Rings, not redemption, drive Phillies

The Phillies have heard a little something about a championship drought in Philadelphia.

It is something like 25 years or 250.

It is just 25 - not too long considering the Earth is between several thousand and 4.5 billion years old, depending on whom you ask - though it certainly feels longer. But the Phillies, who will open the National League Championship Series tomorrow night against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Citizens Bank Park, don't feel the pressure to end the drought. Except for Souderton High product Jamie Moyer, all the players grew up outside the Philadelphia area, so they aren't overly burdened with the ghosts of seasons past.

They just know they would like to win a World Series.

"It doesn't matter who wins a championship," centerfielder Shane Victorino said yesterday during a workout at Citizens Bank Park. "I think we're playing for Philadelphia. We're not trying to outdo the Eagles. We're not trying to outdo the 76ers. We're not trying to outdo the Flyers. We're the Phillies. We're focused on our goal and what we have ahead of us.

"We're not trying to make this a red town. We're not trying to outdo the orange. We're just trying to focus on what the Phillies have to do."

But doesn't he sense the tide turning toward the Phillies a little bit? You know, turning an Eagles city into a Phillies city?

"No comment," Victorino said with a laugh. "I'm not trying to get any Eagles fans on me."

Good call.

But the Phillies understand their opportunity. If they get past the Dodgers, they will play in their first World Series since 1993.

For Moyer, who is 45, this could be his last chance to play in a World Series. He reached the American League Championship Series with the Seattle Mariners in 2001, but the New York Yankees beat them, four games to one, in the best-of-seven series.

"At this stage of my career, I'm going to try to enjoy it," Moyer said. "In the last series, win or lose, after the game was over, I just tried to sit here in my chair and kind or realize where I was and what was taking place. Win or lose, we're playing in a situation where there are four teams still playing.

"No disrespect to any of the teams at home, but we can take this situation and have some fun with it. Especially for the younger guys in here who have a lot of their career ahead of them, I think they can use this as a stepping-stone. Learn from it and hopefully become better players and better people from it."

Those players see how a NLCS victory over the Dodgers would help cement the team's legacy in the city.

"You would like to leave an imprint from the time you were with the organization," third baseman Greg Dobbs said. "You were able to accomplish something special for the organization, for the city, and for your teammates. You want to leave your stamp on this era that the Phillies are playing because as soon as it goes, it's gone. You want to be a part of history. You want that history to be favorable."

The players have been asked about getting out of the shadow of the 1980 World Series champions. Or the 1993 team.

But those aren't the shadows they seem to care to escape as much as the ones that involved 10,000 losses.

"So much is made of the losses and the failures, which I understand," Dobbs said. "There are two sides of it, and you've got to take the good with the bad. But to be able to maybe put that to rest once and for and all, and maybe have the sun shine a little more favorably on the organization . . . people can look at it from the outside and not look at those days when it was down, but rather when it was up."