It's a good week in Philadelphia. So what better time to take a vacation? Yeah, as a lifelong professional Philadelphia Fan, you don't generally tend to take World Series possibilities into consideration when your scheduling your vacation back in June. No worries though. This is a very good problem to have. The city is already electric and we'll be taking some of that electricity to the west coast where we'll watch the games with our friends....one of which has saved just enough skin on his right arm for another Red Sox World Series tattoo. So we'll see how that goes...
I got a bunch of emails and calls from yuz guys to congratulate. I appreciate it and yes, I hope we deserve it. It's been a long time since '93. I was on a flight out of Toronto when the Blue Jays hit the walk off homer to win that series. It's been a longer time yet since my folks poked an eleven year old in a beanbag chair to wake up and watch Tug Mcgraw get the last out of our only World Series.
When you take this stuff seriously, and those of you that have watched just an ordinary regular season ballgame with me will tell you I take it too seriously, you really live for weeks like this. It's fun and while I'm thrilled we're in the series, I don't have to tell you that it's not good enough to lose now. I've said since mid-season that if the Phils got hot at the right time, they could win it all. When I was Johnny Negadelphian, my buddy Joe and my wife were there to maintain a positive perspective. The Phillies are in a great spot now, so why not.
It's been a story book year for my involvement with this team. Something I didn't really think about until I started to pull together the pictures for this posting. 2 Spring Training games in FLA with my folks, a couple regular season games and 2 post-season games. My buddy Jack (Team Tacos for you Fantasy Football people) hooked me up with the first playoff game....and my buddy Alan (Tusk Monkeys) sold me his extra playoff tix for the Dodgers series. When we got to our seats for this game my friend BJ was three seats over in the same row. BJ and I grew up on the same block and our Dads used to take us to the Vet for games when we were kids. It was just funny. There was one dude in that section that was wound as tight as me, living and dying on every pitch....and that was BJ (The Management for FF people).
In addition to the games, I was able to do some work with the team this year. JRoll's charity event that I posted about previously and then the ALS event later in the summer. It's pretty cool to see these dudes outside the game and interacting in the real world. As far as I could tell, these guys are all pretty grounded and people you wouldn't mind hanging out with. I got to give Jroll pictures of his family from his event. I got to thank Chris Coste for answering my dad's email after he read his book, I got to wish Harry Kalas a speedy recover after his eye surgery and I got to tell Pat Burrell to adjust his stance and slow things down a little at the plate.
It's been a great year. Hopefully it has a little greatness yet to come. If we could win one more before I'm 40, there might be a chance that we could win one or two more before I'm 80. Maybe I'll be able to take it a little less serious...maybe I'll get a tattoo.
