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 The Phillies don’t have much of a playoff history: 5 pennants, 8 1/2 division titles and just the one World Series win. The Phillies have only played 62 playoff games, 61 fewer than Derek Jeter has played in himself.
It’s no surprise, then, that a loss ranks as one of the greatest moments in Philadelphia sports history. (It’s Great Moment #2 in The Great Philadelphia Fan Book.) In the second inning of Game 3 of the 1977 NLCS, Phillies fans cheered louder and louder as Dodgers starting pitcher Burt Hooton issued three consecutive bases loaded walks (helped, like last night, by a few borderline calls).
It’s a moment Philadelphia fans are proud of. Most of the people who refer to the local teams in the first person plural know they’re not part of the team, they know their weird superstitions and reverse jinxes have no effect on the game. We know these are just 5 or 9 or 11 strangers who happen to play here. But that night on 1977, the fans were part of the game. “We got to him,” people say, “and he unraveled.”
Another fitting point? The Phillies ended up losing the game when the Dodgers scored 3 runs in the ninth inning. (To make matters worse, the Phillies actually should have won the game on a wild groundout that bounced off Mike Schmidt’s knee and into Larry Bowa’s hands — but the ump ruled Davey Lopes beat Bowa’s throw to first.) It’s called Black Friday and it stands along with the 1964 collapse and the 1993 World Series loss as the most painful moments in Phillies history.
The parallels to last night are too easy. Here was C.C. Sabathia, ERA under 2 since joining the Brewers, facing Brett Myers, just like Larry Christenson did 31 years earlier. The Phillies had already gotten a run in. And here was Myers, working a walk after falling behind 0-2, just like Christenson. Here was the crowd, cheering louder and louder with each ball Sabathia threw. Any Phillies fan who knows their history was thinking about Burt Hooton by the time Sabathia walked Jimmy Rollins, loading the bases and sending the fans into a frenzy.
In 1977, Hooton walked four straight batters before being pulled; this time, the Phillies would get something even more magical. Shane Victorino caught a hanging breaking ball and lined it into the left field seats. Suddenly, the Phillies had scored 5 runs in just two innings against Sabathia, a pitcher who hadn’t given up that many in a game since being traded to Milwaukee mid-season.
The stadium was filled with dread the rest of the game. Being a Philadelphia sports fan means knowing that, soon enough, something bad is going to happen. An easy win, a magical moment, a historic grand slam can all go away so quickly. It looked headed that way last night: The Phillies couldn’t get any insurance runs; Milwaukee creeped closer with a run in the 7th. The tying run came to the plate in the 8th. Brad Lidge came into the game in the 9th a night after nearly blowing Cole Hamels’ eight-inning gem.
Yawn. 1-2-3, 12 pitches, Phillies take a commanding 2-0 lead in the division series. The moment everyone was dreading never came. The cheers from Citizens Bank Park after Shane Victorino caught the final out of the NLDS were not just joyful boasts. They were sighs of relief.
Philadelphia fans are known for being boorish hecklers who boo Baby Jesus, throw snowballs at the president and eat the severed tendons of opposing injured players. All of that may be true. Truth is, though, it’s hard to be a Philadelphia sports fan. It’s one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Michael Irvin were dead. People were so nervous yesterday they couldn’t even come up with any good taunts:
[The] Philadelphia faithful watched Milwaukee ace Sabathia warm up in the bullpen prior to the game. A typical Philadelphia greeting, which meant showering him with epithets, was expected by many.But the crowd was strangely quiet. The few who were heard called Sabathia was fat or simply told him that he “going down.” No one had any real zingers for the 290-pound lefty.
Jarrod Krycewicz, 28, of Allentown, Pa., was one of the few who yelled at Sabathia during his warm-ups. “Hey, fat boy!” he screamed out. “Sabathia, fat boy!”
But it quickly stopped as one of the security guards told him to leave. And if he came back, he was told, he would be ejected. “I paid too much money for this seat to get kicked out,” Krycewicz said. “I’d rather just watch from my seat and root hard for the Phillies.”
It’s a little silly to say that the fans rooting hard caused Sabathia to walk Brett Myers, walk Jimmy Rollins, and leave that ball up against Shane Victorino (though the crowd’s cheering every ball as if Sabathia couldn’t throw a strike had to help when the ump called close pitches). But Victorino’s slam was so perfect, so amazing, so unlike anything the Phillies have seen in their previous 125 seasons you couldn’t help but think the crowd was part of it. You couldn’t help but think that screaming at your TV actually worked, that your lucky shirt actually was lucky, that even though it was just 11 innings into the series this could be the year when something everything breaks right and a local team finally wins a championship.
Of course, you also remembered the 2001 Sixers after Game 1 of the NBA Finals, or the Flyers squad that won in five overtimes the year before. You remember the 1977 Phillies. And that year’s Sixers, who won the first two games of the NBA Finals in Portland before dropping the next four. And you know the Phillies are more than capable of dropping consecutive games in Milwaukee.
Yes, this is life for a Philadelphia sports fan. It’s kind of depressing. But as last night showed, every once in a while it’s an awful lot of fun.
Further reading: Sports Illustrated’s recap of the ‘77 NLCS is quite good.
Original photo by David Owen used under a Creative Commons license
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