The Math that Matters.

This will likely be my last sports-related column for a while. But, I had to write it. I will get back to talking about the family and the kids soon, and in fact have a column that is halfway completed regarding the kids and their recent independent-streak…stay tuned.

As you may have heard, my beloved Philadelphia Phillies, are, as Harry Kalas would say, the World Champions, of baseball. I’ve followed this team a long time, and have written about sports in this space before. Here are some of my thoughts of late. Thank you as always for your indulgence…

The way that I spoke to my father in many ways was through sports. The hard part was that for the most part, during our time together, our teams, on a regrettable and consistent manner, sucked ass.

While I remember the Phillies 1980 World Series win very well, I was more interested in the Sixers in 1983 than Dad was. It was not something we shared.

What remained was a double decade of awfulness. Dad died in 1990. While I know he would have loved, as I did, the 93 Phillies, I’ve written here more than once about that season.

Over those years, the Eagles, and Flyers, and even the Sixers, though I never cared for the Iverson teams… they all gave us a few potential title runs, and came close, I only now realize that this Phillies championship is what would have made my dad the happiest of all.

Dad was a ballplayer. He taught me the game, and that was the game I played growing up. I wasn’t given the chance to play football, but in addition to swimming, I was allowed to play baseball. He taught me a few pitches, and I made them work while I still played. If I could have hit a curve ball, perhaps I would have played longer. But, once they started throwing those, I knew it was time to focus on swimming and music.

While I was old enough to care, the Eagles and Phillies were both horrible, and then we had the Buddy Ryan years. I don’t remember Dad being overly interested, not in the manner in which I was, and by that, I mean that manner in which I got into fights with the front running-fair-weather-cockroach Dallas fans, or on occasion the Giants fans. Like many young sports fans, I learned how to calculate a batting average long before I understood Algebra. It may have kept me from honor roll a few times, but it mattered far more to me that I could understand ERA and Yards per carry, so I could read football and baseball box scores than it mattered that I understood the “order of Operations” and PEMDAS. There was math that mattered to my life, and well, then there was Algebra.

The math that mattered was far more interesting. Still is.

I remember my dad telling me once that his mom kept scorebooks on the Phillies. Reams of them. I started doing it too, but regrettably, I was keeping score during the forgettable Lance Parrish and Dickie Thon years of Phillies baseball. Those were lean, lean years, and my interest in that pursuit waned a bit.

But Dad loved baseball. He would watch the World Series every year, even if he didn’t care much about either team. As the Phillies were so bad during the late 1980’s, my interest waned, but he always seemed to find a way to get my sister and I to watch some of the series. So I remember the Earthquake during the 1989 Oakland-San Francisco series. I remember the Kirk Gibson Home Run in Game one of the 1988 Dodgers vs. Athletics series. I remember Dad was happy that the Dodgers won, as I think he still begrudged the A’s for leaving Philadelphia. Can’t blame him. I remember the 86 Mets-Red Sox series really well, and I remember him telling me not to go to bed yet…it wasn’t over, and then the ball went through Buckner’s legs, and the Mets won. I didn’t much care for the Mets, and I thoroughly hate them now…but at the time, I knew it was a pretty major moment.

My interest dropped a bit after he died. Whereas he and I and my sister could make even a Von “Five for one” Hayes Phillies team interesting, removing him from that equation, and her as well after she moved out, made for a somewhat less engaging experience. I figure, subtract my family, and any semblance of decent play or a chance to win, and that math added up to me paying attention to other things. The Phils were just awful in those years. And, there was music to learn to dance badly to, Star Trek to watch, girls to flirt with and be rejected by and bad jokes to tell over and over.

But, going into 1993, when reading the Trenton Times, noteably Mark Eckel, and the paper's coverage of the team and it’s new acquisitions, and their personalities, I got hooked all over again. I went to a lot of games that year, and it was a wild ride that I’ve written of here before. While I’d always cared, that team brought the joy of the game back to me.

But now, after 28 years, the Phillies won a World Championship. I think Dad would have been most happy about this. More so than the Flyers two Stanley cups in the 70’s. More so than the 1980 series win. More so than the…well, the Eagles have their own road to travel there, but as they last won an NFL Championship in 1960, and have never won a Super Bowl, they seem like the odd one out here… But overall, I think Dad would have liked this won most of all, as it was of course a fun season, but my sister and I are both old enough, and have truly demonstrated symptoms of the disease that is Philly Sports Fever. I think we could have shared this one in a really fun way. Factor in the addition of my unwitting children to this equation, and one is left with a very satisfying result, were Dad around to enjoy it.

So, what’s odd about this experience for me, is that while I am certifiably excited and happy that the Championship drought of 25 years is over, I’m finding myself feeling two distinct things:

The first is relief. I got way too geeked up for some of these games, to the point that if they had lost, I very likely would have caused great harm to the walls of my home. Just being honest. The décor is intact.

The second though, is an even deeper desire than I had before for my teams to win. I thought I would feel satisfaction, but now that I’ve tasted it…I want more. More….More. I’m not satisfied. I want the teams to care as much as the fans do. I want more parades. I don't want to see teams let up, now that the "curse" is over.

My kids are now, as I’ve taught them, referring to the Phils as the “World Champion Phillies.” My daughter is in love with the Phanatic. My son wants to watch Hockey, but loved the series, and as the final outs were recorded, I held on to whichever one happened to get close enough for me to hug, in turn. I don’t know that they’ll remember it, but I’ll see that they hear about it. Over and over again. They are part of the Math now.

The twins will be four next month, and the Bear will be two. They’ve lived to experience one Eagles Super Bowl (loss), and a Phillies world championship. That’s two chances for a World Championship and one title in just under four years.

By the time I was four, I had lived through the following: two Flyers Stanley Cup wins in three consecutive trips to the NHL finals; The Sixers went to the NBA Finals one time and lost to Portland. That’s four chances and two titles in the first four years of my life.

I for one, hope that the twins averages hold or improve, as mine did neither: the next 30 some years of my life yielded only a Sixers title, and now a second Phillies title.

I want this to be the start of something great, rather than the start of another 28 year wait.

Here's hoping the Math adds up.

Until the next one. Hope I can make that Parade. Go Philly.