Bill Lyon: The Phillies have slowly become a destination team

"If any player ever asks me about playing in Philadelphia, what I thought it was and what it actually is, it's completely different. I've never had anyone yell at me."

  - Doc Halladay,

In the dead of winter, circa 2002, in South Philadelphia, a stretch limo, windows darkened, purrs down Broad Street and slows to a crawl where a majestic new ballpark is rising and where an impromptu welcoming committee of hard hats and hoodies awaits.

The honored guest motions for the limo to stop and gets out. He senses that these are his people. It feels right. It feels like, well, home, and then it really feels like home when they begin showing him the money and the hard hats and the hoodies show the honored guest a sign they have made. It welcomes him, beckons to him. He cannot resist.

It was, upon reflection, the most seminal, most significant moment in the recent history of the professional baseball team of Philadelphia: the Fightin's and the Great Turnaround, the moment when, after decades of defeat and frustration, they decided to stop being the nail and try being the hammer.

The man in the limo will sign a contract in which he pledges to launch baseballs prodigious distances while pocketing, gulp, $85 million. Chump change for, say, the Yankees, but a whole year's payroll for the Phillies. So Jim Thome becomes the first big-money, big-star player to be landed by the Phillies, who, in the process, jumped into the deep end of the pool and put the first puncture hole in their reputation as timid and cheap.

Thome spread the gospel of the Fightin's, as a most congenial place to play - no really, it is - and then once they had the money they spent it like sailors on shore leave. The new ballpark was the equivalent of a giant ATM.

Money was one matter, but that killer, reputation-scalding, unforgiving media and carnivorous, impatient fans, quite another. The Young Ones in our audience are at that happy stage in life when the Fightin's and winning baseball are starting to look like, well, a birthright. Aren't we taking our division every year? Aren't we in the playoffs every year? Guaranteed?

Ah, Young Ones, you haven't a clue. For years and years, fans of the Fightin's chafed and stewed as high-priced talent went somewhere else, knowing that no matter what big name came on the market, the Phillies wouldn't be bidding for his services. They probably wouldn't have even been asking.

You'd mention Philadelphia to a player, and the prospects of being traded there, and all the blood would leave his face. You might as well have asked him would he like to play in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Conveniently, that brings us to the little matter of Veterans Stadium, a.k.a. the Career Killer, home of the blown-out knee, the torn ACL, and the ruptured Achilles. Word circulated among the mercenaries at warp speed - avoid at all costs.

At about the same time last week that Doc Halladay was proclaiming his belief that he was exactly where he should be, thank you very much, another Phillies pitcher was holding forth about his impending windfall.

Soon to be doing the backstroke in an ocean of money, Cole Hamels was announcing where it is that he really wants to play, most probably for the rest of his career. Now in the not-so-long-ago, the Phillies would have braced themselves for his defection. But that was then and this is now, and Cole Hamels, given his druthers, would like to stay put. And will.

The Fightin's have gotten the hang of how you play this Big Money game, and Philadelphia, once the place to avoid, is now the preferred destination.

Especially if you've been there before - remember Mrs. Cliff Lee imploring Ruben Amaro Jr. to return them to where, like Doc Halladay, they feel they belong?

Across the street from the Phillies, Doug Collins is coaching up a storm, like some wild scarecrow waving and flapping, a man caught in a whirlpool and loving every insane minute of it. Like Doc and Cliff and Cole, he is exactly where he wants to be, absolutely certain because he had picked this out a long time ago. He returned to coaching because he felt as if he had one last stop, and this is where it would be, and should be.

Of all the players who have passed through Philadelphia the one who has always intrigued me is Mitch Williams. He threw the pitch that will live in infamy, the one in Toronto, the one Joe Carter bashed to decide the World Series, yes, that one . . .

And he was instantly vilified, and probably a prudent man would have caught the next flight to somewhere far, far away.

He stayed.

He stayed and he flourished and he has been accepted, fondly, and you think: Boy, does that say a lot for him.

Yes, yes it does. And for the city, too.