Burrell a reminder of Phillies' championship season

CLEARWATER, Fla. - It was Halloween and your world was collapsing around you: AIG and Citigroup toppling, your stocks and houses and wages deflating like air from a balloon that somebody had forgotten to tie, a balloon that was now darting around the room in flatulent loopty loops, the country clinging to its surface, powerless to resist the momentum pent up inside. This was the best day of your lives, in the best month of your lives, in a year you've spent the previous 7 yearning for. You swore it as you felt the morning sun stream through the skyscrapers, bathing you in slats of light, and you swore it as you watched the darkness drop like a curtain, the beer still glowing, the streets still swamped with mobs of red, one last night to soak it in, one more ibuprofen morning to greet without regret.

The dancers call it spotting. Fix your eyes on a constant point and the world feels balanced even as your body spins round. For a few hours on that blue-skied morning - Friday, Oct. 31, 2008 - Pat Burrell was the point on which an entire city fixed its eyes. This isn't a ballad, where have you gone Pat Burrell, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. It's only an observation.

I'm not sure when I realized how little I remember outside of the Phillies when it comes to that period, but whenever I did realize it, it fascinated me. Engulfed in a financial crisis unlike any most of us had ever seen, in the midst of an historic presidential campaign, an entire metropolitan area revolved entirely around the Phillies. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's a bad thing. Whatever the case, it is a thing, and on a day when Burrell was announced as the newest member of the Phillies' Wall of Fame, it's a thing I figured I'd mention.

I told my editor I was going to attempt to place Burrell within some context of Phillies history. You know, what it all means. I looked at the numbers, and they are more impressive than you might think. Fourth in club history in home runs (251), ninth in RBI (827), fourth in walks (785). His .852 OPS ranks 15th among players with at least 2,500 plate appearances with the club. That's just behind Chase Utley (.858) and John Kruk (.861) and tied with Greg Luzinski (.852). The only players ahead of him who played postintegration who aren't on the wall are Bobby Abreu and Scott Rolen.

Now that I mention it, that's a fitting duo for Burrell to share company with. For a few years, he seemed destined to join them as victims of circumstance, focal points for the frustrations of fans who thought they'd never again see a winner. Abreu and Rolen were better players - much better, according to the numbers - but they left town before getting the chance Burrell enjoyed. The thing about chances, though, is you still have to take advantage of them. Burrell did. And that, right there, is his context.

If he felt underappreciated before 2008, could you really blame him? Remember that 2007 season when Jimmy Rollins said the Phillies were the team to beat and then went out and won an MVP award? Burrell hit the same number of homers (30), posted a higher OPS (.902 to .875), drove in more runs (97 to 94) and finished the year with a .400 on-base percentage. That's not to say Rollins didn't have a lot of other factors in his favor, but those numbers are the kind of thing a narrative can make you forget.

But I guess narratives are part of it, too. It's a Wall of Fame, not a Wall of Merit.

Fame (noun): The condition of being known or talked about by many people, especially on account of notable achievements.

There was a lot of stuff to talk in October 2008, some of it stuff we still are talking about today. But the only thing anybody in Philadelphia talked about was the Phillies. And on the last day of a madness that nobody will soon forget, an entire city flocked to Broad Street. And the first thing that they saw was Burrell.

On Twitter: @ByDavidMurphy

Blog: ph.ly/HighCheese