The Triangle

Issue date: 10/5/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Dave Hernandez A Phillies pep rally in center city.

The Philadelphia Phillies are the 2007 National League East Division Champions.

When reading the previous sentence either on paper or saying it out loud, it feels like they are words from some unrealistic dream.

It's actually a pretty funny joke when you start to analyze it. The Philadelphia Phillies are a team notoriously known for choking down the stretch - the sad part is that it doesn't even take a knowledgeable baseball fan to realize it. If you ask random people on the street the first three words that comes to the their minds when thinking of the Philadelphia Phillies, the responses you would most likely hear are "chokers," "heartbreakers" and "disappointment." Those words might actually be understatements, taking into account how the Phillies have performed over the years.

In 2005, Philadelphia won its regular-season finale, but Houston also won to earn the wild card. That season the Phillies were swept by the Astros in the season series, 6-0. To make matters worse, Sept. 26, the Phillies hosted the Mets on College Night, and built up a 4-1 lead heading into the seventh inning. The game was delayed two hours and 35 minutes by rain, and could have been called, giving the Phillies the win. Instead, the Mets came back and scored four runs in the eighth, giving the Mets a gutsy 6-5 victory.

Last year, the Phillies were eliminated on the penultimate day of the season despite beating the Marlins, giving them 13 wins in their final 17 games. This year, they won 13 of 17 to finish out the season.

It's one thing to have bad seasons and not make the playoffs, but it's another to have great seasons year after year, only to crush all the fans mistakenly thinking that this Philadelphia baseball team will make the postseason. From 2003 to 2007, the Phillies have won at least 85 games each season. Yet as of last week, they had still not made the playoffs in 14 years.

There were about 10,000 reasons why the Phillies should not have won the division this season, let alone make the playoffs. I'll give you six.

They haven't made a postseason appearance since 1993.

This year, they became the first professional sports team to lose 10,000 games.

Continued...

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