together.''
Williams remembered after that team clinched the division during a September series in Pittsburgh, "We never left the clubhouse. And that was not a nice clubhouse.''
They also drank the beer.
"We sprayed the champagne,'' Williams said. "Giving that group champagne was like putting earrings on a pig.''
Kruk is brutally frank - what a surprise - when comparing that team with this version.
"Honestly, they're more talented than we were,'' he said. "At least the position players are. If we had Ryan Howard coming up when I was playing, I would have been playing somewhere else.''
And he isn't any more kind toward his old teammates. Chase Utley is better than Morandini, he said. Jimmy Rollins is better than Kevin Stocker. Dave Hollins gave that '93 team more pop at third, and Darren Daulton had both experience and offense over rookie Carlos Ruiz.
As a whole, Kruk will take this year's five-outfielder ensemble over the five who shared that space in 1993.
