This one arrived yesterday afternoon: "My dad passed away this past March and I could not stop thinking how he would love this," Mike wrote in an e-mail. There have been a lot of them like that in the last couple of weeks. So many of them mention family.
Wednesday night at Citizens Bank Park was a lot of different things that happened to be wrapped around a baseball game. In many ways, it was a raucous, roaring prayer for deliverance. That is the theme, the Philadelphia sporting theme - pervasive, persistent, for years and decades around here.
But when you read the e-mails, when you talked to people, when you watched them in the stands on Wednesday, when the Phillies won the World Series and the town got its first champion in a quarter-century, it seemed obvious that while the theme is accurate, it is also inadequate.
This isn't about the spray of champagne, signaling the end of losing. It is about two sets of hands on the champagne bottle, prying loose the cork.
It isn't about the experience but the sharing of the experience - with friends and acquaintances and family. Mostly family.
Because, trust me on this, you will forget most of the details of what happened on Wednesday night - and you will forget them pretty quickly, too. You might remember that Pedro Feliz knocked in the Series-winning run but you will forget that it was Eric Bruntlett, running for Pat Burrell, who scored it. You will remember Brad Lidge striking out Eric Hinske to end it with a Tampa Bay runner on second base but you will forget that it was Ben Zobrist who smoked the line drive to rightfield just before that, right at Jayson Werth.
That stuff will fade in rapid order - and the parade will be a complete blur. But you will never forget who was sitting next to you when Lidge delivered strike three.
"My greatest Phillies memories are talking about them with my grandfather. My grandfather was Philly inside and out, an old city firefighter who only drank a Philadelphia beer, Schmidt's. He loved his Schmidt's and loved his Phillies. Last December, when he became ill my family cleared out his apartment, and I saved the last half of his last case of Schmidt's. He was a child of the depression who hated to waste anything and I promised to hang on to it as long as needed and promised to finish it once we finally won the World Series. On August 17th he passed away. I had traveled from Kentucky a couple of times during his last month, and we sat and talked about the Phillies, it was the only thing that brought out his energy level. He didn't get Comcast at the hospital so I gave him updates on the games the night before. We talked about how wrong we were for not allowing Vuk a chance to manage, or what Gene Mauch should or shouldn't have done. Our last conversation was about Mike Goliat, who he thought was the unsung hero in 1950. I also promised him that no matter what when we won I'd drink his Schmidt's for him."
- Heath
If you have ever been a young guy working at a newspaper, you never forget how nervous you are the first time you write an obituary and have to call the family. But it's funny - they're always fine about it. They want to talk to you. They want people to know about their departed father or brother. That is kind of what this feels like.
As we mark the end of a quarter-century without a champion, everybody seems to have a story - about baseball, and the Phillies, and losing, and a loved one. People must have sent me a dozen of them in the last month, as the Phillies made their run. One man wrote about how his father died while bowling on the night the Phillies won in 1980. Another wrote about a 94-year-old aunt who used to listen to games at Shibe Park as a kid and who was going to get to a Series game this year.
There is a connection between this team and this town and these people. It is the only part of this thing that will last.
Series, parade, short afterglow - that will be the life cycle of this phenomenon. Then we will all go about our Philadelphia sporting business. We will criticize the quarterback when he throws three interceptions or the coach when he calls only three running plays per half. We will boo the power play when it fails to get off a shot. None of this is going to change.
In your heart, you have to know that, right? You do understand that this legion of now-I-can-die-happy people are kidding themselves. Right?
What will not change is the memory. That is what will be indelible. That is what this baseball team gave you on Wednesday night. You will always be able to close your eyes and picture exactly where you were when Carlos Ruiz caught that final pitch, and Lidge dropped to his knees. You will remember what it felt like, yes, but you will remember what it meant to the people around you more - and to the people closest to you, even if they were at some distance that night.
That is the gift of winning a championship.
"My uncle, who worked for KYW-1060, took me to my first game back in '85 just after my father passed away. I was 7 at the time and still remember the red and yellow seats at the Vet. Little did I know or understand that then and there I'd become a Philly fan. I now reside in Chicago and have put up with massive amounts of crap because of my sometimes painful loyalty to teams that don't pull through. But now that's different. As of last night, with the Phils winning, I now know what it's like to root for and feel like I'm a part of a winner."
- Brendan
Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com, or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at http://go.philly.com/
theidlerich.
