No Such Thing as Superstition

So now I'm convinced. Being superstitious is a waste of time, it is not real. I never really thought that it would really make a difference but playing the game of baseball for my whole life gives way to giving in to superstitious habits now and then. So its only typical that I carried them over to watching my beloved Phillies. But to no avail, they've (the superstitious habits) failed me. Wearing certain shirts on certain days. Not wearing my alternate Phillies colored hat on gamedays. Not going on twitter during the game. How I sit during the game. Yea, all those tendencies failed me. They failed me last year when the Phils lost in the World Series and I bought into them again this year. What was I thinking?

It was as if I could help the Phillies win. As if I did something wrong when they lost. I screwed up the equilibrium in the universe that affected Citizen's Bank Park all the way from State College. I know it sounds ridiculous because it IS ridiculous. And now I'm done. Whatever is meant to be will happen (which is something I've also believed in since I can remember (I'm a hypocrite?)).

Guess what else I thought prevented the Phillies from doing well? Blogging. So for the few that had been to this top-notch blog before, that my buddy TJ and I started over the summer, I bet you were wondering where we had gone. Well, I've returned and am hopefully here to stay. Part of the absence was due to laziness and then a ridiculous amount of schoolwork. But when I did feel like blogging, I couldn't pull myself to do it because I was semi-convinced that it would prevent the Phils from doing well. Done with that, whatever is meant to be will happen. Which brings me to why Giants won this series.

First lets get this out of the way so you don't think my bias and bitterness is playing into the post: the Giants played really well and beat the Phils fair and square. They are the National League champions and I'm not taking that away from them. Congratulations and all that.

But there isn't one position player that I would rather have on the Philllies that is on the Giants. You could make a case for Buster Posey, but right now, at this point in their careers, give me Chooch from Monday to Sunday. On paper the Phils should have taken care of business in four or five games. The talent on each roster within each pitching staff is comparable, but at the plate, it isn't even close. Look at the lineups, Pat Burrell was hitting cleanup at one point for the Giants. He wouldn't even start for the Phillies. But games aren't settled on paper.

The Giants caught some breaks in this series. The Phils started off by hitting a few balls well off of Tim Lincecum but they were at fielders and playable. Cody Ross who didn't have a great average against the Phils in 2010 (in a handful of at-bats from being with Florida) was picked up in late-August. He was only picked up by San Francisco because they didn't want their division rival, Padres, to acquire him. What did he do this series? Just set the tone in game one with two homeruns off of the eventual 2010 Cy Young award winner, Roy Halladay. That's it. A game in which Halladay didn't get a called strike three that would have ended the fifth inning against Pat Burrell. Burrell then doubled off the wall to score a run and Juan Uribe then followed with a groundball single that scored Burrell's pinch runner, Nate Shierholtz. Tough loss.

In game three Cole Hamels made a good pitch with two outs that Babe Ross just hit into left field for an RBI single. The pitch was away and somehow Ross pulled it. Not especially good hitting but it worked out. Aubrey Huff then hit a seeing-eye groundball that just got past Chase Utley that scored another run. Later in the game, with two outs Utley misplayed a humpback liner to secondbase that was somehow ruled a single. Tough breaks. Tough dinky hits. Cole shouldn't have surrendered any runs that game but it happened.

Game four included Joe Blanton giving up his usual first inning run, this one on a RBI groundball single with two outs. Later in that game, Jayson Werth hit a ball right on the button with two men on and less than two outs that was directly to the rightfielder. Anywhere else in that spacious outfield, both runs would have scored. Neither runner ended up scoring. A couple innings later, when the Phils had the lead, Chad Durbin was facing Pablo Sandoval, who at the end of the season and thus far through the playoffs couldnt tell a baseball from a paperclip. His struggles were well documented by both television networks covering the games but he decided to remember how to hit just once with two men on, as he disposed of Durbin's fastball into the left-centerfield gap. The Phils would eventually chalk up a loss when the heaviest shortstop in the big leagues hit a walkoff sacrifice fly to cap a rally which was started by an Aubrey Huff seeing-eye groundball single. Bummer, or should I say Bumgarner.

image courtesy: Associated Press, yahoo.com

Which brings us to tonight's heartbreaker. The Phillies kept their game five momentum going right into game six as they were right on Jonathan Sanchez scoring two runs off of him in the first. But Sanchez, the pitcher, then singled right through Chase Utley's arms to start the third. After an Andres Torres single off the wall (one which Victorino almost made a great catch on) and a Freddy Sanchez sacrifice bunt, Aubrey Huff singled on a groundball that scored a run. With two outs, Roy Oswalt would then get Buster Posey to hit a tapper down the thirdbase line that Placido Polanco threw away. Game tied up. After the heavy shortstop, who was playing third, homered off the rock solid Ryan Madson to take the lead, the Phils looked like they had something cooking in the bottom half of the eighth. But Carlos Ruiz hit one right on the screws to Aubrey Huff who doubled up Victorino. If you watched, you know the rest of the story. It pains me to type it out.

Giving up groundball singles, hitting balls well that don't fall, and not hitting with runners on base basically sums up the series for the Phillies. They didn't get the two-out RBIs that they needed and the Giants caught some breaks. That's what happens when things are going well for a team, breaks. Heck, I'll admit the Phillies caught some in 2008 on the way to being World Champions. But now I know what it is like to be on the other end of things. It is saddening and it doesn't feel fair. But the game of baseball isn't exactly fair, which is why we love it.