As I prepared to write this piece, I was looking over the statistics of the 1980 Phillies versus the 2008 Phillies. Then it came to me: Who cares? I was going to break it down position by position, batting average, extra-base hits, RBI, etc. Does it really matter that second baseman Manny Trillo hit .217 in the 1980 fall classic against Chase Utley's .167 in 2008. Larry Bowa hit .375 to Jimmy Rollins .227, and the point of this all is...both are World Champions.
Two teams, 28 years apart, will now be linked forever to Phillies fans. The same way people my age talk about Steve Carlton, Tug McGraw, and Mike Schmidt, the newer generation will talk about Cole Hamels, Brad Lidge, and Ryan Howard.
We seldom mention the 1983 National League Champion Phillies, who bowed out four games to one to the Baltimore Orioles, and we can now put the memories of John Kruk and the '93 team to rest, although the vision of Joe Carter circling the bases will burn in our memories forever.
To take and compare the two rosters would be unfair to everyone, at the end of the day, all that really matters is the final result, in this case: a World Championship and the result of that, a parade down Broad Street! A parade that ESPN chose to show 20 second clips of about every 15 minutes, but that's for another day.
Thank you to the Philadelphia Phillies organization for making our dreams come true. I have been talking about the '80 Phillies for 28 years now, and because I now live in Michigan, it must be very boring to most people that anen't baseball freak-shows. Thank you for some new material to talk about...And please don't make us wait another 28 years.
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