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Gonzo: Whole new ball game for Phils and fans

The Phils repeated the line all season: It's not 2008 anymore. And they're right. Things have changed - for the Fightin's and the fans.

Chase Utley and Jayson Werth celebrate Ryan Howard's game-tying double in the ninth inning during Monday's come-from-behind victory over the Rockies. (Yong Kim / Staff Photographer)
Chase Utley and Jayson Werth celebrate Ryan Howard's game-tying double in the ninth inning during Monday's come-from-behind victory over the Rockies. (Yong Kim / Staff Photographer)Read more

The Phils repeated the line all season: It's not 2008 anymore. And they're right. Things have changed - for the Fightin's and the fans.

Jimmy Rollins understands the sentiment better than most. The other night, while his teammates celebrated reaching their second-straight NLCS - spraying champagne and drinking giant cans of beer in a scene that's become pleasantly familiar - Rollins paused to talk to Comcast SportsNet about how this season is different from last year.

"In some ways, it feels like we have to work harder," he said. He had swimming goggles perched on his forehead but (sadly) no orange floaties on his arms. "In the past, we were the team in second place looking to knock somebody down. This time around, we're the team everybody is looking forward to knock off. . . . You understand why they say you're defending something."

At times, the season has felt like a Frank Sinatra song - it hasn't been easy, but they've done it their way. They are the present and possibly future kings, and they've grown protective of their thrones. In turn, their loyal subjects have gone from rags to riches. The fans here are no longer the paupers of the sports world - we're princes in a thriving kingdom.

Things are different indeed. Before the Fightin's won the World Series, there was a sense that big moments wouldn't work out in Philly's favor - mainly because they generally didn't. We hoped for the best but expected the worst. Now we hope for the best and, in a mind-melting turn of events, we usually get it.

Before the Fightin's ended the drought, could you have imagined all those NLDS twists and turns working out in Philly's favor? The ninth-inning comebacks. The redemption of Brad Lidge. The diving (possibly run-saving) catch by Ben Francisco. The clutch hit by Ryan Howard after he confidently told his teammates, "Get me to the plate, boys." The dropped flip from Chase Utley to Rollins that didn't end up sinking the game (or the season). All of it went down the way we wanted.

Even the umpires - an evil lot that conspired against our teams for years - made countless calls in the Phillies' favor. Incidentally, my favorite line from the TBS announcers came in Game 4: "Jim Tracy is close to arguing for the cycle."

When was the last time that happened? When was the last time someone else got hosed and we were the ones thinking, "Man, those poor saps can't catch a break"? It's all part of being on top. Calls go your way, and it's the other guys who have to deal with the disappointment.

"You look at [the Phillies]," Tim Kurkjian said on SportsCenter yesterday. "They are the defending world champs, and they know how to win."

Just as the Fightin's are no longer the underdogs, the fans here are no longer pitied - we're envied. When I lived in Boston, Red Sox Nation was going through something similar. Not anymore. Their luster grows duller by the day, and they've become jealous of our glow.

After the Phils won the NLDS in spectacular, jaw-dropping fashion, I got a text from my buddy Flan. He's a lifelong Sox fan.

"It's a strange [expletive] world when [Jonathan] Papelbon explodes and the Phillies get all the breaks," he wrote.

Strange? Yeah, I suppose it is. But a guy could get used to it.

There's a great exchange in Wedding Crashers where Vince Vaughn's character tells his lifelong friend and fellow bachelor, played by Owen Wilson, that he's going to get married. In today's Page 2 reenactment, we've tweaked the script just a touch. Vaughn is now a Phillies fan who tells Wilson - a Rockies supporter - that he's going to L.A. for the NLCS.

The dialogue from the original scene - courtesy of IMDB.com - is otherwise unchanged and works pretty well for our purposes:

Vaughn: Listen, I'm going to [Cali].

Wilson: Get out (points at the door).

Vaughn: What? You just sat there and said you were happy for me, that I . . .

Wilson: I'm hanging by a thread. I'm reading don't-kill-myself books.

Vaughn: You said the book wasn't yours.

Wilson: Don't worry about the book. It isn't mine. . . . But I glanced at it.

Vaughn: You've been my friend for 16 years. I'm going to [Cali].

Wilson: Kindly leave!

Vaughn: I'm try . . .

Wilson: (Cuts him off; whispers) Kindly leave.

My favorite post-NLDS moment was when Brad Lidge praised Philly in his best 1996 lingo: "Greatest fans in the world - I have nothing but mad props to give them." Word, homey. . . . Since I'm headed to Hollywood, I took another crack at the Bako/Bacon game: Bako played with Ken Griffey Jr. in Cincinnati. Junior was in Summer Catch with Fred Ward. Ward was in Tremors with Kevin Bacon. And there you have it - Bako/Bacon in just four moves. If anyone pulls it off in three, lunch/drinks are on me. . . . A reader named Kathleen e-mailed me with a great point and keen observation: "Last Friday, if someone asked you to pick one of the following five closers to not blow a save - Lidge, Jonathan Papelbon, Huston Street, Joe Nathan or Ryan Franklin -- would anyone have taken Lidge?" It's like Charlie Manuel says: funny game.