Be Careful What You Wish For

Sometimes you just need a night like tonight. As a baseball fan and avid pitching lover i have always wated to experience aperfect game. i don't care how, but i wanted to follow a perfect game from at the most the 4th inning on. Tonight i was listening to the Phuils Reds game. it seemed like a match made in heaven. Roy Halladay, Cy young winner, perfect game owner, Ace pitcher against a 23 year old kid with only 3 MLB starts to his name named Travis Wood. through 4, you started to sense it.



If you ever do get to experience a perfect game against your team for all 9 innings you experience quite the roller coaster of emotions. Its a lot like "Lost" actually. your so excited and intruiged at first and after the 3rd inning (second season) your hooked, once you get to six, you know something big is happening here, but you don't really wanna think about where its headed (Wait they're off the island? wait, they wanna get back to the island? What do you mean they can move the island? How the hell are they in two different time periods simultaneously? why is everyone dying but kate dammit!) so many emotions are makeing their way through you all in dramatic swings. Curiosity, Fear, Anger, Despair, Unease, Anxiety.



You know theirs a good chance you'll be witnessing history tonight, but never in a way you ant to see. you don't want to be the first team to have a perfect game and be perfectoed in the same season. you don't want it to be a 23 year old in onlyhis 3rd MLB start, you don't want it to happen against your Ace for whom you haven't given any run support to. and you Really don't want it at home, during a shaky injury riddled season.



It's worth noting that Joey Votto, having been snubbed in the all star game has been a man on a mission like President Bartlett when his youngest daughter Zoe was abducted. He's been tearin' shit up and leading two of the 3 triple crown categories, hitting like a savant and doing it humbly. Thats a scary man to have on the other side.



When the bottom of the 9th came around, and we were guarenteed Travis woods had to pitch 10 perfect innings if he was going to win this game. in his first game back from a long enough stint on the DL we got one of our surprisingly clutch hitters back. Carlos Ruiz, Chooch is one of our most valuable players. from being such an important part of our world series team, to giving us a reason to not play Chris Coste,being a wonderful backstop and an even better game caller. he caught and called our 2nd team perfecto, Roy Halladay gave him his due. after doing extensive work in the off season on his stance, he came back this year with more stats, a higher batting average and some of the first half of the seasons most clutch plays. but he hasn't gottent too much love. He's a lot like Josh Charles' character in sportsnite... without all the bitching and whinning.

Like the Dependable Veterans do, Chooch came through. with a leadoff double the perfect game was over, the no hitter too! everyone in philadelphia took a deep breath... and then rememberred its a still a scoreless game. When uiz advanced with one out, we believed we could win this thing. But we'd have top wait because the ninth was over, Haladay was done, and we lived to fight a little longer.

Roy Halladay. what more can he do for us? regardless of what happens from here on out he's done more with less, witched 8 9-inning games (7 complete games), throwing the 2nd perfect game in phils history, and now kept us out of the other side of that record book category and saved us from watching a bullpen train wreck. Jose Contreras, Dan Hernendon and Brad Lidge? if anything these names would have installed confidence in Travis Wood... but Halladay, thats a scary thing to come across. A lot of people say "Desmond is my constant" well... Halladay is my Desmond.

When Brad Lidge took the mound in the tenth every Philadelphia fan held their breath again. In Analogyworld, Brad Lidge is Ben Linus. You want to root for him because he's the backbone of the 2008 World Series team, just as Ben was the reason you kept watching in seasons 3-5. But after that you just never know which version is coming. is it meltdown brad/self-serving ben or is it World Series Hero/the good side of Ben. Still, whenever Lidge looses a game or blows a save i am filled with teh same dissapointment i fel with Ben antagonized Meany and then watched him execute his daughter. But no matter what, i always know the next time i have to count on them i will, i will believe in the good, i will have faith. Faith was a owerful thing tonight. after getting himself out of a little game Brad had perserved the shutout, gave us a fighting chance.

A ho-hum at bat by the phils and reds led to the bottom of the 11th... when Chooch came up to the plate with one out. Everyone could feel it, and when he smackedhis second double, we knew. it was our night afterall. after a Wilson Valdez intentional walk and a Ross Gload flyout (that wasn't deep enough to advance the runners of course) the longest tenured phil and unarguable leader of the team, Jimmy Rollins came to bat.

The second the ball hit the bat we all knew what could happen. as Jimmy made his way to first Carlos ran harder than Matt Santos and made his way into home. three straight walk offs by the Phils. three great nights of extra inning baseball, three magical reasons to believe.

The Slump is over, this CAN be our year. we can win in any situation (except maybe 2 run lead from the 6th on with our Bullpen pitching). but there is no reason to count the Phils out. Tonight is going to go down in my top three sports memories of all time (ruight up there with our demolishing of Johnny Bronxton in the '08 NLCS and Lidge's greatest slider ever getting the rays to strike out and getting the Phils a ring). This game was exactly what good baseball is. I welcome the dead ball era in baseball, i love good pitching duels. i hope pitchers continue to bring their A-game against Halladay, these are the best games.

There is so much baseball left. the 2010 season Part Two... soon.

(and for those of you scoring at home we counted 4 Lost References and 3 Aaron Sorkin references. Congrats to those who bet on Lost, well done)