This time around,
the Phillies finish the race

In the Batter’s Box
By Matt Godfrey

"Myers has the sign from Chris Coste. Curveball STRUCK HIM OUT!! The Phillies are National League East champions!!!"
— Broadcaster Harry Kalas, calling the last pitch of Sunday’s game against the Washington Nationals.

At the start of the season I compared a baseball season’s strategy to that of a marathon, rather than a sprint.
Well, the marathon has finally ended. And all of the runners have crossed the finish line, most with a thud, some with a bang.
The Phillies finished with a bang, probably the loudest in all of baseball. Seventeen games to the finish line and the Phillies won 13 of them.
The New York Mets, the front-runner for almost the entire season, became the runner constantly looking over his shoulder at the guy advancing behind him.
The Phillies were that guy.
And the Mets stumbled and fell. They lost 12 of their final 17 games to cough up their chance at a second pennant in as many years.
Baseball Prospectus, an analytical bible of the sport, already has proclaimed the Mets’ dive as the second-biggest collapse in the history of baseball. The horror of our ’64 Phillies still ranks up there, but perhaps we won’t have to keep hearing so much about it now.
Or, come to think of it, people talking wistfully about the ’93 Phils, the last team to reach the playoffs. (We won’t talk about the World Series.)
When you ponder the 2007 edition of the team, there are a lot of reasons they were extremely fortunate to be giddily squirting champagne on one another during Sunday’s locker-room celebration.
Their bullpen was horrendous for much of the season.
Their pitching rotation was marred by injuries. Only 44-year-old Jamie Moyer made it through the season without spending time on the disabled list.
The offense, of course, was the bright spot, but you aren’t supposed to win the division without solid pitching.
Most startling of all, the Phils never reached first place during the first 159 games of the season. But the last three games defined their year, and the Phillies got to the top when it mattered.
At the plate, the Phils put together a season to remember. They scored 892 runs, second only to the New York Yankees, the other team with a resurgent push to the playoffs.
And the Phils’ starting pitchers did their part. Kyle Kendrick came up from the minors and Kyle Lohse arrived in a trade with the Reds to join Moyer and Cole Hamels as the nucleus of reliable starters.
As the season moved into late summer, the bullpen started to save more games and blow fewer leads. J.C. Romero, Tom Gordon and Brett Myers in particular figured out how to stop the avalanche that was threatening to bury the Phillies’ season.
And leading the charge was their own MVP, Jimmy Rollins, who should end up with the National League trophy as well.
Rollins scored the first run in the first inning of Sunday’s pivotal game — after stealing two bases to put himself on third.
Then, during his final at-bat of the regular season, he joined Willie Mays, Frank "Wildfire" Shulte and Curtis Granderson as the only players to have at least 20 home runs, 20 triples, 20 doubles and 20 stolen bases in a season.
In March, everyone recalls, Rollins told the Associated Press, "Bottom line, we’re the team to beat. I can’t put it any other way."
And now the Phillies are your National League East champions.
In their current playoff series against the Colorado Rockies, the challenge is for the Phils to summon the same fire, the same intensity, that wrote the remarkable script for that final weekend of the season.
It’s nice to remember that sensation of how good it felt to be watching the Phils play baseball in October. ••
Columnist Matt Godfrey can be reached at 215-354-3113 or mgodfrey@phillynews.com