Game 153 - Sunday Afternoon, September 23rd in Philadelphia
Record 77-76, 3rd Place, 15 1/2 games behind the Nationals
One Sentence Summary: The Phillies managed two hits off Braves pitching in a 2-1 loss, slipping further back in the Wild Card standings.
What It Means: Barring an eight or nine-game win streak from the Phils and a bunch of losses from the Cardinals, Brewers, Dodgers and Diamondbacks, the season is over. They're now five back in the Wild Card standings.
What Went Wrong: Re-read the first sentence: The Phillies managed two hits.
Cliff Lee pitched a nice ballgame, allowing two runs (one earned) on nine hits in eight innings of work. His ERA over his last six starts is a minuscule 1.04. But the Phillies managed just two hits off Tim Hudson, Eric O'Flaherty and Craig Kimbrel.
Featured Card: I recently picked up the 1983 TCMA Portland Beavers team set, which includes 25 cards of the players, coaches and manager who spent time with the Phillies' Triple-A club that year. It's got great minor league cards of Phillies Room favorites Larry Andersen, Juan Samuel and Porfi Altamirano. But while I was thumbing through the team set, the card featured here made me pause.
Closer inspection of the photo on the card confirmed that Chris Bourjos, a seven-season minor leaguer who appeared in 13 games with the San Francisco Giants, has his eyes closed. I love minor league cards because of cards like this. And when I was trying to come up with a good card to best sum up my feelings towards yesterday's Phillies game - I thought of this card. Like Bourjos, I spent the majority of the game with my eyes closed, dreaming of a happier 2013 season.
2 comments:
I love how they turned the Phillies' "P" upside-down to make a "b". That's so typical of the minor leagues in the 1980's.
Good point--the Reading Phillies did likewise for about 25 years. They just took the Phillies P and added a "leg" to it--both in the 1960s with that stylized P and in the 1970s and 1980s with the P in this Beavers photo. Then they developed some self-respect and came up with their own "R."
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